Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Sun Prairie is tops!


The old adage goes that the only two sure things are death and taxes. For Sun Prairie, let's make that GROWTH and TAXES.

Recently, our luvable little---errr....BIG----city rose to the top of two charts:

1. Sun Prairie is the top growing city in all of Wisconsin (any surprise there?)

The article states that,
"The city, which counts artist Georgia O'Keeffe as its most famous native
daughter, has now swelled to 27,758 residents, making it Dane County's
second-largest city. A 24 percent growth rate since 2000 also makes it the
fastest-growing city in Wisconsin
, with more than 10,000 new residents
."
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/index.php?ntid=318899

1. Sun Prairie also ranks number one in Dane Country in terms of taxes...according to the fair tax comparison performed by the Wisconsin State Journal. (that probably doesn't come as a surprise either).

Read the article

Review or download the tax comparison table
Remember folks....a mill rate is just a number; a mill rate alone is like toast without butter. The Senior Partners love to quote mill rates and use them to their advantage. "Hey....look at us! We're nowhere NEAR the awful mill rate people face in the town of Montrose!". But in the end, it's all about the benjamins....YOUR benjamins. You have to look at a mill rate relative to the assessed value of your home. And THEN, you have to consider that assessed value relative to what a fair market value would be. THAT converts something that aspires to BE a number into a real cash liability...your property tax bill.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Taking Stock: State of the District

As another calendar year passes, it's time to reflect on the school district and how our school board is doing. Are we better one year down the road? Those suffering from pollyannaism may indeed believe so.

What have we really accomplished? Let's take a look back. Is this really what we expect from our elected officials???

Long tenured school board member and past president Mary Ellen Havel-Lang was ousted during the April 2008 elections. Has the school board changed as a result? Sadly, no. The status is most definitely quo.

We have opened the 7th elementary school, Creekside. Alas, the school is only half full, yet 3 other schools are nearly filled to the brim.

The high school is on its way to completion, but it may take some additional money to build an access road on Marshview road to the back side of the existing high school. It seems the DNR has some issues with paving over a wetland. How dare they? Funny hat no one investigated this earlier.

The fighting is still happening at the high school, so nothing new there. Does anyone really think that will change with a new high school?

For two consecutive years we've replaced a school board member mid-term. Hmmmm.

The school board unveiled a brand new $50,000 system to hold school board meetings on-line. Board Docs is up, but the jury remains out as to whether this represents an improvement, or a costlier widget. One good thing is that --so far--the PDF files appear to be text rather than image-based. Hoorah!!! That is a huge step forward. Just remember that we had that capability long before BoardDocs....we just didn't utilize it.

The district WKCE scores weren't anything to write home about. Good, but not stellar.

A month-by-month review of key issues is as follows:

JANUARY 2008
  • Teachers picket School Board meeting.

FEBRUARY 2008
  • Jim Carrel shakes up board meeting, claims to be ashamed of other board members
  • 1st Community Engagement Task Force mtg
  • Boundary wars begin as final recommendations presented to public

MARCH 2008
  • Taxpayers get the bill for a $339 steak dinner ($42/person) as 6 school board members attend annual school board conference and treat themslves to a nice dinner
  • Board discards Boundary Tasl Force recommendations and makes major changes causing a huge community ruckus.
APRIL 2008
  • Election surprise: Boylen and Havel Lang ousted, Camber-Davidson & Shimek in , Stasckhouse re-elected
  • Expulsions up 400% over previous year
  • School Board decides to pay for District Admin Tim Culver's Rotary Club membership in addition to two memberships allowed by his contract.

MAY 2008

  • The importance of checking one's work- the SPHS honor roll fiasco
  • School Board meets to re-consider March Boundary decision, then reaffirms ealier boundary decision by split vote.

JUNE 2008

  • High school graduation ceremony; students completely out-of-control. Neitrher school board or adminstration takes any action.
  • SPHS makes the list, but it's not a good thing. SPHS failed to make adequate yearly progress

JULY 2008

  • Communiuty learns that board president Stackhouse is 3-years delinquent on property taxes. (Hey...doesn't money for schools come from property taxes???). Later pays full $15K in arrears.
  • Board votes (amazing!) NOT to spend $45-50 K to move school board mtgs from municipal bldg to district office.

AUGUST 2008

  • Administration proposes $5.00/hr raise (from $32/hr) for Bus. Services Manager. Board sees the error in its ways and only gives a raise of $2.50 per hr (geee...that's awful!) but commits to doing a market comparison study (thereby telegraphing hope to 'justify' the rest later on).
  • 9 adminstrators now in the $100K salary club
  • SPASD debt now at $170M, 2nd in state only to MKE. (+ 4M more due to the pool vote in Nov)

SEPTEMBER 2008

  • District Administrator Culver gets a B- on his performance evaluation (8.0 out of 10) despite meeting only 19 out of 56 metrics. (Math challenge question: How on earth does 19/56 = 0.8?) Translates to a 4.5% salaryt increase. How much of a raise did YOU get this year?

OCTOBER 2008

  • The annual electors meeting was held. Once again, the 40 or so folks that came out to the meeting to vote was heavily weighted by District employees and spouses and/or school board members. . "We" voted to approve a tx levy of over $40M.
  • Questions over "finder's fees" associated with naming rights for various "pieces" of the new high school gets approved.
    electors mtg

NOVEMBER 2008

  • Fueled by a huge presidential election turnout, the Community approves (53.4%, 9715-8464)construction of a pool for the new high school AND allows the school board to permananently exceed the state-imposed revenue cap (51.1% (9189-8782)by $288K each year to cover pool maintenance costs beginning in 2010.
  • SAGE program compliance is questioned. Will the school board back Culver's interpretation of what constitutes compliance?

