School Referendums

The DPI has a pretty useful website, which lets you search for info about school referendums in Wisconsin.

Here's the link.

You can enter dates (as in: on or after this date), look solely for referendums that passed or failed, and then search by the first letter of the school district.

Pretty cool.

Anyway, I'd thought there were only a couple referenda on yesterday's ballot. Turns out there were 17, with over 40 more coming up in April.

The info wasn't completely updated as of today. According to the site, two of yesterday's referenda failed, and one (in Portage) passed. The other 14 - those haven't been reported/updated yet.

By the way, about that Portage referendum:

By a margin of more than two to one, voters supported Tuesday's referendum allowing the Portage School District to spend up to $1.5 million each year in additional property taxes, if it needs to, over the next five years.

Exactly the same as what the Baraboo School District has proposed - $1.5 million in each of the next five years. We Barabooians vote on April 4.

From the same story:

The measure carried by a wider margin this year than in 2003, when 58 percent of residents supported a similar referendum.

I looked it up - that 2003 referendum gave them $1.5 million a year for three years. The one they passed yesterday just picks up where it leaves off.

Which is odd: it means they're operating under the same annual spending increases that they would be even without the referendum - one would think they'd ask for a bigger number.

One more thing: this may be a typo, but according to the website, the Galesville-Ettrick School District (Trempeleau County, far west side of the state) has a referendum scheduled two days after the Spring election, on April 6. What's up with that?