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Madison voters decisively passed two referendums on school funding Tuesday, amid wider concerns about the future of education, with schools gone virtual since last March due to COVID-19.
One would increase the operating budget by allowing the district to exceed state spending caps over the next four years ($6 million, $8 million, $9 million and $10 million, resulting in $33 million more in spending); the school district has said that this will allow it to maintain current class size ratios, ensure internet access for all students, recruit and retain teachers of color, and offer full-day 4-year-old kindergarten. With six precincts left to report, this referendum passed with 76.6 percent of the vote.
The second referendum authorizes $317 million to pay for renovations at all four high schools, a new elementary school near Rimrock Road, and the remodeling of Hoyt School as a new home for the alternative school Capital High. It passed with 79.7 percent of the vote.
Melinda Heinritz, executive director of the Foundation for Madison's Public Schools, and representative of Vote Yes 2 Invest, a coalition of community members and education advocates working in support of the referendums, says of the vote: “We are very grateful to voters for believing in our schools, that even during these very trying circumstances of a lot of stress and anxiety for people, that community members still felt it was important to invest in our schools.”
Heinritz says those working for the two proposals were mindful of current economic uncertainties and hardships borne of the coronavirus, and that meant it was “important to present a compelling case to voters to vote yes.”
School funding referendums have a history of passing in Madison, and they have been given the nod by voters statewide recently. According to the Madison school district, 91 percent, or 52 of 57 referendum questions, passed on ballots across Wisconsin in April 2020, totaling more than $1.7 billion across 44 school districts. That included a $1.3 billion 30-year referendum in Racine, and a $87 million referendum in Milwaukee.
“This was far and away the biggest ask we’d ever put in front of [Madison] voters,” Heinritz says. It was also the first time that Foundation for Madison's Public Schools was “involved in this level of advocacy and lobbying work,” says Heinritz.
“Turnout helped,” adds Heinritz. “We know that turnout for 2020 is higher than 2012 or 2016. We knew there would be a very high turnout and that was a good ingredient for producing yes votes on both of the questions.”
The referendums were not without their critics. A group of area Black leaders came out in opposition to the referendums, saying the school district has failed to do enough for Black students, that the costs could prove too great a burden on lower-income residents and that priorities in the district have changed due to COVID-19.
Now that the referendums have passed, Heinritz and other supporters want to “make sure we are getting good information to the community — our voters, our taxpayers — about what happens next. We need to report back about the difference that these resources made, given the leap of faith it took to vote yes.”
Heinritz notes the district will now go into at least a year of intensive planning and will be seeking community participation. “It will take all of us working together so we get the schools we all want. Great thriving public schools are critical to a thriving community.”