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Candidiate Update: Whalen in

Despite reports from numerous sources that John Whalen was NOT going to run for re-election, it seems that he now IS running to retain his board seat.

He was circulating nomination papers at the Special School Board work session on Tuesday Dec. 2.

The current buzz is that his employer likes the prospect of Mr. Whalen serving as a board member.

Hmmmm.

Stay tuned. This means that Whalen, Shimek, and Slane all plan to retain their seats. Several folks have been asking the question: "Will Mary Ellen Havel-Land submit candidacy papers?" SP-EYE has not heard anything along the lines, but we'll keep you posted as information comes available.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Diss. Engine. You. Us.

What's that mean? Exactly!
And that's exactly what we thought when we read the article in the 12-4-08 edition of the Sun Prairie Star regarding the District's SAGE program compliance. What does that mean?

Sound out the words "Diss. Engine You. Us" and you get: disingenuous. And that's exactly what that article presented to the community. A disingenuous monologue by District Administrator Tim Culver designed to discredit the question asked by district resident John Welke at a recent joint meeting of the school board's Education & Policy and Finance committees.
Look up "disingenuous" in your favorite dictionary and you'll find that it means:

Lacking in candor; giving a false appearance of simple frankness.
Generally, it means "insincere" and often represents a synonym of
cynical or calculating.

Check your handy thesaurus and you'll find:

Not being what one purports to be. Marked by treachery or deceit.

We all thought we were done with the constant barrage of double-speak in the form of presidential blitzkrieg ads. Not so. This article is full of double-speak.

Culver keeps asserting that Sun Prairie is in compliance. He's right...for this year (2008-09). As of the 3rd Friday count, none of the SAGE classrooms exceeded 15 kids. This year. That statement cannot be made for years 2006 and 2007, however. (For argument sake, let's even get past the SAGE program "changes" prior to 2006.

Rules are rules and the law is the law. Dr. Culver can rationalize things all he wants, but in the end, statutes and administrative code drive the system.

Ch. 118, Wis. Stats., "General School Operations":

118.43(1) Definitions. In this section:
(a) "Class size" means the number of pupils assigned to a regular classroom teacher on the 3rd Friday of September.
[That means 15.0 PER class,period.]

118.43 Achievement guarantee contracts; state aid.
(3) Contract requirements. Except as provided in pars. (am) and (ar), an achievement guarantee contract shall require the school board to do all of the following in each participating school:

(ar) Class size; additional contracts. For contracts that begin in the 2000-01 school year, reduce each class size to 15 in the following manner:
3. In the 2002-03 to 2004-05 school years, in at least grades kindergarten to 3.

s. PI 24.03, Wis. Admin. Code, "STATE AID FOR ACHIEVEMENT GUARANTEE CONTRACTS AND PARTIAL DEBT SERVICE REIMBURSEMENT"(4) The department may not pay aid to school districts under this subchapter if the school district does not comply with the requirements under this subchapter.

So, Yes, Virginia, Dr. Culver is correct that Sun Prairie is in compliance with SAGE requirements...THIS YEAR. But that is not completely truthful in previous years. Remember the old "the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth" thing? DPI may not have consistently enforced the provisions of the law in years past, but that does NOT mean that we were in compliance. The fact that DPI may be "looking the other way" does not give us carte blanche authority to disregard the law. Read between the lines of the DPI representative's statements in the article, and you'll see there's waffle room in what was stated.

Also read the letter from DPI. You decide what it means or does not mean.

"Higher ups" at DPI were contacted by members of the public to ask VERY SPECIFIC questions regarding the compliance issues. Here are the answers that were obtained:

"To my knowledge, there is no specific State Statue or Administrative Code that
exempts a school district from filing for a waiver when out of compliance with
SAGE requirements prior to 2006.

The district files the waiver. A waiver could be "initiated" in a myriad of ways - a teacher asking his/her principal to request one, a citizen could ask the school board to file one, a school principal could ask his superintendent to file one after consulting DPI folks, etc. The bottom line is the district files it.

if a district is not in compliance, the contract may be terminated, which means the district would not be in the program, which means funding would cease."

Perhaps what's most alarming here is Dr. Culver's venomous attempt to malign the credibility of a citizen that brought forward a valid concern. Ulterior motives? How about, the citizen (John Welke) truly embraces the value of the SAGE program (Geee...Dr. Culver forgot to mention the accolades that Welke had for SAGE and Director of Instruction, Alice Murphy). He was concerned that Sun Prairie was not in complete compliance with the law and feared that SAGE aid funds were in jeopardy.

Dr. Culver and the School Board: Why must you choose to tear down a resident instead of just doing the very simple task of following the law? If you have even ONE K-3 classroom with more that 15 kids on the 3rd Friday, then file a waiver! You may not WANT to do the extra work, but that's what the law says. It's kind of like paying taxes...none of us love paying them every year, but we do. Wait...to be completely accurate here, we really should say that MOST of us pay our taxes on time.

Our apologies Mr. Welke for having been treated as you were at the Finance/ Ed& Policy meeting, and then again for how this article suggests that you have no idea what you are talking about. You were right then, and still are today. Take solace in knowing that there ARE members of this community that aren't so easily snowed by those that are masters of doublespeak.