The Referenda (Derek Gottlieb)

My interview questions

Jason's links:

Hiswebsite

Hisfacebook page

Hisemail address

Hiscampaign phone number

In this episode:

• The recent "merger" revelation and what it means
• The history of school district boundaries and the things they separate
• How and why Open Enrollment and Chapter 220 were created
• What we have gained from OE over the years and what we hope to gain by drawing it down

Show notes:

WSD merger stuff

Special school board meeting to release legal opinion

WISN-12 coverage and interviews

The legal opinion itself

Tosa 2075 Task Force materials

Resource booklet

Open Enrollment Data Review slide deck

Policies brief

Task Force final report

State legislative and DPI resources

LFB explanation of Open Enrollment history and processes

DPI enrollment, demographic, and discipline datasets

Histories of general school choice dynamics in MKE/WI come from here:

John Witte, The Market Approach to Education: An Analysis of America's First Voucher Program (Princeton UP, 2001).

Robert Asen, Democracy, Deliberation, and Education (Penn State UP, 2015)

Noliwe Rooks, Cutting School: The Segrenomics of American Education (The New Press, 2020).

Jack Dougherty, More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black Education Reform in Milwaukee (U of North Carolina Press, 2004).

General history of spatial, educational, and economic segregation in the urban north

Shep Melnick, The Crucible of Desegregation: The Uncertain Search for Educational Equality (U of Chicago Press, 2023)

Ansley Erickson, Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (U of Chicago Press, 2017).

Carla Shedd, Unequal City: Race, Schools, and the Perception of Injustice (Russell Sage Foundation, 2015)

Savannah Shange, Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Antiblackness, and Schooling in San Francisco (Duke University Press, 2020).

Mike Amezcua, Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification (U of Chicago Press, 2023).

Jonathan Rosa, Looking Like a Language, Sounding Like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad (Oxford University Press, 2019)

Andrew Kahrl, The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America (U of Chicago Press, 2024)

Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton University Press, 2005).

Erica Frankenberg and Gary Orfield, eds, The Resegregation of Suburban Schools (Harvard Education Press, 2012).

Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime (Harvard University Press, 2016).

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership (U of North Carolina Press, 2019).

Elizabeth Popp Berman, Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in US Public Policy (Princeton University Press, 2022).

Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (Liveright Publishing, 2017).

Matt Kelly, Dividing the Public (Cornell University Press, 2024).

Jerald Podair, The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis (Yale UP, 2002)

In this episode:

• Bipartisan agreement(?!) between Tosa representatives on increasing special ed funding?
• Facilities referenda, 20-year bonds, and time-indexed community-building
• How did our $4m budget mistake happen, and what does it mean?
• Are upgrades to ADA standards "needs" or "wants"?

LINKS:

WSD School Board budget presentation (10/9)

WSD 2022-2023 budget summary

In this episode:

• I correct myself to say MUHS does indeed enroll student with disabilities
• I go through the district's published plans to save $14m annually in case we vote down the operating referendum
• I acknowledge and go through the facts that (a) total state aid to WSD has indeed kept up with inflation and (b) spending on administration rose by 50% over the past five years.
• And I talk about the extent of my own interests in the result of the referendum votes.

LINKS!

Send me your questions!

WSD admin's "long-range budget planning" doc (June '24)

WSD admin's "potential reductions list" (updated 9/27/24)

DPI staffing reports (all of our district's salaries).

DPI comparative revenue per member (excel file)

DPI comparative cost per member (excel file)

District docs showing 50% rise in admin costs

No Country for Old Men "just how dangerous is he?" clip.

My interview questions

Kaitlin's website

Her campaign Facebook page

Her campaign phone number

For Public Schools Week, here, I got a little worked up.

In this episode:

• WSD's long-range facilities plan
• How and why junior highs emerged
• How and why middle schools replaced them
• What happened when K-8 models became popular
• Will 6th graders do okay in elementary schools?
• What does the research say about 7-12 models?

Contact me with questions!

References/Bibliography (or: my browser tabs for the last two weeks)

My interview questions

Troy's links:

His campaign phone number

His email address

His facebook page

His website

In this episode:

• What the referenda are asking for
• What the money will be used for
• What effects can we expect if they pass
• What are the plans if they fail?
• Why our community loses no matter which way the vote goes.

And of course:

• What the state might do to help, and why it has to.

LINKS:

ADA standards (the law), since people keep asking.

MDRoffers "Community Change and Projections Report."

Wauwatosa teacher salaries info for 2017 and 2023 comes from here.

