Spring Green, Wisconsin
Thursday, February 20, 2025 | Vol. 6, No. 3 FREE, Single-Copy
Inside this edition
River Valley School Board moves 4K to five days a week
Puzzles: Crosswords & Chess
How Wisconsin’s budget process works
Pages 1, 9
Page 4
Page 5
River Valley board sets referendum sessions, hears survey results, ups 4K to five days a week
Parents, teachers score district near peers, open enrollment parents cite distance for taking kids out of the district
and updated mill rate projections, that the district will not have any official projections until the State Legislature signs the 2025-2027 biennial budget in June.
Luukas Palm-Leis, Reporter
Parent, staff surveys
At the Feb. 13 regular meeting of the River Valley School District Board of Education, the board heard updates and continued ongoing discussions about the upcoming April 1 referendum, discussed staff and parent satisfaction surveys and continued discussion on the district's closure of the Early Learning Center and the updated district configuration.
Referendum
The district is hosting four referendum community information sessions so that members of the public can ask questions about the upcoming April 1 referendum and talk with district administration. The dates and locations for these sessions are as follows: Tuesday, March 4 at 5 p.m. at Grandma Mary’s Café Event Hall in Arena; Monday, March 10, at 6:30 p.m. at the Early Learning Center Gymnasium in Plain; Tuesday March 11 at 5:30 p.m. at the Lutheran Church Community Hall in Lone Rock and Tuesday, March 18, at 5:30 p.m. in the Middle School Library in Spring Green. The board voted at their Jan. 9 meeting to place a referendum on the ballot for the April 1 Spring Election. The April 1 referendum is an operational referendum, meaning the money being requested is to be used for academic courses, programs and classes exclusively, not for building updates, construction or other maintenance. The district is seeking to increase its revenue limit to allow for a mill rate increase, as the district has been dealing with falling mill rates since 2020. The mill rate is a way to calculate property taxes in Wisconsin, including those used to fund public school
Document via River Valley School District Updated projections for the April 2025 River Valley School District referendum. QR code inlaid to read. districts. It represents the amount of tax owed per $1,000 of a property’s assessed value. For example, if the mill rate is 5, a property owner pays $5 in taxes for every $1,000 of their property’s assessed value. District Administrator Loren Glasbrenner noted in the meeting that there had been some confusion from community members regarding the referendum and the ELC closure. “One of the questions that was brought forward was ‘So if the referendum fails, Plain stays open, the ELC doesn’t move?’” Glasbrenner said. “The ELC is moving at the end of this year, full stop. We also have a referendum happening in April, they’re not related to each other.” Glasbrenner also addressed the question if the referendum were to fail. “We’ll come back the following April for the exact same need. The need will not go away, and that we will come right back to the community again for that amount, after we would have to probably make some significant cuts or other budget reductions,” Glasbrenner
said. Brian Krey, the district business manager, discussed the district’s updated numbers for the referendum mill rates. Krey had noted that his initial estimates for state aid were lower than updated estimates from the Baird School Business Solutions, a company that specializes in public finance, school budget forecasting and data analytics. These estimates increase the state aid projections, which lower the necessary tax levy increase. “This increase in state aid does not provide any additional revenue, it only impacts where the revenue comes from between property taxes and state aid - in this case our state aid increases, therefore decreasing property taxes and the mill rate,” Krey said. This new estimate lowers the proposed mill rate increases by 25 cents per year. This changes the mill rates to $7.74 per $1000 of tax assessed value in 20252026, $8.40 for 2026-2027 and $9.10 for 2027-2028. Krey also noted that despite the improved accuracy of the estimate
Derek Gottlieb from School Perceptions, a company specializing in school district satisfaction polls and information, provided the board an overview of the parent and staff surveys that were conducted in December as part of the district’s strategic plan. School Perceptions compares the scores from parents and teachers within the district to a comparison score which is made up of scores from 200 similarly sized districts. Parents were surveyed on questions about information, inclusion, educational excellence, atmosphere and experience. Overall parents scored River Valley on a response scale very slightly below what School Perceptions lists as the “comparison score” with the other schools in all of these categories. The survey had 225 respondents, representing a 31% response rate. Areas of strength for the district included staff treating children with dignity and respect, feeling welcome at the child’s school and having one staff member they feel comfortable going to with ideas or concerns. Areas for improvement included having a healthy school culture, opportunities for parental involvement and efforts to address bullying. Parents gave the district a 6.49/10 score for overall satisfaction and recommendability of the district, compared to a 7.61/10 comparison score. The ELC earned the highest score with 7.25, followed by the Elementary School with 6.64, the Middle School with 6.55 and
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