Friday, October 09, 2009

Rich Kasten Guest Column

Rich Kasten has a great guest column in the Daily News today.  Here’s the meat:

The initial part of the meeting, the CFAC portion, was heavily focused on the message “We are the lowest spending district in the region.”

   One of the CFAC members asked, “We have people losing their jobs, people taking pay cuts, $10 a month is a big deal to them when they don’t have an income. How do we handle this?” Superintendent Pat Herdrich’s response: “We are the lowest spending district in the region!”

   Those two points are unrelated and shows how Dr. Herdrich cannot look past the district to see what the community is experiencing. The conclusion by the CFAC meeting — the district has a PR problem — they have not gotten the message out to the residents that we are the lowest spending district in the region.

   Next the School Board took their turn to look at the cuts put forth by the leadership team. They only, however, looked at the first 13 of the 57 on the list. At that point, School Board President Joe Carlson stated that instead of going through all the cuts, the board should pick the levy they want to go with and work to the levy. He stated he would be comfortable with a 9 percent levy increase, or a $300,000 cut from the previously proposed spending. The Board then stopped looking at any more cuts and back filled to the $300,000 number.

   I will say that I was impressed by the principals and vice principals in attendance. Mr. Carlson tried to cut the salary freezes and give small raises. The principals stated they would rather take the entire freeze to save other cuts. I commend them for doing this.

   I was also impressed by the new director of facilities. He looked at the system he inherited and came up with over $200,000 in budget cuts that do not impact programming or student/staff health.

   What I was surprised by, was that the board did not look at what they could cut based on the list, but instead worked to an arbitrary number. Cutting an AD? Custodial reclassification? Cutting the elementary dean of students at McLane? These items were never discussed because they were too far down on the list.

   No reduction in aides, substitute aides or the parking attendant. When they added up the savings they decided on, it came to more than $300,000 so they backed off the alternate day site cleaning from $200,000 to $150,000. Mind you, they could cut up to $200,000 with no impact on programming, but they elected not to. Leaving no stone unturned?

   When I approached Mr. Carlson to tell him I was disappointed and pointed at the cuts they could have made with little or no programming impact, his response was: “It’s all on the table for next year’s budget.”

   We have heard again and again from this board that their hands are tied because of spending decisions by previous boards.

   Passing the problem on to the next board shows they have not learned from this mistake.

 

(2) Comments
Posted by Owen at 0748 hrs
Politics + Politics - Wisconsin

  1. I’ve got an Idea, why dont we start with a 0% tax levy and work to that number. Thats would equal what my raise has been for the last 3 years. If you want to work to a -30% increase that would be even better, because with my hours cut that is what my gross pay is now.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 09, 2009 at 0943 hrs


  2. Thank you Rich for keeping us informed. I hope the rest of the City will start to take notice.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 09, 2009 at 1056 hrs


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