School district to hold referedum info sessions

Anna Speaker
October, 2008

The Madison School District has scheduled four public information sessions throughout October in an effort to raise public awareness about the rapidly approaching referendum.

The district will hold the meetings at four different middle schools across the city. Madison School Board member and communications committee Chairwoman Beth Moss said she hopes that the wide distribution of session locations will generate diverse representation from various attendance areas.

“The formal information sessions try to appeal to more people out in the community,” Moss said. “It’s not just parents. It’s more like people who live in that attendance area. We try to get seniors to come.”

The sessions will feature a brief introduction by a district administration member, followed by an informational DVD presentation. Moss said the DVD uses graphics to help explain details of the referendum that may not be clear to voters.

“It is very important for people to get the facts and understand what we’re asking for. We’re not building a building. We’re trying to just keep going. We’re just trying to keep providing an education and not make really devastating cuts,” Moss said.

The referendum is scheduled for Nov. 4, and proposes that the district raise the revenue limit by $5 million in the 2009-2010 school year, and by $4 million in 2010-2011 and 2011-2012. The increased revenue limit will consequently cause taxes to increase in 2009 by about $27.50 for a $250,000 home.

Moss said that while Madison residents suffer yearly from increased tax rates, the city’s schools don’t benefit from that increase.

“There are all of these things showing how the amount of money that schools receive now is so much less than it was in 1978, and people are actually paying less out of their taxes now than they did in 1978,” Moss said. “So it’s kind of like, this is why we’re in the situation we’re in. It’s hard for people to understand because taxes otherwise have gone up, but the amount we get has gone down.”

As of now, Moss said there is no known organized opposition to the proposal, but could not say the same for past referendums.

“I know [at] the last referendum there was no organized opposition but [at] the previous one, there were groups who actually had signs and had literature and they were actively campaigning against it. We haven’t seen that yet, but you never know. There’s still quite a bit of time,” Moss said.
People with an eye for education may have spotted some of the other publicity outlets the district used in recent weeks. District Spokesman Ken Syke said that schools took numerous measures to get the word out about the event.

“We work through our schools in what’s called either backpack mail or just school newsletters. Each school sends out a newsletter to parents about once a month or once every five weeks, and we give them any information that they can use there,” Syke said. “In addition, as far as the sessions, we’ve done a traditional news release to the news media and asked them to promote it.”

He also said that the school district e-mailed the parents about the informational meetings and added a section to the district’s Web site explaining the referendum in detail.

The information sessions will be held Oct. 7 at Sherman Middle School, Oct.16 at Jefferson Middle School, Oct. 22 at Wright Middle School, and Oct. 28 at Sennett Middle School. Each meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. and will feature both Spanish and Hmong interpreters.