CAC Referendum Recommendations in Light of Survey Results

If any of you read this morning's Gazette, you will know that the CAC has recommended that the BOE proceed to referendum on three questions on September 9 or one big question in November. The 3 questions in September option would pose a tax impact of 1.305 million dollars year for four years, as envisioned by the CAC. Instead of separating out Safety and Security from building maintenance, as was done in the survey, they recommended lumping them together into one question, with the total expense for those two items being no more than 2.8 million, whereas the survey indicated that the expense to do this would be 3.1 million (Safety at 300K and Maintenance at 2.8 million). The curriculum would be separate at a total of 900K and the Technology would be separate at 1.52 Million. The one big question would have the same tax impact, but the reasoning and timing was important. If questions are separated out, funds have to be spent only on the items specified in the referendum question and earlier voting would enable earlier purchase of services, particularly in outdoor building improvements. In Wisconsin, after November outdoor work is not an option, sometimes all the way until May. That would leave very little time to expend those funds if done in November. If all questions are lumped into one, November would be better, getting a higher voter turnout and giving flexibility for the fund usage where needed. The downside is that those adamantly opposed to one or another item in the one big question may or may not vote against the whole enchilada. The survey didn't really measure how much additional tax burden the community was willing to take on for a limited time.

So what did the survey say about the likelihood of these particular items succeeding on referendum? Important contextual information to have while reviewing the survey results are as follows:

• The non-parent, non-staff subgroup represents 70-75% of the voters in a district.
• The undecided survey results typically break negative at 80% no and 20% yes.
• Our survey results had an inordinately high "undecided/need more info" result across the board, according to the School Perceptions presentation.

CURRICULUM SUPPORT $900,000

63% of all residents responding to the survey said they would support a referendum of $900,000 over four years to improve curriculum. 52% of the non-parent non-staff group said the same. Clearly, there is community support for this item. One need not even perform the weighted average to see that this is likely to be a win at the ballot, but performing that math indicates that initiative would garner 55.3% yes votes, and even with a 2.9% margin of error would likely pass a referendum.

SAFETY AND SECURITY $300,000

54% of all residents would support this at the ballot with 22% undecided and 44% of the big voting block "non parent non staff" would do so, also with 22% undecided. This is less clear cut. Doing a straight weighted average on these numbers indicates that the likely outcome of a referendum regarding this item alone is only 47% yes. If you include 20% of the undecideds changed to yes in each group, the weighted average is now predicted to be 51.4%, which may encourage the optimists among you, but I just want to remind everyone that the margin of error for the survey is +/- 2.9%, placing this question firmly in the grey area of "it depends on who comes out to vote."

BUILDING MAINTENANCE

49% of all residents would support a referendum for this item with 31% undecided and 39% of the non-parent non-staff group supports it with 32% of that group undecided. As with the curriculum question, it's clear that a straight weighted average would fail to garner support at the polls. That result would be 42% yes. Adding in 20% of the undecided votes for each category would increase the support level to 48.34% yes. Again,  margin of error puts this even further into the questionably successful category.

TECHNOLOGY

57% of all residents supported the technology initiative with a 21% undecided group. 44% of the non-parent non-staff group supported this question with 23% undecided. The straight weighted average indicates public support at the polls would stand at 47.9%, again in limbo. Changing 20% of the undecideds in each group and recalculating the weighted average results in 52.38% support for improving technology and its infrastructure.

What does all this mean? It means that if the BOE decides to take all four of these questions to referendum that Curriculum is likely to be a clear winner and the other three are a crap shoot at this point in the conversation with the community. Two may break positive and one negative. It doesn't seem wise to lump in one that is breaking positive with one that is breaking negative just to get them all on the ballot. I don't know how voters would react to lumping everything into one question, but it seems likely that that strategy, while it has good reasoning, could backfire based on this statistical analysis of the survey results.

How will this affect your property tax bill.

CURRICULUM: 23.2 cents per thousand, increasing the mill rate to $12.53 per thousand in property value, a 1.9% increase in the current mill rate. All of these calculations only include these initiatives and do not take into account the increases that will be seen due to other increases in the revenue limit and debt payment.

SAFETY and MAINTENANCE: 72.2 cents per thousand, giving an individual mill rate increase of 5.9% and a cumulative (including CURRICULUM) rate increase of  95.4 cents per thousand, or a 7.8% increase.

