This information has been shared via Wildcat clips, but we do plan to send another email to parents with the remaining Community Info Session dates as well as the slide deck from tonight's presentation.

We have not established this at the board level at this time, and with the size of our district, discussing any cuts will become very apparent on whom it affects. Therefore, the District will not discuss this further until we are at a point where this is the situation we face. 

Yes. Our administrative team will present the same presentation at each session. The questions from the audience during the open forum Q&A session may be different, however, but those questions will, following each session, be placed on our referendum website. 

Yes. It will be offered for all students in grades 6-8. 

Band will be offered to students. We will have a .6 FTE teacher for band, allowing for 4th grade strings, band for students in grades 5-8, film music, and small group lessons. The change will come in either the number of students in the small group lessons or the lesson frequency. 

Yes.

No. Our neighboring districts sunset/ended their post-employment benefit programs starting in 2010, when Act 10 was past. 

The original goal was to have work on the building begin during Summer 2025. 

During the spring and summer of 2024, the District became concerned with how SiteLogIQ was trying to implement their contractual responsibilities as the project  progressed. 

The District engaged with legal counsel to help settle these contractual concerns to ensure that  we are getting the best value for the referendum dollars that were approved by the voters in the community.

We are looking to become financially stable as a district, so we have the proper time to devote to doing the appropriate research to look at these types of alternative revenue sources.

While the district would love to leverage parent expertise, in this particular case, we need to be cognizant and respectful of private employee information.

Parents should not have access to this information and it would not be appropriate for the District to allow this to occur.

We do, however, work with The Insurance Center, who is an insurance broker with over 25 years of experience working with school districts, that assists us with all of our employee insurance renewals.

There are three types of referendums a district can ask voters to approve: capital and recurring operational and non-recurring operational. A capital referendum funds building construction/renovation—which LCSD was grateful to pass in April 2024.

An operational referendum helps cover ongoing expenses associated with running a school district. Recurring means that the increase is indefinite; non-recurring means that it's only for a specified amount of time. 

Operational referendum money cannot be spent to renovate or build facilities, and capital referendum dollars cannot be spent on school operations.

Wisconsin public school districts are mainly funded by a combination of state money and local property taxes. The state aid that school districts receives has not, since 2010, increased to cover inflation. In fact, that gap has increased to $3,380 per student—or around $1.18 million for LCSD per year. 

That means most districts require more money from local taxpayers to operate. Because districts are limited by their revenue limits, in order to receive additional local money, they must ask to increase these revenue limits through operational referendum.

Additionally, beginning in September 2024, Federal COVID-19 pandemic aid (ESSER funds) were no longer available to schools. 

Unless the school funding formula and state funding changes, it's likely that operational referendums will continue to be more common. The Wisconsin Policy Forum study found that school districts asked voters to sign off on a record 241 referenda, eclipsing the old record of 240 set in 1998. The referenda sought a total of $5.9 billion, a new record ask. The old record was $3.3 billion set in 2022.

In short, if this referendum does not pass, LCS is going to face significant and unprecedented reductions to staff and programming that will severely impact the quality of education our District has come to expect.

The Board would need to make extremely tough decisions and program reductions could include everything from academic offerings, co-curricular activities, and staffing — resulting in fewer opportunities for students. With fewer opportunities, it is possible the students open enrolling to our school district would leave for other districts, taking additional state aid money with them, compounding our financial concerns.

You can think of a school district's fund balance as an internal line of credit and funds to address unforeseen expenses. The ability to retain a fund balance as a school district is important for several reasons: 

• District budgets run on a fiscal year that starts July 1 and ends June 30. Given the small state aid payment, the first noteworthy revenue each year comes in the form of taxes - in late January - when the district receives approximately 40% of our tax levy. That means we operate for more than half the budget year without much incoming revenue. The fund balance allows us to flexibly use that money and then replenish as our local revenue comes in. 
• It serves as a fund from which any potential emergency expenditure (major Mechanical replacement due to malfunction) can be adjusted to ensure smooth school operations.
• A fund balance allows the District to cover potential small budgetary shortfalls should they arise; this is how we've been able to balance the budget over the last several years.

The District’s fund balance has been spent down to approximately 10% of the overall budget. The general rule of thumb for school districts is to maintain a fund balance near 20%-25% of the overall budget. 

If the District completely depletes its fund balance and operates in a deficit spending situation, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction will likely intervene in the District’s operations.

After the failed April 2024 operational referendum, Lake County School District sent a survey in December 2024 for members of our community to better understand the feelings about another operational referendum in the future. 

We took the time to listen and to understand the survey results and, along with internal analysis, determined that $800,000 per year for the next five years was a compromise that allowed us to decrease the financial impact to the community, while maintaining most of our current programs and services and increasing our fund balance.