Referenda statewide ask for $6b

Wisconsin 23-25 education budget (general aids amount is at the bottom)

WSD "potential reductions" list

In which we cover the fundamentals of the Wauwatosa School District budget situation, of school finance in Wisconsin as a whole, of property tax and referendum mechanisms, and of revenue-limit legislation.

LINKS to cited sources:

General WI Educational Funding

State Aid to WI School Districts (source: Legislature pub)

Referenda-use in Wisconsin (Forward Analytics)

Revenue Limits -> Student Outcomes (Rothstein report)

Referendum Impacts on Educational Outcomes (Am. Econ. Journal)

DPI's revenue-limit calculator (DPI)

Local District Descriptive Stats (from NCES for 22-23)

Wauwatosa

Beloit

Campbellspot

Lomira

Kewaskum

Tosa 2075 Task Force information

June 3rd presentation/discussion with the Board (video)

⁠Final Report⁠

School Board elections are coming up in April, and so I invited a national expert on district leadership to talk about what boards do, how they do and should work with district administrators, and how boards respond to community members, parents, and teachers.

LINKS:

My contact info, again

In November 2024, voters in our leafy suburb of Milwaukee will join the majority of Wisconsin school districts in having to approve a sizable local tax levy or else suffer draconian cuts to its public schools.
This series looks at how we got here and what we can do about it, beginning with voting on the referendum.

Hosted by: Derek Gottlieb (derekgottliebphd.com)

Kathleen Knight Abowitz joins us to talk about her recent research into school board members in her home state of Ohio, the squeezes that school leaders find themselves in between state pressures from above and constituent demands from below, and how easy it is to forfeit local trust and how hard it is to rebuild.

LINKS:

Kathleen's Publics for Public Schools (2014)

Malin and Lubienski, "Information Pollution in an Age of Populist Politics" (2022)

Jonathan Collins's website.

Jonathan Collins's dissertation abstract (it's paywalled)

Collins's article version of the same (also paywalled)

Collins "The Politics of Re-Opening Schools"

In this episode:

• What data (from which years) goes into state report cards
• How "achievement," "growth," "target groups," "on-track-to-graduation," "chronic absenteeism," etc. are technically defined
• How different stakeholders can/should interpret state reports
• Just to keep it interesting, does WSTEM have "incubator" value? Why or why not?

LINKS:

• Wauwatosa's report cards (district and individual schools)
• DPI's "report card resources" page
• DPI's report card "technical guide" for all my stats/measurement nerds out there
• "target group outcomes" explainer
• "growth model" explainer

My interview questions

Chris's links:

Hiswebsite

HisFacebook page

Hiscampaign email address

Findings fromhis survey of the community

My interview questions

Chris's links:

His bio

His facebook page

His website

His email address

In this episode:

• Can we fix our budget issue by cutting administrators rather than teachers?
• Why are teachers suddenly having their raises wiped out by new healthcare contributions?
• How do we cut our expenses without affecting our teachers?
• Can we boost revenue by robbing casinos instead?

LINKS:

Wisconsin Policy Forum report on teacher pay (Nov, 2023).

WPF report on Wisconsin teacher attrition (Aug, 2023).

"Compensation Practices of School Districts [incl. Tosa] When Collective Bargaining Disappears" (Jun, 2018).

LFB memo on revenue limits and inflation (Jan, 2023)

DPI Workforce Analysis Report (Apr, 2024)

NCES annual inflation-adjusted salary stats (through 2022)

Emergency license use in WI (Mar, 2023)

Barbara Biasi, "The Labor Market for Teachers Under Different Pay Schemes" (NBER, 2019)

Tosa expenditures (2008-2023) DPI "Multiyear Comparative Costs Detail Accounts Data File"

My interview questions

Sarah's campaign website

Sarah's email address

Sarah’s Facebook page

In this episode:

• The correct tax impact of our two referenda
• Does Open Enrollment "solve MKE's problems?"
• School Choice and (State-)Constitutional Promises
• Resident Enrollment Projections and National Population Decline

Show notes!

Comprehensive revenue (select district from dropdown)

• (Also, if we WERE interested in a low-cost, politically-inexpensive ways to do OE, check out McFarland's figures in rows 94 and 99 -- the power of virtual charters.)

T2075 Resource Book (see chapter 2)

MKE-area school quality/demographic map (for all schools that report to DPI)

MDR demographic change report

In which an expert on the history of education finance talks about the evolution of school funding, the different options that we've seen over time, and the various advantages and drawbacks of each.

LINKS:

Matt's book, Dividing the Public

Boston Globe piece on conservative school boards in WI

Arrowhead Union HS District's testimony to legislature.