TECHNOLOGY: 43.8 cents per thousand for an individual mill rate increase of 3.6% and a cumulative (including both items above) increase of $1.39 per thousand, or an 11.3% increase.

Link to Tonight's Board Meeting Packet

Here's the link that includes both agenda and packet contents for the school board meeting tonight at 6. Lots of information is included. A third reading of policy that has flown under my radar until now (so sorry) is Policy 521.1, wherein all communications between board and staff are to be through the conduit of the District Administrator. I am appalled at this and now understand where the staff got the idea they weren't to talk to board members at all. Unbelievable. Come early to snag a good seat!

Melissa

http://www.ecsdnet.org/documents/Board%20Meetings/2013-2014/March/March%2012%20board%20packet.pdf

Link to the Survey Results!

After looking for this every day or so for the last few weeks, here's the link to the survey results.

Enjoy!

http://www.ecsdnet.org/documents/CAC/survey%20results/Evansville%202014%20Survey%20Report%20draft%20-2.pdf

Thank You For the Endorsement EEA!

I am very happy and humbled to announce that the Evansville Education Association has given me their endorsement. I got the call last night after attending parent teacher conferences at the High School and trying to do so at the Middle School and attempting to feed 5 people in between. Any of you who have had a 14 year old taking messages at your home can appreciate the years of training required to get my son to take a message (huge progress getting it on paper!) "Mrs. Koph (sic) 6:45." Since there are two nights of conferences, I didn't know which night he meant. He was sure it was last night. It wasn't. But we're happy there was an actual message recorded. It's all good.

Back to the endorsement. With this endorsement comes a pretty significant stipend donation to my campaign. It will help pay for ads and fliers and any other items I think will help my cause. Fortunately, I still have signs from 2007. This is the 4th campaign they've been through, so nobody can accuse me of being a spendthrift! Some of them need new wires, but it's all good! Next week, with the 40 degree weather coming, they will probably even enter the ground smoothly! No knitting needle and hammer required! (I had to use that technique last year to get the signs to stand up). Since I don't write for the Review anymore to avoid conflict of interest and appearance of partiality, this endorsement stipend is especially appreciated. Thanks again teachers and carry on!

Update to the School Perceptions Update

Here's an up date to the survey participation rate question, hot off the presses. Chelsea Davis from School Perceptions sent me this email literally the minute I posted the first update. I will wait a few days to post this so new data isn't made obsolete in minutes.  

Hi again, Melissa.

There is one correction I need to make.  We are working on updating the report and noticed that the total percentage of surveys taken was based on an incorrect number of surveys mailed.  In addition to the 3,552 surveys mailed via Every Door Direct Mail, there were 471 additional surveys mailed to individuals who do not live on Evansville Post Office routes, but are considered District residents.  Therefore, the total number of surveys mailed was 4,023 and the overall response rate as of last Monday (1,148 surveys taken) was 28.5%.

We apologize for any inconvenience.  This percentage will be corrected in the updated version of the report that will be provided to the District.

A 28.5% (1148/4023) response rate is better that the 27.3% using the Gazette's reported 4200 surveys distributed and a heck of a lot better than the paltry 400 (9.9%) the committee, with the input of School Perceptions, had determined would give them sufficiently rigorous statistics to extrapolate the results to the entire district.

Then today, I got a call from Janesville Gazette's Gina Duwe to ask me for information regarding my board candidacy. In the course of that conversation, I was able to ascertain where the original "4200" came from. Gina follows my blog and wanted to clear up her source of the total number of surveys. She told me that her source of surveys being sent to "all 4200" district homes was Mr. Roth in a previous context, which she logically extrapolated to this situation and, honestly, is pretty close to the actual number of surveys sent. I told her that even the new estimate doesn't capture the total available surveys, so don't sweat it. With the additional surveys distributed from the office (and other sources?) as well as additional codes emailed to survey respondents who requested one for each voter in the house, it's likely that there were even more than 4200 surveys made available to folks. I also told her that I wasn't criticizing her report, it's just that my analytical brain went into spasms trying to do a calculation that wasn't computing.

