Athens residents support balancing budget

Survey indicates K-12 building opposition

Athens School District residents support an operational referendum to help balance the district’s budget, but they aren’t in favor of paying for the full list of district capital needs.

That’s a summary of a community survey presented to the Athens Board of Education on Monday.

The Athens school board hired Sue Peterson, strategy specialist at ISG, Green Bay, to draft the community survey. She appeared virtually during Monday’s meeting to provide the school board with survey results. The board hopes to use the survey as it proposes a fall referendum.

Andrea Sheridan, Athens schools superintendent, told Tim Krueger, Athens school board president, the school district is ready to have an operations referendum question on the Tuesday, Nov. 8 ballot. Baird consultant Elise Murn, who attended Monday’s meeting in person, has proposed the school district ask taxpayers for $900,000 in the first year and $770,000 in the second year of a referendum in order to offset a budget shortfall beginning in the 2022-23 school year.

The Record-Review asked Sheridan on Tuesday if the school district will propose a recurring or non-recurring operations referendum. She said the school board will hold a special meeting in approximately two weeks to review referendum draft resolutions regarding a potential November referendum.

A recurring operations referendum will increase school taxes with no end date, while a non-recurring operations referendum will allow the school district to increase taxes for a specific number of years.

Peterson told the school board 565 people completed community surveys. This is a 30 percent response rate.

“The magic number is to get 400 people to respond so 565 is absolutely excellent,” she said. She identified the group of school district resident voters who the school board needs to focus on when thinking about a Nov. 8 referendum.

“The group of people that we really want to spend most of our time focusing on is the one I refer to as general citizens,” Peterson said. “They don’t work for the school district and they don’t have children attending the school district so they are either retired, don’t have children and most importantly they may never step foot into your school buildings. The reason they are important is number one they are people who are least connected to the schools and number two they make up the majority of folks that vote at the polls. This group represents 75 percent of voters, so when you look at the data, this group will really determine the school referendum voting results at the polls.

“The second most important group of school district voters are parents of school-age children, who make up about 25 percent of the voters. School district staff account for one percent of school district voters.”

Peterson said school district residents will see an increase of $4.29 for every $100,000 of property in an operations referendum.

“Fifty-one percent of the general citizens are giving you the nod they are extremely likely or likely to support an operating referendum, and parents are sitting at 78 percent support,” she said. “While looking at this data and knowing all the subsets of your community are represented, we feel very comfortable saying the school district can move forward putting the operating referendum on the Nov. 8 election and would likely see success at the polls.”

The Athens school board is also hoping to have a second referendum question on the Nov. 8 ballot to ask school district taxpayers for capital improvement money.

Jim Wede, business development manager at design and build contractor Performance Services in Waukesha, also appeared virtually during Monday’s school board meeting. After analyzing the school buildings, he determined Athens School District’s best option was to abandon the current old elementary school building that continues to need repairs and spend $20.1 million to add an elementary wing onto the current middle/high school building. Peterson said community survey results, however, indicate school district residents are not ready yet to put this plan in motion.

“Thirty-three percent of your general citizens said yes on the community survey to build an elementary school wing onto the middle/high school campus, 35 percent said no and just under a quarter of folks were undecided,” Peterson said.

She said the school district should move forward with a capital improvements referendum item of making improvements to Maple Grove Charter School in Hamburg, based on the community survey results. Maple Grove Charter School needs its roof replaced and a backup generator for power.

“Forty-four percent of general citizens are saying yes they support Maple Grove’s needs, 33 percent are saying no and 23 percent are undecided right now,” Peterson said.

The HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) needs to be replaced in the Athens middle/high school building.

“Thirty-nine percent of the general citizens said yes to upgrading the HVAC and 38 percent said no among the general citizens,” Peterson said.

Athens School District also needs to rebuild its track that is in such bad condition. Athens middle and high school teams haven’t been able to host meets there for the last few years. A new track is estimated to cost just over one million dollars.

“Thirty-nine percent of general citizens say it’s a high priority to rebuild the track and 37 percent of them say it’s a low priority,” Peterson said.

She said both the general citizens and parents of school-age children place a much lower priority on other school district capital improvement wants such as upgrading the consumer science classroom, adding a multispace for wrestling practices and upgrading the fitness center and weight room.

Based on the community survey results, Sheridan told the school board on Monday she is suggesting it have a capital improvements resolution on the Nov. 8 election ballot to ask school district taxpayers for money to upgrade the HVAC in Athens middle/ high school, build a new track and replace the roof and buy a backup power generation at Maple Grove Charter School.

She wants to add two other capital improvement items which were not listed on the community survey. The first item is constructing a new playground at Athens Elementary School, which would be used by students in the short term.

Sheridan said the new playground would also be a good long-term investment for the school district, because it could also be used if the elementary school is repurposed as a daycare center.

The second item she wants the school board to add to the capital improvements wish list is a Career and Technical Education classroom to create a pipeline for students being employed by area businesses after they graduate high school.

The school board is expected to vote at its meeting at 6 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 15 on referendum question language.

In other news:

n It was announced school board member Johnathan Blake, who was elected onto the school board in April, has resigned his position because he is moving out of the school district. The school district will begin advertising to find a replacement for the school board to nominate to fill the open position.