Kuhn shares district benefits of an operational referendum

CLINTONVILLE – In an interview with the Clintonville Tribune-Gazette, Clintonville Superintendent Troy Kuhn shared what the benefits would be to the district if the district’s residents would approve a $1.95 million operational referendum on April 7.
Kuhn also addressed the district’s finances, discussed state aid, and explained what it would mean to the district if the referendum failed.

District finances
Regarding the district’s finances, Kuhn said the district has been working with financial experts for long-term planning, as well as short-term investing.
“The other thing that I think is extremely important is we are truly doing a zero-based budget,” Kuhn said. “Working from the ground up every single year. Figuring out what services we need to offer, therefore it goes to what personnel we can hire. And then what supplies we need to do effective teaching.”

Kuhn said the district has also tried to avoid contracted teaching services, if possible, because of the expense.
“We have been very fortunate to hire some speech language path teachers and some therapy services and we don’t have to contract them out,” Kuhn said. “They’re ours. Whenever you do that, you get more bang for the buck. You get more services for the money.
“When we built the middle school, I said we were going to expand to consolidate, and we did. We expanded by building more buildings, but we consolidated by sharing spaces and sharing staff. So, we’ve cut quite a few clerical, maintenance, janitorial, those types of staff because with less buildings, less space, we can be more efficient in how we run our services.”

Debt defeasance
Over the past couple years, the district has also used debt defeasance to allocate extra money towards its debt payments. By doing this, the district has saved more than $4 million in interest on its debt and reduced its loan payments by multiple years, Kuhn said.

“The big important part of this is when you put money towards loan payments, the state (of Wisconsin) sees that as needed money and they aid that,” Kuhn said.
Because of that, the state aid that the district has received has increased. But Kuhn warned that if the debt is paid off too soon, the amount of aid the district would receive from the state would decrease because the district’s expenses would be less.
“There’s that fine balance of how quickly you pay your loan off, but you still want a little bit of debt there,” Kuhn said, because of how state aid districts receive is calculated.
He added, “The shift that we’re proposing to move forward is the money we would use to pay off extra debt, we need that money for operations. So, the total tax bill that the school would tax, we want to reduce that, but we also need permission from the taxpayers to put more of the taxable money into our daily operations. We could keep paying off the debt, but eventually that’s going to catch up to us. We need the money to run the operations. I don’t want to have beautiful facilities and run horrible programs, and not have quality staff but beautiful facilities.”

Why a referendum?

Kuhn said the district balanced its budget this year by “dipping into our bank account.” He said the district needs a minimum of $1.3 million to balance its next budget. The district would need $1.6 million to balance next years budget and to set funds aside for future maintenance projects, such as roof or asphalt repairs, and for technology. The additional funds from the proposed referendum would be used to help students who Kuhn referred to as “struggling learners.”
If you look at the state report cards for the district and its schools, Kuhn said the elementary school is “doing excellent.”
“They really are, with the leadership and quality staff,” Kuhn said. “I think our middle school has quality staff and I think our high school has quality staff, however, we have focused our money on the foundation. Our interventionists and all that, we poured into the elementary. The middle school and high school has very little interventionists. Much less mental health support.”
The reasoning for investing in interventionists for the elementary school was so there would be less need for interventionists as those students moved through each grade level, Kuhn said.
“The reality is, it’s not fair to the current students that are there (middle school and high school), and we always know there is going to be a need,” Kuhn said. “So, we need to help out the middle school, and specifically the high school for the struggling learners.”
He added, “We have the curriculum. We need people. We need bodies in there who understand how to work with struggling learners. How to work with students who have had trauma in their lives in order to make sure they’re going to be successful when they graduate. We need bodies to ensure that students are going to be successful when they graduate.”
So, if the operational referendum is approved by district residents, Kuhn said the funds would be used to balance the budget, meaning all staff and operations would continue as normal. Also, interventionists and other types of support systems would be hired and implemented for struggling learners.
“And struggling learners is different than special education,” Kuhn said. “It’s students who aren’t special ed, but they struggle in the classroom. But because they’re not special ed, they don’t get the extra support.”

Taxes
Kuhn said the Clintonville School District has maximized the state aid formula.

“The state is pumping more money into Clintonville. That’s a good thing,” Kuhn said. “We can maximize that for so many years and essentially have state taxpayers fund education in Clintonville versus the local taxes.”
Kuhn said the district wants to lower its debt payments, increase its spending a little on operations, and not tax as much for local taxes.
“That’s the only way that taxes can go down, school tax goes down, is to not tax as much but still get what we need,” Kuhn said.
But since the district is comprised of residents in 12 different municipalities, there are other variables within each municipality that determines a property owner’s property tax bill amount.
“Total school taxes should go down by how we redistribute the money and how the state funds our programs and our schools based on how we redistribute the money,” Kuhn said.
While it is unknown how much state aid would increase if the referendum is approved because of the formula used for determining state aid, Kuhn said maintaining the district’s current level of state aid is important.

What if not approved?
If the $1.95 million operational referendum is not approved by district residents, Kuhn said there would be special meetings held to look at district-wide cuts.
“Staff is the quickest way to make money,” Kuhn said. “I’m not saying that’s the best option, that’s the quickest way. We would have to look at programs. We’d have to look at student opportunities like upper-level dual credit classes. Those are normally more expensive. We need to consider what is essential. What is an essential program or what is an essential worker. And that’s where opinions come in because essential to one person is very different than essential to another person.”
Kuhn said he won’t provide a list of potential cuts before the referendum vote on April 7 because he does not “want to create unwanted panic.”

Final decisions on what those cuts would be in the district would be made by the Clintonville Board of Education, Kuhn said.
“I’m hoping that people understand the budgeting process where we’ve become more financially responsible,” Kuhn said. “But at the same time, there is a lot that goes into massive cuts because you still want to offer a quality education, but the staff that exists, you don’t want to burn out. And you still need to offer quality programs so kids don’t open enroll out to a different district.”
Kuhn reiterated that if the operational referendum is approved, “It maintains current services and it allows all learners to have a quality education. Right now, we do our best with what we have, but there are some students that struggle in the Clintonville School District because we don’t have the support system that other districts have or the personnel that other districts have. That is the inequitable part in education at this point. Rural school districts that are not affluent still suffer because they rely on local money mostly to support their educational systems.”