The bottom line is this: since School Perceptions has been doing this for over a decade with many districts, it's likely they consistently calculate the percent response rate for their survey results. So no matter what value is used, the nearly 30% rate of return was calculated in a consistent manner and, compared to surveys in other districts, is very high. I am satisfied that the values of the ECSD have been recorded in this process and can guide the district in their future decisions. I hope the board will use this data to come up with a good Strategic Plan to help them all stay focused on the vision of Excellence in all aspects of Education.

Come Early to Get a Good Seat at the March 12 School Board Meeting

I know the agenda has yet to be published, but as they summarized the agenda coming forward to the school board meeting on March 12 at the Feb 26 meeting, I knew this meant 1) March 12 is going to be a long meeting and 2) a lot of interested parties will attend that don't normally do so. The district has already anticipated this and changed the normal venue to TRIS LMC (library for us old farts), entrance through the Fair Street (bus) doors. The staff has been planning to bring food and hunker down for the duration. Start time is 6:00. Come early for best viewing!

The two top drawing cards for attendance will be:

1). The Citizen Advisory Committee presentation of its recommendations to the school board based on the recent community survey.

2). The 4K Investigative Committee's presentation and recommendations to the school board based on their research and the survey results.

Either of these two presentations would increase attendance, but both items will likely increase public comment time and fill the library with interested parties. If you have something to say about either of these items, come have your 5 minutes of fame. The lousy weather has shifted the timing on the 4KIC presentation from 2-26 to 3-12, but given that the information from the survey wasn't available until two days prior to the expected presentation date of 2-26, that was probably a hidden bonus. Now there is time to put together a well-designed presentation that reflects all the hard work of the committee. The 4KIC is practicing on March 10 in the TRIS library for those interested in a preview. Paula Lander's leadership of this committee has been the epitome of professionalism and has made all the difference to the final product. Our district is very lucky to have her as curriculum coordinator and I hope they recognize that.

I don't remember all the other agenda items coming forward to the next meeting, but they will probably approve the Girl's Hockey co-op with the Stoughton (currently) 4-op, again with parents shouldering the burden of (really high) costs here. Pay periods, Press Box, Budget updates this year and next, Insurance updates, etc. will probably reappear. Basically all the items on the Budget portion of the last meeting might come up again in the discussion section of the next meeting. I don't know if the paperless board packets will come to this meeting, but Doreen said she would do a cost analysis of the various forms of what "paperless" means. I'll try to remember to post the agenda when available later this week!

One disturbing comment came up when discussing the pros and cons of changing to a policy governance model (only 12 districts out of 426 currently use it in Wisconsin). "Their meetings seem to be shorter," was mentioned as a perk. Some of the current board members seem to rate productivity of board meetings with how quickly they are finished. Too bad for our district. I always thought how well a board advocates for the education of ALL of its students was the most important measure of productivity for a school board. Taking a peek at the open enrollment net deficit alone, I'm thinking a few more hours might be called for. That is all, except if you want this attitude to be challenged:

Response from School Perceptions Folks about the Response Rate

Here's the response I got from Chelsea Davis at School Perceptions when I asked about the reported participation rate for the survey.

Hi Melissa,

Thanks for your patience on this issue as I was out of the office last week.  To answer your question, the District’s postage order was for a total of 3,552 surveys.  As of last Monday, 1,148 people had taken the survey, which is the 32.3% response rate we reported. 

Because the District did not have an official community-wide mailing list, they used the US Post Office’s Every Door Direct Mail program.  This is a typical mailing format we recommend if a district does not have a mailing list.  A number of extra surveys were available at the District Office for anyone who did not receive a survey or requested an additional for another eligible voter in their household.

I hope that helps.

Thanks,

Chelsea Davis

(main) 262.644.4300 ext. 7003

(direct) 262.299.0325

(fax) 262.299.0333

319 East Washington St.

Slinger, WI 53086

She notes that an unspecified number of additional surveys were made available to people who requested one for each voter in the household, and the district had copies available. So this response rate is best case scenario, which I believe is still pretty good. In discussing matters with the CAC chair, she noted that they were targeting 400 surveys as the minimum acceptable response rate, and they got nearly three times that, so looked at in this way, it's a win all around. I don't know where the 4200 number came from that the Gazette used in their article, but it was good to get the data from the source.

Thanks to School Perceptions for their quick turnaround time on this question. Now to formulate more questions now that I have digested all the data!