Both the Rockford School district and the Vote Yes for the Future Committee have been spreading misinformation about the upcoming November 2012 school referendum that needs correction.
The school district is asking voters for $27,000,000 for the Capital Bond Referendum. Yet this is not even HALF of the actual amount taxpayers would end up really paying. According to the school district’s own bond proposal prepared by Ehlers Inc., this bond will cost around $38,000,000 and will increase our total capital debt to $80,488,202. The $27,000,000 the district has cited on the ballot is just the PRINCIPAL of the bond and does NOT include the interest. If this passes, our projected tax rate for 2013 would be 41.73% (according to their own proposal). This tax rate will rank us around the 4th highest in the state, the highest of any school in our conference (http://pressnews.com/2012/10/11/letter- ... -election/).
The Vote Yes for the future is conflating a BOND levy with an OPERATING levy. They are not the same. Their website says “Rockford is listed 267th LOWEST of the 296 districts with referendums” (http://www.yesforthefuture.com/). This ranking refers to the OPERATING LEVY only. It conveniently fails to mention the capital bond levy proposed in the upcoming ballot.
They make it sound like this bond referendum will raise the amount of funding per student. But this is simply not true. A bond referendum will in NO WAY increase the amount of spending per student. ONLY an operating levy would do that. A capital bond funds completely different projects than those funded by an operating bond. This capital bond covers buildings, infrastructure, and property maintenance ONLY. An operating levy covers “the day-to-day operations” of schools, including “funding for teachers, textbooks and technology, smaller class sizes, transportation, and electives and extracurricular programs such as music, art, gifted programs, and sports” (http://www.educationvoters.org/levies-bonds/).
They appear to be trying to mislead voters. They are trying to make it seem like our tax rate is comparatively low, when in fact, they propose to make it among the highest in the state. Probably because the bond referendum would have much less of a chance of passing if they presented ALL the tax and spending data.
But don’t worry. NEXT November in 2013 the district will be asking for another bond (“November 2013--renew $395 referendum, or increase”) should the upcoming November 2012 bond referendum fail (http://www.rockfordreferendum.info/docs ... hreats.pdf). Voters already rejected the $28,000,000 February 2012 bond. I guess they won’t stop until they got what they want.
I do think they would be wise to invest in academics through an operating levy. But then why the district is now pushing for a capital bond instead, and one that is so heavily invested in sports?
The Rockford School District believes this proposed bond will “attract new students” (http://rockfordreferendum.com/docs/Nov2 ... hreats.pdf). And the Vote Yes Committee believes “that strong extracurricular programs with attractive facilities will keep families and their student athletes in our communities and attract prospective families.” They believe that spending $4,514,000 “District Site Improvements,” i.e. sports facilities, such as $900,000 for synthetic turf stadium, will attract these new “student athletes” and their parents. However, research suggests that sports programs are NOT a high-ranking factor for parents choosing their children’s schools.
According to a telephone survey of 141 parents in the state of Wisconsin (1998-1999), what MOST prompted parents to withdraw their children from their districts of residence and what attracted them to outside school districts were “academic and discipline concerns” (http://www.publicpolicyforum.org/pdfs/o ... llment.pdf). Out of 19 factors, parents ranked “methods of teaching,” “student achievement,” and “Discipline/safety” as their top three most important factors when choosing their children’s schools. School “facilities” ranked 9 out of 19 while “Athletics and other extra-curricular activities” ranked 12 out of 19.
Since the Rockford Elementary Arts Magnet School and the Rockford Secondary School have FAILED to make AYP (Annual Yearly Progress) under the No Child Left Behind specifications for several years in several categories (http://rockfordreferendum.com/Docs/NCLB_2011.pdf), parents would likely NOT be attracted to our district, at least based on the criterion of “student achievement.” If we want to attract new students to the district, we ought to be strengthening academics. NOT sports facilities.
The Vote Yes Committee and I agree that “academics are the lifeblood of the student experience.” But, unlike the committee, I accurately recognize that this bond referendum will NOT in ANY WAY help student academics.
I agree with the district and the Vote Yes supporters that attracting new parents and students to the district probably would improve property values. But prospective parents and students are attracted to academics not sports. So why are they proposing to invest in sports instead of academics?
I would support a responsible and evidence-based capital bond to support academic programs and increase educational opportunities. But first the district needs to earn back my trust.
The fact that the district has put sports before academics, requesting funding for athletics before asking for funding for day-to-day educational needs makes me question how responsible our district has been with their current funding or would be with even more taxpayer money. Their lack of transparency also makes me mistrustful. I need a better show of faith from them, especially when it comes to playing with millions of dollars. If they can’t be honest with us about what amount they are actually proposing, what they plan to spend the requested money on, the tax rate that they are really proposing, or the fact that they already are planning to ask for another referendum next year, then they don’t deserve our money.