May 9—SUPERIOR — The Superior School Board has given administrators the green light to gather public feedback on a potential operating referendum.
A list of survey questions will be developed and sent to residents, who will be given three weeks to reply. Results should be available in July, District Administrator Amy Starzecki said during the Committee of the Whole meeting Monday, May 6.
The board would need to formally decide by August to add an operational referendum to the November ballot.
Wisconsin state statute
requires that a school board file a resolution to go to referendum at least 70 days before the election.
An operational referendum allows districts to raise their tax levy to fund daily operations. Superior seeks to address a financial cliff caused by declining enrollment and below-average state funding.
“The cuts were brutal this year,” Director of Business Services David See told the board.
The district
cut 25 teachers
and
40 support staff
for 2024-25 and
is closing Lake Superior Elementary at the end of this school year
due to a looming fiscal cliff.
More districts in Wisconsin are turning to operational referendums to make ends meet.
Wisconsin voters approved 62 of the 103 school district referendums placed on ballots in the spring election. The 60.2% approval rate was the lowest in a midterm or presidential election year since 2010,
according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum
, yet, more schools had a referendum question on the ballot in April than in any spring election since 2000.
“Eighty percent of districts (in Wisconsin) already went out and got an operational referendum,” See said. “We have to do it now, or we have to clearly define that there are going to be cuts.”
Part of the message the district wants to share with the community is that there is a difference between an operational referendum and a new building referendum.
Superior voters approved a
$92 million new building referendum in 2016
to replace Cooper Elementary School and renovate Superior High School.
“Ultimately, the money we use for building projects is different from what we use for operating,” Starzecki said.
Two Douglas County schools have launched operating referendums in the past 10 years.
Solon Springs School District voters
approved a recurring $500,000 operating referendum in 2016
to keep the school open. Two years later,
a three-year operational referendum that would have pumped an additional $582,000 into the Maple School District
was voted down by a slim margin.
A pair of presentations focusing on the Wisconsin public education funding crisis will be given by the League of Women Voters of Douglas County next week. The free informational sessions, followed by a question-and-answer panel, will take place from 5-6:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 14, and from noon to 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 15, at Superior Public Library.
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