School Board Campaign Conversation: Notes from Tuesday

I had my first big public event as a school board candidate yesterday morning. O.K., scratch big: six people stopped by for the open forum I hosted at the Madison Public Library... and two of them were Mrs. Madville Times and Madville Times Jr. :-)

But I can have as good a conversation with four voters as with four hundred. Current school board member Rod Goeman dropped in. He'd just finished pitching a new housing development on Lake Madison to the Lake County Commission (Sioux Falls house hunters, start sending your bids) and had some time to offer some insight on board activities.

One startling fiscal note: Madison Central's FY2007 general fund expenditures are $6.1 million. In FY2000, the general fund was $6.2 million. (See the state Department of Education's Statistical Digest for budget data.) In seven years, our school district budget has seen a real cut -- not a cut in growth, which most policy wonks consider a cut, but a decrease in actual dollars. Compare that to the state general fund: growing from $785 million in FY2000 to $1.093 billion in FY2007. Over seven years, that's 4.7% annual growth. Had Madison Central increased its budget at the same rate, our general fund would currently be $8.6 million.

Special education may create a budget squeeze in the near future. Special ed students used to be, for lack of a more polite term, a cash cow: Madison Central qualified for more funding than it needed, so for a while, drawing more special ed students actually filled the coffers. Now the number of special ed students may be growing faster than the budget can keep up. Special ed isn't an optional program we can cut whenever we need; the law requires us to offer certain services to every qualifying student. So there's something we need to keep an eye on.

We talked a bit about computers. The Legislature's cut to the Classroom Connections program won't affect Madison; the funding is still in place for our HS laptops. But we did discuss going for cheaper computers in the future. If we did bolt from the state's deal with Gateway, we'd have to pay for our own training workshops. Of course, if we can get a good deal on Dell or HP laptops for $600 a pop instead of $1200 per Gateway Tablet PC, we might have plenty of money left over to conduct our own in-house training.

New idea of the day: Charlie Johnson offered a brainstorm about creating a student advocacy position. He suggested students could benefit from having a staffer who would speak on their behalf in disciplinary situations. When a student takes a complaint to a teacher or the principal, the student is at a disadvantage. A student usually doesn't know the district policies or school law as well as the teacher or principal. A student may also not be as good at presenting her or his case without getting emotional or smarting off (hey, kids are like that -- it's called being 16 and having hormones). Even a good kid with a reasonable grievance may not be able to put her or his case forward as well as an adult. Charlie thus recommended having someone like a public defender for kids to help them out in those situations. I don't know if any schools have a position like this -- suggestions, anyone?

The gym came up (it always will). Linda McIntyre said last year's gym proposal failed in large part because its main advocates came across as arrogant. Linda's husband Neal noted that they already pay $800 a month in taxes to support education, and they're happy to pay it. But the gym proposed last year would have added to their tax bill without adding to the educational benefits the school district provides. They agree that a new events center of some sort would provide some benefits in tourism and sales tax dollars. But the school district is already doing its part for economic development by educating kids (education is the bedrock of any development). If folks want more economic development, they should turn to private capital campaigns like Forward Madison and the economic development dollars the city, county, and state can make available.

Just one more gym thought: maybe the school district just isn't the right agency to build a big events center. Maybe the district operates under budget and political constraints that are too tight to build the biggest, best facility possible. The district cut corners on its events facilities in the high school in 1964 (imagine if we were still hosting games in the HS gym). The district hasn't had the finances to upgrades its HS auditorium in 45 years. The district had to cut corners to build the middle school and ended up with a non-regulation basketball court. The school does what it can, but athletic supporters who want a big gym version of the Field of Dreams may need to chase a different funding source. (Hey, how did Ray Schultz get his ball diamond built?)

My thanks to Rod, Charlie, Neal, and Linda for stopping by for a really good conversation. I'll host one more meeting like this, on Wednesday, April 2, from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., at the same place, the Madison Public Library meeting room. If you can't make the all-candidate public forum on the 3rd, or if you just want a chance to have a more substantial conversation and ask more follow-up questions, come on over!