Greenwood School District plans for referendum in April 2024

The current operational referendum for the Greenwood School District will be ending soon, bringing the question of what to do for school funding in future years back to the public to decide. Greenwood School District Administrator Joe Green gave a short presentation to the school board during its meeting Aug. 23 to inform them of the future need and to begin preparations for a referendum question to be asked in April next year.

Green informed the board that the current operational referendum will expire in 2025. If the district wants to continue operating without having to make cuts, he said it was important for them to begin the process to go to referendum once again. This would include figuring out how much money the district would ask of residents and how that would impact the mill rate.

“The big thing for the community is communicating the need for the referendum,” he said.

There are two elections that will take place in 2024. If the district wants to go to referendum, Green said they had the option to plan for a proposal for either the spring or the fall. If the board favored a spring vote, a proposal would be needed by Jan. 23, while a November election would push that proposal to Aug. 27.

Currently, Green said the district has been working Referendum,

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with Baird, a financial services company out of Eau Claire, to create a timeline for future funding for the district and how a proposal could impact residents. After the district’s annual meeting to be held on Sept. 25, he said he should be ready to give the board some numbers on how much the district will need to continue to operate without having to make cuts.

“Right now, our preliminary numbers show that the mill rate should be lower than what it has been for the past 10 years, even with the new referendum,” said Green. “We will have the annual meeting on Sept. 25; we can come back to this at our regular meeting (on Sept. 27) and talk about the actual numbers with the board.”

After his presentation, the members of the board spoke in favor of trying to put a proposal together for residents to vote on at the April 2 spring election.

In other action taken by the board at its Aug. 23 meeting, the board tabled deciding on a new head football coach for the co-oped Loyal-Greenwood football team until after the conclusion of this season’s games. The board also voted to hire an athletic trainer to work with coaches and athletes two hours a week at a $90 per day rate.