Loyal,
from p. 16
Finances The Loyal and Greenwood school districts are both under operational referendums that last through 2028. Those would be considered void were the districts to consolidate before 2028. Loyal’s final year of the referendum is for $1.5 million while Greenwood’s is for $1.7 million.
“So that’s $3.2 million (between the two), and one of the things, just looking at some initial things, is that would be reduced by $1 million between the two districts of what we would need to ask the public to support for a referendum to keep our schools open,” said board member Tom Odeen.
The study found that a $2 million operational referendum should be sufficient to support the combined school district, meaning the taxpayers of each district would be responsible for a lesser amount than they are currently paying for an operational referendum. However, the study didn’t take into account all the factors associated with combining the two districts.
“It doesn’t look at all at facilities; it doesn’t look at reducing the buildings. It doesn’t look if there’s some staff reduction due to attrition or retirements, or other cost savings. So there’s a lot of room there. So the financial aspect would be a really good thing to delve into. Because the goal of both districts is to be able to offer quality education and keep the programs that we have, or possibly offer more programs together than what we could do individually,” said Odeen.
The two districts are both debt free, both have a similar mill rate and are in close proximity to each other, which are all positives, said Odeen. However, he said, a lot more information needed to be gathered.
He also felt the location of the school(s) was to some degree a secondary issue that would need to be worked out when the districts decided to consolidate.
“My understanding is once you, you know, whether you have the vote by the public to move forward, my understanding is then that more or less forms a consolidated board. There’s a board that then would be acting on behalf of both schools. So I imagine it would involve board members from each group, not all of us, as part of that, and then they would have a recommendation as far as what they recommend to put out there as far as buildings and that sort of thing,” he said. “I know there’s a lot of concern as far as what building is going to be what. I’m more looking at, how can we provide the best education for our students, regardless of if we have to travel 6, 8 miles in one direction or the other. And I know that can add up for those that are on the edges of the districts, if it requires more traveling. But we have to look at how we can provide the best education for our students. We can’t guarantee that the operating referendums will continue to be approved.”
He said he was appreciative of the taxpayers supporting operational referendums in both districts up to this point. However, he knew of a school district in west-central Wisconsin that recently had two operational referendums fail, and unless they received additional income, the board said they would be forced to vote to disband in 2027.
“It’s because of the funding situation we have in Wisconsin that we have to ask for additional monies from residents, and we know we have folks on fixed incomes and we have to ask whether they’ll continue to support increasing amounts for the referendum,” said Odeen.
Lindner said the district would continue to need to go to operational referendums unless the state funding formula were to change. Eighty percent of the school districts in the state have requested for additional monies under an operational referendum.
“We are in a county where I believe everyone except for Abbotsford is (experiencing) decreasing enrollment. So, we need to do something. I think this is Mr. Green’s and my idea, when we started this, we weren’t talking consolidation; we were talking collaboration — how can we make things viable for our students in an efficient way? But I think it’s at that point where somewhere in the future consolidation is inevitable. I don’t know how long we can continue passing referendums. Hopefully it will continue but we can’t tell that future,” said Lindner.
He agreed with what Roehl said about not firing staff but reducing the number of positions by attrition. He said even right now when one of the districts has a retirement, they look at how they could possibly share that position instead of hiring someone new right away. He said another example is the elementary school. Currently Greenwood and Loyal have two sections of each grade. If an elementary teacher were to retire, they could look at possibly reducing that to three sections under a combined district.
Lindner agreed that an advisory vote would be good, but they’d have to get moving to get it on the ballot.
“I think it would depend on where the high school is, because that would change how people would vote,” Kubista chimed in.
Additional thoughts Odeen suggested collecting data from similar-sized districts to see if there were cost-saving strategies a future combined district could employ.
“I would like (Baird) to look at schools around the same size as what we would be (combined), around 800 students, to see what do their expenses look like versus what would ours be combined,” said Odeen. “I know you mentioned there’s a couple different schools that you compared us to, and we were anywhere from $2 million to $4 million more expenses than what those schools were. Granted, those might just be those schools in that community and two buildings in one community versus spread out, but I think we need to look at other schools that are similar size and see, what are they doing to reduce expenses? And can we do any of those things? If we want to reduce the amount needed for the operating referendums down the road, we need to look at that.”
Community member Viki Pieper spoke during the public comment period at the end of the meeting. She asked that if the community continued to pass operational referendums, could the Loyal School District continue to operate independently as is? The board replied yes. She also noted that the last successful K-12 consolidation in Wisconsin occurred in 2010.
The next joint school board meeting is tentatively scheduled for Dec. 11 at 7 p.m. in Greenwood. The next Loyal School Board meeting is scheduled for Dec. 18 at 7 p.m. in the Loyal board room.
