Arcadia board reacts to referendum failure

In its first meeting since voters denied an operational referendum ask in the April 4 election, the Arcadia school board last Monday said the district’s focus will continue to be on quality education, students and staff as budgets get tighter.

All seven board members shared their thoughts on what they hope to see post-referendum and what they think should happen next.

Board members agreed that the district should focus on day to day education and ensuring staff and students are taken care of before they designate money to extracurriculars and other areas.

“I think the public made it pretty clear that we as a board should figure out a way to do the same or more with less, essentially. They made it pretty clear that even though it’s not going to make an impact on the amount of taxes they were going to pay, there wasn’t an interest in adding more new money into the budget,” board member Brian Steinlicht said Monday.

Staff salaries and benefits account for about 80-85 percent of the annual budget, Superintendent Lance Bagstad told the board. That other 15-20 percent is where cuts could be coming.

Bagstad added that this spring Wisconsin saw the lowest referendum passage in “several” election cycles.

That didn’t surprise board member Diana Tempski, who said she saw the end result of a failed referendum coming.

“I’ll be brutally honest,” she said. “I was not surprised one bit that it didn’t pass, because that was the perception that I got in talking to people. I didn’t talk to a single person outside of this room that was in favor of it.”

Board vice president Randy Nilsestuen admitted the board could have done a better job of illustrating what programs or offerings are on the line with the failure of the referendum.

He thinks the community has been good to the district in his 25 years on the board and said the budget crunch is hard, but most districts across Wisconsin are facing the same problem. 

“We’re swimming in a difficult environment with everybody feeling the bite of inflation which makes us squeeze our wallets a little tighter. … and it’s uncertain because we don’t know what the state is going to do, and that makes a huge difference,” he said.

No staff member is in danger of being laid off, both board president Paul Servais and Bagstad said, but both think the district will have to consider not filling positions of staff who are retiring or moving to another district if possible.

That could lead to larger class sizes and other sacrifices to save money and adjust to already growing concerns related to staffing issues in public education.

Charging fees for sports and clubs is an option, but he said he doesn’t want to see the district cut sports or extracurricular activities.

Other purchases and maintenance will be put on the back burner, including new school busses, the board conceded.

One proposed fix that has been floated by community members comes with moving money from the Wanek Center, but state funding rules do not allow Wanek Center funds (Fund 80) to be used in the district’s everyday spending budget (Fund 10).

Steinlicht pointed to the board’s math growth over the last several years, and he wants to see such educational growth continue despite other changes coming— in 2018, the Arcadia School District had a 21 percent proficiency rate in math. That number is at 41 percent today, he said.

“I don’t want to lose that momentum. To me, we have that momentum, I would like to continue increasing those scores, if there’s any way possible,” Steinlicht said.

The school board will need to get creative. There will be budget cuts made where possible. But the school district’s priority, they say, will remain the same.

And if the state’s biennium budget comes back friendlier than expected? Joyful adjustments could be seen.

“The end of the world has not come here,” Servais said. “We’re gonna be fine. We’re gonna move forward. We’re gonna have some plans. If the state comes through, we’ll reevaluate everything we can.”