Scare Tactics?

This was the news back in January:

The Baraboo School District is proposing $1.3 million in cuts in the 2006-07 budget, including the elimination of 10 full-time teaching positions.

"No one should be surprised," said District Administrator Lance Alwin. "We have a crisis and you can only keep the fox out of the chicken coop for so long before he gets in. The fox is in the coop."

The cuts included something like 9 sports and the entire High School French program.

The announcement led to anger, which led to a petition, which led to a referendum. The referendum failed, barely, pending a recount.

I called it scare tactics. I wasn't alone.

Now here's the news this week:

BARABOO - The Baraboo School Board made a compromise where it could Monday night in its first meeting after the five-year, $7.5 million referendum failed by a narrow margin April 4.

Instead of cutting nine sports outright, as proposed earlier this year, the board vote unanimously to find a way to distribute $45,000 in cuts among all the sports offered at the high school level...

...The French program will survive in its entirety for another year, though one French teacher will be cut back. The health teacher will stay at the high school while a library specialist retiring will not be replaced.

Scare tactics? You decide.

There will be some reductions in Baraboo - some teaching positions will be eliminated, some classes not offered.

But. How much less anger would there have been if the School Board had announced this new - and far less dramatic - list of cuts back in January? Would there even have been a referendum?

One last note: by the school district's own numbers, spending is growing annually at 5% per year. This is generous, and if there is a problem, it is that our expenses are out of control - not that we aren't paying enough.