On how districts' receiving Covid funding is like "winning the lottery."

In this episode, I'm basically giving an academic paper on how our default approach to improving schools gets something wrong about how we inherit values and practices from the past and how we project them into the future.

Is it nerdy? Extremely. Enjoy!

In this episode:

• Important background for interpreting educational research
• How we deal with value pluralism and fundamental uncertainty
• How educational research responds to and provokes anxiety and moralizing
• How we can avoid enmity and grift as we argue about research

Contact me!

Sara Lerand comes on the show to talk about the local referendum question on our ballots in April, which would change the way local school board elections run -- undoing a decision that Tosa originally made in 1994.

LINKS:

The text of the referendum question

Wauwatosa News-Times pre-election coverage from 1994

Wauwatosa News-Times post-election coverage from '94.

Okay, if every local district is in the same bind, and taxpayers and schoolkids everywhere are being pitted against each other, then how do we get together and apply pressure on the state?

I'm joined by two folks who've been organizing pressure campaigns and harnessing the kind of anger we're seeing in our community for a long time: the Wisconsin Public Education Network's Heather DuBois Bourenane and Jenni Hofschulte.

Check out the network itself here.

Here is the link to register for their 11/7 post-election debrief.

And here is the link to register for their 12/14 Budget Action Planning event.

My interview questions

Shannon’s campaign email

Shannon’s campaign website

Shannon’s Facebook page

In which we talk about the specifics of the referendum questions we'll see on our ballots in November and the district's plans relating to the proposed funding. With additional complaints about state-level policy that pits housing affordability against school funding and some wonkery about the difference between recurring and non-recurring referenda.

*Ugh, I called Fund 46 "Fund 64" at one point. That's an error.

References:

The referendum questions and tax calculator.

The district's long-range facilities plan.

Wisconsin districts that have created a Fund 46

The administration's 48.4m operating budget plan.

UW-Madison's Chris Saldaña joins us to talk about Wisconsin's school finance regulations in comparison to other states' policies, and we think through some ideas we've considered before, around the way that local institutions--including citizen groups and taxpayer organizations--might hold states or local institutions accountable themselves.

LINKS:

Chris's recent article "examining the practices of K-12 early fiscal intervention during periods of economic crisis."

Accountability 3.0: Beyond ESSA, which we both worked on.

Taking Equal Opportunity Rhetoric Seriously report.

In this episode:

• More details on revenue limits and state aid
• Explaining Tosa's increase in state aid next year
• Statewide impacts from Milwaukee's referendum
• Special education funding and revenue limits

LINKS

contact me!

Wisconsin Uniform Financial Accounting Requirements

legislative fiscal bureau brief on revenue limits

2023-2024 July 1st estimate

2024-2025 July 1st estimate

legislative fiscal bureau's memo on MKE's referendum

legislative fiscal bureau's brief on state aid

University of Massachusetts professor Jack Schneider joins us to talk about what local school governance does for us as citizens, how to do it well, and what stands in the way.

LINKS to stuff we've written together:

• "Putting the Public Back Into Public Accountability" (Kappan)
• "In Praise of Ordinary Measures" (Educational Theory)
• Educational Accountability 3.0: Beyond ESSA (NEPC report)

LINKS to Jack's stuff:

• The Education Wars (2024)
• A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door (2021)
• Off the Mark: How Grades, Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (But Don't Have To) (2023)
• Have You Heard (Podcast)

In this episode:

• What the passage of the referenda means for us
• What the district is doing and can do more of in building trust
• What makes participation in local school gov't difficult and what we can do about it.
• A surprising amount of Hannah Arendt.

LINKS:

• My contact info
• The district's long-range facilities plan
• WSD facilities referendum project list
• WSD Financial transparency plan
• Manny Teodoro's The Profits of Distrust
• Linda Zerilli's incredible A Democratic Theory of Judgment, which has really informed my reading of Arendt.

How are voters supposed to know whether a school district has been spending tax dollars responsibly? How are community members supposed to evaluate a district's claim that it needs a referendum?

This episode gives you some public resources to start with -- what's driving cost increases and where are they occurring? How have revenue sources changed in response? What has the district already done to limit costs?

LINKS:

1.) "Multiyear Comparative Cost Detail" spreadsheet (explanation of formulas etc is here)

2.) "Multiyear Comparative Revenue Detail" spreadsheet (explanation of formulas etc is here)

3.) WI Dept of Public Instruction's "All Staff Report" page.

My interview questions

Heidi's website

Her campaign facebook page

Her campaign instagram