One of the new West High logo options being painted on a crumbli
One of three new logos being considered for West High School.
In November voters approved the biggest school referendums — and resulting tax increases — in Madison history. This month the Madison Metropolitan School Board showed once again why giving them more money was a mistake.
I opposed those referendums and voted against them for several reasons. My most basic point was that, while I wanted to support the schools, I couldn’t vote for these referendums because they were much more expensive than what was needed. Moreover, this was especially troublesome given Madison’s high housing costs, an issue that has been appropriately identified as perhaps the biggest local problem by local officials.
As just one example of the overspending, the largest project in the $507 million capital referendum was $108 million for a new building to house Sherman Middle School and Shabazz High School. But that building is only at 50% capacity and projections are for the student populations to go down over the next five years. And yet the new building will be even larger than the current one. That simply made no sense to me. I thought the district should adjust attendance boundaries before spending all that money on a new building. There was more stuff like that, but you get my point.
No matter. My concerns fell on deaf ears and both the capital referendum and the $100 million operating referendum passed by overwhelming margins. As a result, taxes on the average Madison home will go up by over $1,500 — just for the schools and not counting increases for the city and county — when the spending allowed under the referendums is fully implemented in a couple of years. That will exacerbate the housing problem for both owners, who will pay the costs directly, and renters, who will pay the costs passed along by their landlords.
While I might lament that, I have to assume voters knew what they were voting for and so, I have to respect the democratic outcome, no matter how much I might disagree.
But here’s the thing. If I were on the school board I’d feel a little bit humbled by that voter approval. I hope I’d feel a deep responsibility to use that power of the purse wisely and to even come in with spending that was lower than what the taxpayers authorized. I’d want to be a good steward of the taxpayers’ generosity.
But this school board is now spending like there are no limits. One of the board’s first actions since those referendums passed was to spend $100,000 on a Kentucky-based consulting firm to redesign the high school logos. If there were some burning need to redesign the logos, why not turn it over to the talented students in the Madison high schools? I’m sure they could come up with something every bit as good as some contractor out of Kentucky. And they’d be a lot less expensive.
District spokespeople said that this would help make Madison a “destination” school district. “The rebrand will have a districtwide impact as it will be used to build the district’s brand through various ways including signage, print, digital, clothing and textiles,” Director of Communications Edell Fiedler wrote in a memo to the board.
This is indicative of a broader problem in our society: the elevation of marketing and image over substance. The Madison school district has some of the lowest test scores in the state and some of the highest rates of truancy. Its racial achievement gap is yawning and it hasn’t budged despite a laser focus on issues of race. And, for the most recent year in which I could find data, there were 800 police calls to Madison schools. None of those problems will be solved by new logos.
In the fastest growing county in the state, MMSD has lost students almost every year over the last decade. (And still, we’re going to build bigger schools.) Parents are moving their kids to neighboring districts and private schools because of those test scores and those discipline problems. New school buildings and new logos can’t mask the underlying underperformance of this district where it counts.
I had a conversation recently with a West High senior, the son of a good friend. I asked him about the logos. He rolled his eyes. “I don’t think that’s where we should be putting our time,” he said. “Besides, I like the angry lion (the current logo). I just don’t get it.”
Neither do I.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
