The Referenda

In this episode, Rob DeMeuse and I break down the Spring 2026 school referendums in Wisconsin, what it all means, and so on. This is the last "Referenda" episode until the next school board cycle, so to keep up with my commentary on statewide and national education matters, subscribe to the School Perceptions podcast!

Bob Soldner joins me to talk about how "district reorganization" processes work -- when districts dissolve or multiple districts consolidate. What should community members know? What does the state require district leaders to take into consideration? What happens to property taxes?

TOTALLY UNRELATED TO UPCOMING ELECTIONS in any district! But this is where I look closely at Waukesha to see the sense that their recent structural and financial decisions have made, and to see how their constraints and affordances match up with our situation here in Tosa. LINKS! Waukesha's own planning process website (including links to enrollment reports, community engagement, etc.) Jan 12t...

From Monday night, February 2nd -- there's also a video recording if you prefer. I mainly wanted to get some clean audio out in public. Here are campaign websites for residents to visit -- in seating order, left to right, on Monday night: Heather Birk Liz Heimerl-Rolland Todd Koehler Melissa Lamers Chris Merker Dan Stemper Jason Wautier Lynne Woehrle

HOUSEKEEPING! There's a school board candidate forum happening Monday, March 2nd, 6:30-8:30 at Longfellow. If you can't make it in person, register for the Youtube livestream ! References in this episode: Calarco, J. (2018). Negotiating Opportunities Calarco, J. (2024). Holding It Together . Daminger, A. (2025). What's on Her Mind?

Tuck your pants into your socks, nerds -- We're going into the weeds on public finance, budgeting processes, democratic involvement, and community building! This is a conversation with CUNY's Celina Su , author of the newly-released Budget Justice: On Building Grassroots Politics and Solidarities , and Seton Hall's Dave Backer , whose As Public As Possible: Radical Finance for America&...

CORRECTION: At one point in this episode, I say that the 2024 operating ref was "2m for curriculum, 8m for teachers, and 54.4m" to cover deficits. 8m for teachers is correct, but it was 4m for curriculum and 52.4m for deficits. This episode reviews some basic facts about these three important issues and what our conversations around them are like. The major goal is to help community memb...

LINKS to background information for the survey: 1.) The Tosa 2075 Task Force website . 2.) The Tosa 2075 final report. 3.) The district's long-range facilities plan (adopted 2024) 4.) The current ad-hoc facilities committee website , incl minutes and detailed model summaries (at the bottom). 5.) Secondary model summary spreadsheet . 6.) FAQs about the proposed models and processes . 7.) Analys...

LINKS: Ad Hoc Committee page (scroll down for current models) WI State Report Card weighting calculator Growth Score calculation specs Target Group Outcomes explanation Tosa's district- and school-level report cards Nativity Jesuit Academy's report card

Dr. Amanda Lewis is coming to Wauwatosa to give a talk based on her book, Despite the Best Intentions , whose 2nd edition just came out this year. EVENT INFO: Where: Underwood Elementary When: Monday, October 20th, 6:30 to 8:00. What: A talk, followed by a Q&A session. If you'd like to pose a question to Dr. Lewis, send it to me here.

The district has drawn up some options, a community committee has been poring over pros and cons for months, and we're going to get a survey to take in late October. So what should we be thinking about? What are our choices? LINKS: 1.) Ad-Hoc Committee page , with a list of proposed models to consider. 2.) In-depth description of each model 3.) What "modernization" means in these mod...

LINKS: Onward Tosa piece on our reassessments WSD 2024 referenda tax impact calculator Wauwatosa's post-reassessment 2025 tax estimator WSD Strategic Plan (feat school-engagement indicators) SP podcast interview on board-supt relationships

*Corrected an editing mistake in an earlier version* In which I’m joined by Anne Chapman, the leading expert in Wisconsin school finance, the research director of the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials, to talk about the impacts of state budget changes on school funding decisions and community conversations. In this episode, we’ve got: A recap of Wisconsin school finance basics, fe...

I originally intended to fit something like this into the previous episode, but it clearly is too big. But here I'm talking about why local control of schools matters for us as citizens, what the state ought to be doing to invest in the cultivation of civic virtue, what districts can be doing to facilitate good conversations about schools, and ultimately, our own obligations as citizens to partici...

So, I got mad, and I had to use the bleep button a few times. Here, moving backward through time, is media coverage of the budget as it has developed: Today's update . (July 1) JFC's June 13th plan . Budget negotiations reach an impasse (June 4) JFC starts over from scratch (May 9) Evers's budget proposal (Feb 26)

Links! First, just put down your name and email here if you're interested in participating in the book group at all. I'll follow up with details. Here are the two books: Manny Teodoro's Profits of Distrust : Citizen-Consumers, Drinking Water, and the Crisis of Confidence in American Government, and Amanda Lewis and John Diamond's Despite the Best Intentions (2nd edition) 2030 Task...

I kept trying to get my thoughts down to 3 minutes in order to deliver them at public comment on June 9th 2025, but I, um, overshot it a little.

LINKS! Secondary School Ad Hoc Committee (including application) Secondary School Configuration summary

A couple of colleagues from School Perceptions join me to talk about what we saw with the 89 school referendum questions on the ballot April 1st! Here's the blog post breaking down referendum results , including graphs and everything. Here's the info on Tosa's Secondary Ad Hoc Committee. And here's a link to the School Perceptions podcast , for any school leaders out there!

In this episode: Meet Vlad Kogan Learn about quality measures that isolate school effects from out-of-school effects. Understand some of the factors that impede school board accountability. Hear a bit about Vlad's forthcoming book

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.

My interview questions Kaitlin's website Her campaign Facebook page Her campaign phone number

My interview questions Heidi's website Her campaign facebook page Her campaign instagram

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

My interview questions Sarah's campaign website Sarah's email address Sarah’s Facebook page