Eau Claire Schools Consider Referendum

Tom Giffey, photos by Andrea Paulseth |

AN ENGLISH CLASS AT  MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL
AN ENGLISH CLASS AT MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL

School budgeting choices are always difficult, and this year is no different for the Eau Claire school district. Rising costs and stagnant state aid lead to budget shortfalls: In the next three years alone, the district predicts spending will exceed revenue by $29.3 million.

This leaves school leaders with few choices: They can dip into the piggy bank, they can make budget cuts, or they can ask voters for more money.

Over the years the Eau Claire school district has done all three. For the 2015-16 school year, for example, the school board took $4.6 million from its reserves to balance the budget. However, doing this every year would quickly exhaust those reserves and lead to costly borrowing. In past years, there have been staff layoffs and program cuts. Now the Eau Claire school board is considering holding a referendum to ask voters for permission to boost the budget through a higher tax rate.

“Does our community support reasonable class sizes? Does it support quality staff in front of our kids? That’s what it’ll come down to. And I think our community does. We just have to get down the right balance.”
– Richard Spindler, Eau Claire school board president, on the possibility of a referendum

“Otherwise, you cut programs or increase class sizes,” says school board President Richard Spindler.

Board members and district administrators held three forums in late October to solicit public feedback on a potential referendum. Spindler said the board likely won’t decide on the specifics of the referendum until December or January, and the referendum will likely go before voters on the April 5 spring election ballot.

“Does our community support reasonable class sizes? Does it support quality staff in front of our kids? That’s what it’ll come down to,” Spindler said in an interview. “And I think our community does. We just have to get down the right balance.”

Finding the balance in a $130 million annual budget will be a challenge. There are a variety of ways a referendum could be structured, all of which would have different impacts on property taxes for home and business owners in the school district.

Why can’t the elected school board simply set the tax rate where it wishes? Because that power was taken away by the state Legislature in 1993 as a way of controlling property taxes. In exchange for putting caps on the tax levy, lawmakers promised to pay roughly two-thirds of the cost of education with state funds. However, over the past two decades, that two-thirds figure has dwindled. Today, the Eau Claire school district gets just over half of its funding from state aid; most of the rest comes from the pockets of local property-tax payers.

If they want to exceed these state-imposed revenue caps, school districts can hold a referendum. In the past, such referendums were primarily used to boost revenue temporarily to remodel or build schools. In 2011, for instance, Eau Claire voters approved a $52 million referendum to remodel four schools. However, as revenue limits have continued to pinch districts around the states, more of them have taken to asking voters for extra funds for school operations – in other words, to pay teachers, fire up furnaces, and buy books.

Operational referendums, such as the one the Eau Claire district is now considering, can take one of two forms. They can be nonrecurring, meaning the increase in taxes expires after a set number of years; or they can be recurring, meaning the tax boost is indefinite. Spindler says board members are leaning toward the latter option. “The issue with that is you have a funding cliff,” Spindler says of nonrecurring referendums. “You can’t fund anything long-term.” For example, the board could pursue a three-year, $29 million referendum, but that would only fix the deficit for three years, leaving an even bigger hole in the fourth year.

Spindler said that at a September meeting at which referendum options were discussed, board members seemed to favor a plan that would combine a boost in operational spending with a $2 million annual increase in the district’s maintenance budget, which would help fix aging roofs and other problems. For the owner of a home worth $200,000, this plan would mean a cumulative three-year property tax increase of $1,110.

However, board members are far from their final decision on the content of a referendum question – or even if they’ll pursue one. If you’re a parent or community member who wants to be part of the process, the school board meets at 7pm on the first and third Mondays of the month in the board room at the Administration Building, 500 Main St., Eau Claire.

To contact the school board, call (715) 852-3002 or visit www.ecasd.us/District/Board-of-Education and click on “Email the Board.”