Loyal School Board approves spring referendum question

The Loyal School Board has agreed to pose an operational referendum question in the spring; however, the amount is yet to be determined.

At its meeting last Wednesday, the board affirmed it wished to go forward with the referendum. District Administrator Chris Lindner gave a few brief comments on the subject.

“We had a finance meeting last night, and in order to keep what we have going as a school district, we need to go to referendum. The majority is for our staff and our programming. We are currently in the last year of a five-year, $675,000 referendum. This is the 10th year we’ve ran one. Like many schools in the state, we need it to keep moving forward,” he said.

The state funding formula is set up in such a way that school districts do not receive enough revenues from the state to cover their expenses, so the remainder must come from property taxes. School districts also have revenue limits imposed on them based on Wisconsin Act 16.

Per the Department of Public Instruction website, “Wisconsin Act 16 implemented revenue limits beginning with the 1993-94 school year. A district’s revenue limit is the maximum amount of revenue that may be raised through state general aid and property tax for the General, Non-Referendum Debt … and Capital Expansion Funds.”

If a school district wishes to exceed its revenue limit, it must ask district residents in order to do so. Most school districts in the state have done this. This last year, voters in 92 Wisconsin school districts were asked to raise revenue limits for their schools. There were 166 total school referendum questions on the ballot this last year, the highest number in over two decades.

Loyal School District voters rejected a Nov. 8 referendum 640-556. That referendum would have authorized the district to collect an additional $1.1 million in tax revenue next year and $1.4 million for each of the subsequent four years. The revenue would have been largely used for operational expenses, although some of the first year’s amount would have gone to maintenance items like the elementary parking lot sewer line replacement.

Lindner felt there were some communication issues with the public the last go-around, so he wants to rectify those issues heading into April.

“We are looking at creating a task force so we can get the information out to the public. There were concerns last time with people either not knowing or miscommunication. So we want to continue with posting on the website and Facebook, going to meetings and doing whatever we possibly can do to get the information out there.”

The referendum question will need to be passed and approved by Jan. 24 to appear on the April 4 ballot.

The board plans to hold a special meeting Jan. 11 at 7 p.m. to set the referendum amount. No specific numbers were discussed at the most recent board meeting, although the district would likely not ask for any more than the $6.7 million total it asked for last time.

Lindner also clarified an issue for the public. He said the baseball infield project was being paid for partially by Fund 46 (the Capital Improvement Fund) and that money had been available for seven years. Money for the project will also come from Fund 80 (the Community Service Fund) and donations of services by local businesses. The building trades class will construct the new dugouts. Money for the project is not coming from Fund 10 (the General Fund), as some had mistakenly thought.

“It’s one of those projects we kept putting off and putting off, so we figured we should just do it,” said Lindner.

Middle school baseball co-op, other business Also at the meeting, the board approved hiring Jessica Minders as the K-12 vocal music/choral teacher next year. She is teaching in Luck and is looking forward to returning to the area, as she is from Spencer. The board also hired Annalyse Stratton as a kindergarten teacher, starting Jan. 18. The school district has one kindergarten teacher and a classroom aide currently. The district had been seeking a second kindergarten teacher ever since the person they hired backed out shortly before the school year started. With the new hire, the class will be split in half.

The board also approved Jaedyn Pieper and Nick Schlagenhaft as middle school girls basketball coaches, and Randy Montalvo as head coach and Derek Dieckman as assistant coach for baseball. The school district is still seeking a junior varsity and middle school coach for baseball.

Additionally, the board agreed to a middle school baseball cooperative program with Greenwood. As of the meeting, Loyal had 20 middle school boys interested in the program, most of them in eighth grade; and Greenwood had 10-12 boys interested, mostly in seventh grade.

“We feel it’s a good move to continue having two teams and build the program,” said Lindner. “Mr. Montalvo is on board with it. We could use both fields for practice when the varsity and JV are not using them. We have some details like jerseys we’ll have to figure out. We could just do a t-shirt for this first year. We have one person from Greenwood interested in helping. Mr. Montalvo is working on some different things and we have some interest in helping here. I think it would be good for program development and player development.”

Board member Dave Clintsman asked Lindner if he had talked to the parents and kids involved, and Lindner said he had not. However, board member Kim Bremmer chimed in and said she had heard from a few parents and they were in support of the idea.

“I think it’s important we do this to keep building to the program. I don’t see a reason why we shouldn’t,” she said.

The board voted unanimously to approve the co-op. There has also been discussion in the last couple of years about the two schools co-oping for varsity baseball, so this could be a step towards that.

The varsity softball program is already co-oped between Loyal and Greenwood. For softball, the board approved head coach Greg Brock and middle school coaches Angie Kollmansberger and Samantha Lindner. Greenwood has hired an assistant coach and junior varsity coach. Loyal is still looking for a junior varsity coach.

For track, the board approved head coach Jim Genteman; assistant coaches Morgan Malm, Bernie Stuttgen and Kyle Damask; and middle school coach Rebekah Smith.