Hoping to pass a maintenance referendum in April, the district has formed a referendum advisory board to evaluate the physical condition of the district schools. The board, made of 19 parents, teachers, administrators and community members, will decide what should be included in the referendum, and submit a recommendation to the school board, which will make the final decision.

The board has been meeting about once a week for a couple hours at a time. Together, they walk through the buildings, seeing and feeling the areas in need of improvement.
“I think people were surprised,” said District Accountant Mark Boehlke, “and that’s what they need to see.”

Because the village has already been paying higher taxes to fund the past referendum, it is possible taxes will not increase if the next referendum is passed.

“We’re trying to structure it so that we don’t raise taxes,” Superintendent Blane McCann said.
Whether taxes do go up will depend on how much money the school board ultimately decides to ask for. Boehlke said if everything included in the original study by Eppstein Uhen is included on the referendum, “it would have to impact taxes for a while.”

The last referendum passed in April of 2002 for $5.3 million. According to Boehlke, 2096 people voted to pass it, and 680 voted against it. On October 31, money from the last referendum ran dry. The school relied on the referendum fund to pay for what working foreman Al Thien called “big ticket items.” This year, although it was evident the referendum money would be gone at the end of October, the district budgeted no more funds for maintenance costs than usual.

“I think the community has made it clear they are more concerned about losing programs, or the student-teacher ratio,” said Boehlke.

Thien said he didn’t foresee this being a big problem.

“We should be able to operate on operational funding,” he said. “But the extras that come up; there’s not enough there for that.”

While some have been calling for an operational referendum in Shorewood, which if passed would give the district money to spend in any area of the budget, McCann said a maintenance referendum would be better because the passage of an operational referendum significantly lowers the state aid the district receives. A maintenance referendum would not lower state aid.

McCann also said he decided against an operational referendum because it creates a dependency in the district on referendum money.

“It alienates a problem for a year, and then it’s back,” he said. “We need another change.”

Boehlke said the district is already in a state of dependency on maintenance referendums.

“There’s some hope that the whole process will change at the state level before we need another one,” he said.

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Thein said his biggest priority for the referendum was the physical education building. Plans for this building include the biggest renovation ideas, such as the addition of a hallway along the west side of the building that would connect the north gym to the arena. The referendum advisory board spent one of their meetings walking around the building judging the problems and visualizing proposed changes.
Reflecting on the tour, Robert Norman, with Eppstein Uhen, said, “Security and safety seemed to rise to the top.”

Throughout the tour, physical education teachers Linda Knutson and Vince Peterson pointed out small areas of the building where students could go unnoticed.

“We can lose track of kids very easily,” said Peterson. “We have kids hide on us and we can’t find them.”

The physical education teachers said they would like to have their offices centrally located, next to each other to communicate faster.

One goal for the physical education building is to minimize the little, unused spaces and make every space useful. On the tour, every bit of extra space spotted by the committee was considered a possible location for storage.

The committee visited each gym and locker room in turn. The arena was judged to be in relatively good condition, though the physical education teachers did request a retractable curtain to be able to have two classes using the space simultaneously. They also said the storage space in the adjoining team room was insufficient because of lack of security. The room used to have a television that was stolen.

“We can’t leave equipment in here,” Peterson said.

The north gym had bigger maintenance problems.

“Everything was done four years ago,” said Thein. This includes the lighting. Knutson said one of the lights once fell on her class.

Each locker room came with its own set of concerns. The committee worried about the easy accessibility of the women’s locker room and about the lack of supervision in the men’s. The committee also looked at the locker rooms in the lower level. Peterson called the rooms “disjointed, wasted space.”

Peterson and Knutson had similar sentiments about the upper gym. Though the room is used by gymnastics and the recreation department, Knutson said the room was underutilized by health classes because of the amount of equipment crowding it.

“It’s a wasted area for us,” said Knutson.
While in the upper gym, district parent Jonathan Eder noticed burnt out light bulbs, and posed some questions.

“Is there a basic maintenance that should be going on that isn’t?” he said. “Is there a reason why you aren’t changing the lights?”

Thein responded, “It’s not a real priority. We’re not gonna spend money on it. Not right now, with our budget.”

McCann added, “We prioritize around safety.”

The committee also toured the other high school campus buildings, and will tour the elementary schools as well. The performing arts building of the high school, because of the renovations it underwent after the fires, will not take up a large part of the referendum. Instead, the committee focused on the administration building, and the arts and sciences building.

One concern for these buildings is the fire alarm system, which is not up to code. Also, the building inspection report for the administration building rated the windows as “poor” and recommended new windows to improve energy efficiency. Another concern is vinyl asbestos floor tile on the second and third floor of the administration building, which Thein said is any six by six inch floor tile.

“In the state it’s in, it’s not friable. As it gets old, it gets friable,” he said. “We would rather remove the asbestos soon to make it a healthier environment."