Annual Meeting tomorrow; full court press on busing issues?

In case you did not know, the school district annual elector's meeting is tomorrow night, Monday September 30, 2013.

Place:  Sun Prairie High School, 888 Grove St

Time:   7:00 PM

Heart of the matter:  Setting the tax levy required to operate and maintain schools

Electors at the meeting will vote to approve the proposed tax levy of $47,524,921 upon all taxable property in the Sun Prairie Area School District for the purposes of operating and maintaining the district schools and for paying for debt for school projects.

That represents a 2.9% increase over the 2012-13 tax levy of $46,187,633

Key information sources
http://www.sunprairie.k12.wi.us/district/annual_mtg_13.cfm

http://www.sunprairie.k12.wi.us/businessfiles/Annual%20Meeting%202013.pdf

Whats this about busing?

For each of at least the past two years, issues have been raised about busing.  This year, we hear that a sizeable group of community members ill appear and try to leverage a majority vote to change the busing distance from 2 miles to 1.5 miles...or less.

These 11th hour attempts to take the annual meeting hostage have to end.  Don't people get it?  A hundred or so people do not represent a school district of 30,000+ residents.

Do these people understand how much money is tied into busing? Redrawing the busing lines could cause a significant jump in the tax levy.
How do we pay for that?  These people need to somehow be reminded that the majority of residents in the district do not have any children attending school..  Many are on fixed incomes.   We're wondering what the average household income is of these people that want to bus more.

Here's a proposal....why don't we just bus every kid in the district and to pay for it, we'll eliminate Physical Education from the curriculum.  If we don't want our babies to get exercise walking to school, why bother with gym class?  They probably all get doctor's notes excusing them anyway.

OK...so we jest...but people need to think through these things before engaging their mouths.