14 Thoughts on Today's Referendums

And one or two other subjects

Hi, sorry, it's been a while. In early-2023 I got some money to start an odd local news network that didn't end up taking off and which I rather didn't enjoy. I wound that down in March. In May I started a new job as a research associate for the American Institute for Boys and Men—a relatively new, non-partisan think tank that conducts research on issues that affect the well-being of boys and men across the United States. I am in charge of their K-12 education agenda which we are continuing to build out. You can read about us here and find coverage of our organization and some of the issues in which we’re interested in Axios, Politico, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

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I don't have as much time to think about local government, but I still try to pay attention—mostly to the school board. I was also a member of the Tosa 2075 Task Force that ended over the summer.

Anyway, I realize many people may have already voted, but here are a few disorganized thoughts (not arguments with lots of evidence) on the school district, school board, sunsetting the STEM schools, and the referendums many of us will be voting on today. I’ll be voting ‘no’ on both.

1. I think a common way to frame the referendum is, 'We want this amount of money to do these things. If you think these things are important and this amount of money is reasonable, you should vote for it.’ But I think it’s possible to agree with both parts of that statement and still vote ‘no’ because you worry whether the people you hand the money to are going to be able to turn it into the things you think are valuable. From talking to others and reading complaints online, this is where a lot of people’s concern lies. I feel the same way.

2. In that vein, the $4 million dollar budget oversight is wild, and it seems too convenient to pin all the blame on the CFO who just happens to have already left the district. Big mistakes like these are rarely one person’s fault and usually point to larger issues with how a department is run; a lack of oversight, control, or training; or something more systemic. The speed with which everyone seems to have moved on worries me, and the error itself makes me more skeptical that there will be effective oversight of the money they’re requesting in the referendum.

3. Like, what does Keith Brightman, the former CFO, have to say about this? This interview did not reveal much other than that there seems to be more to the story. I would really like to know!

4. Also, will the referendum be enough to cover the expected operational costs? I feel like they approved the amount of the operational referendum before the budget errors were revealed, so will they actually need $16 million more ($4 million x 4 years) than they’re asking for? I’m genuinely not sure.

5. The argument I hear most frequently is that we need a referendum because a state funding formula that went into effect in the early-90s means we get less than neighboring districts and also that state funding hasn't kept pace with education costs. Therefore, if it's not approved then we'll have to cut staff, extracurriculars, and some non-essential courses. I am mostly okay with that.

6. Another resident did a series of podcasts on the referendums (sorry, I refuse to use the Latin neuter plural and say ‘referenda’) which I recommend. One episode focused on what might get cut if the operational referendum fails to pass. It mostly fits with what I learned during the Task Force: eliminating elementary schools (and the accompanying operational costs) and getting rid of administrative staff don’t really eliminate the deficit. Although, I do wonder how we managed in 2019 or 2021 when we last had a balanced budget. I imagine some chunk of the remaining deficit is from the cost of teacher raises, but I am not sure how much.

7. For me, some of the most important context for this choice is that nationally, we just spend a lot on education without really having a lot to show for it. We try lots of interventions that don’t have much impact. This is not to say that nothing works or that there’s nothing worth doing, it’s just that I think we should have low expectations on the impacts of any particular change.

8. Buildings do get old and require replacement. We should fix leaking roofs and replace old boilers. We should set aside money for ongoing maintenance instead of deferring it. But other things make me skeptical again. I still think back to a Task Force meeting when architects from the firm behind the 2018 elementary school projects explained the varied prices for new elementary schools. When asked why a uniform design can’t be used to save on design costs, one architect replied, “No can do. That’s not what residents want.” Well, that’s what I want. I never learned exactly what a ‘model’ elementary school was or why the “standard” for a new high school with 1,000 students is 40 acres (while we’ve gotten by with East HS at 11 acres for 100 years), but I did wonder if there wasn’t something more bare-bones and cheaper that would do 95% as well. Overall, I guess I’m worried that a lot of the things we do in education are faddish and expensive and potentially unnecessary, and I would love to spend money only on the things that were necessary and not faddish and not overly expensive, but I feel like that option is never really on the table.

9. I include STEM elementary schools in the faddish and potentially unnecessary bucket. Nevertheless, parents and kids seemed to love them and for a certain subset of kids it probably is a genuinely better experience. I’m also skeptical of the reasons for eliminating it. If it was because of cost maybe I could understand, but the biggest reason seemed to be a desire for “universal programming” and concerns about equity. I worry where this ends. I think it’s good for different kids to take different classes, whether those classes are more or less advanced or have different philosophical underpinnings. People have different preferences and needs. We are equal before the law and in the eyes of God but not in our interests and aptitudes. A number of complaints also seemed to center on the unfairness of kids at Wilson and WSTEM having different opportunities or experiences. But different people getting and having different things for reasons that sometimes come down to preferences and luck just seems like a fundamental part of the human experience, and I think trying to eliminate it in the name of equality is an absurd standard to set.

10. Overall, I continue to find it very strange that as the district has become smaller through natural demographic changes and will continue to shrink due to reduced open enrollment that we will nevertheless need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on facilities and additional operational costs. I can imagine ways this might be true, but I feel like no one in the administration or school board has really acknowledged how unintuitive this seems.

11. On the flip side, one of the surprising things I learned during the Task Force meetings was that the school district apparently saved over a hundred million dollars (I think this was the slide I remember) on future interest payments for the 2018 referendum by structuring debt payments in a clever way. If I was an advocate for the referendum, I would advertise this fact more widely. But I never hear anyone talk about it, to the extent that I worry I’ve misunderstood something.

12. The Task Force meetings were supposed to determine the future of the district for the next 50 years. We spent something like $50,000 for a facilitator, and I don’t think many people were satisfied with the result. But I think if we’re considering future costs on the order of several hundred million dollars, it’s worth spending a $1 million dollars to really plan this out. Have a bunch of people from RAND do focus groups and interviews and surveys and help us think through this problem, because they could easily help us avoid mistakes that more than pay for themselves. I know this sounds crazy, but I think we should have spent more on consultants.

13. Over the past year, conversations about the future of the school district have often felt either like therapy sessions or sales pitches. During Task Force meetings, the moderators would acknowledge how hard these conversations were, express pride in us for having them, and praise us for grappling with big emotions. But I wish there’d been less emphasis on having a cathartic experience and more on actually trying to figure out solutions. On the other hand, during school board meetings I felt like things had already been decided and the purpose of the presentation was to convince the board and the public that we needed to do exactly what they said or there would be terrible consequences. I was especially irritated during a July meeting when one of the board members asked the Superintendent what we would have to do to balance the budget without the referendum, and he said class sizes would increase from 20 to 30 in primary school and 30 to 40 at the high school level. I consider those statements to be deceptive, because it implies something like a 30% cut in teaching staff for what was (at the time) a 10% deficit.

14. One of the things I told the school board was that they should demand serious options, not stereotypes. By options, I meant more than one, and by stereotypes I meant something besides, “if we don’t get the money, we’ll cut 30% of the teaching staff.” But instead we just got the recommendation to move to a K-6 and 7-12 model. This could be a good idea, but it also seemed to come out of nowhere and unaccompanied by any serious alternatives.

Happy voting!