Waunakee Referendum Fact Check

08/20/2026

We are less than two weeks from the return to school. I hope all of you has had as good of a summer break as your humble moderators.

Over a week ago, the WCSD Board of Education made it official and certified two questions for the November ballot:

1) $97.5 million capitol referendum for remodeling portions of the high school
2) $10.5 million recurring referendum over the next five years.

There is a lot to say about these over the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

07/25/2026

Waunakee has put five referenda on the ballot since 1/1/20 with two more coming this fall. Just taking the number of five, here is the complete list of all school districts who have gone to their voters asking for increased taxing authority five or more times since 1/1/2020:

8 - Fort Atkinson
6 - East Troy, Elkhorn, Parkview, Waterford Union HS, Wausau
5 - WCSD, Viroqua

That's it. eight districts out of 421. WCSD is in the top 2% of districts repeatedly asking for increased taxing authority. We probably crack the top 1% by this fall when we get to seven in four consecutive November elections.

What WCSD is doing is not normal. We are the outlier. If insufficient state aid was forcing schools to go to referendum, then more than eight districts statewide would be proposing so many referenda.

07/23/2026

WRFC avoids state politics except to report on what state law is and the state budget allocates. However, the Tribune Article made some interesting choices in how it brought state political decisions into its reporting on this article. The Tribune has generally done fair reporting on WCSD. It also wrote a rather good article in 2022 calling out WCSD for being misleading in talking about the size of the phase-in operational referendum at the time.

When discussing the state budget and its impacts. It takes the 'negative' coded policy decision of $0 additional general aids and said, "the state’s 2025-27 biennial budget" did that. When later discussing what WCSD codes as a positive policy decision, the article said, "It also includes Gov. Evers’ budgeted $325 per pupil levy increase."

The State Budget is full of politics and reasonable people can take all sides, but it was interesting that two decisions, in the same document, are attributed differently. The State Budget passed on a bipartisan 19-14 vote in the Senate and 59-39 vote in the Assembly.

5 Democrats, including Sen. Hesselbein, and 14 Republicans in the Senate voted yes. 7 Democrats, not including Rep. Joers, and 52 Republicans in the Assembly voted yes. Governor Evers signed it without significant vetoes to the education areas.

The article reports on the Budget Surplus deal between Governor Evers and Legislative Republicans that WCSD actively supported. The article said, "Had the measure passed in the Legislature, according to data from the Governor’s office, Waunakee would have benefitted to the tune of just over $1.7 million in increased special education aid, plus another $1.614 million in general school aid. However, it failed in the state Senate."

The article and WCSD didn't mention that both Sen. Hesselbein and Rep. Joers voted against it. It passed the Assembly 61-32 (51-R,10-D yes). It failed in the Senate 15-18 (3-R,15-D no).

With the July 1 general aid estimates from the Department of Public Instruction came more bad news for the Waunakee School District and its taxpayers.

07/19/2026

WCSD is refinancing existing debt to push principal and interest payments due out into the future to mask the actual cost of our obligations to taxpayers.

Loyal followers of the early days of WRFC will recall WCSD used to increase property taxes to pay down debt early. It then ran the 2020 operational referendum (while most in-person classes were forbidden) by saying "the referendum won't raise your taxes. If you vote no, we'll raise the exact same amount for early debt service payments... so you might as well let us spend it on our general budget."

They used this line as evidence to bolster the district's statements about its fiscally responsibility. Look at how the district is handling its debt now as stated at the very end of the article:

"Summers also said the Waunakee School Board has been concerned about the situation. Last fall, as a result, it approved a debt refinancing plan to lower the tax levy by $2.3 million in 2025-26. Summers said he expects the board will want to have a similar discussion for 2026-27 to come up with creative measures to address the situation locally 'because it’s not being addressed at the state level.'"

Setting aside that a really obvious 'creative solution' to keep taxes low might be to NOT try for another $100 million in referendum authority after 3 straight elections with referendum requests... Increasing the cost of debt by pushing off payments is not creative. The first time the State doesn't pick up the tab (more on that in a future post), WCSD refinances debt to hide the impact of the full cost. None of these bond payments were unexpected. They were just inconvenient for the next round of referendum campaigning.

With the July 1 general aid estimates from the Department of Public Instruction came more bad news for the Waunakee School District and its taxpayers.

07/17/2026

WCSD gave notice in one of its emails to some distribution list that it intends to go forward with TWO referenda this November. It will be both an operational and an issue debt. The official resolution won't get passed until the August board meeting, but they don't have "information sessions" already scheduled through October for the fun of it.

07/15/2026

There's so much to say about this news article and the comments of district officials. First and foremost, it is moments like these we did our school funding tutorial earlier. Look back around late May/early June for some of those posts.

WCSD is correct that the loss of aid does not impact the budget, but only the share of the budget paid for locally, i.e. increases to property taxes. This decrease in equalization aid was a near certainty given our community has fast growth in property values and declining enrollment. Aid is distributed toward districts with low property value/student.

The $2.9 million figure requires the oddly selective use of biennial (two-year) math. That is, you count the 25-26 reduction AGAIN for 2026-27. WCSD doesn't use biennial math for almost anything else that we've seen. Therefore, the figure is not false, but it is some degree of misleading if you change accounting presentations for only this figure.

For example, revenue limit authority is up $325 per student per year in both 2025-26 and 2026-27. WCSD doesn't say it got $975 per student of new revenue limit authority in its communications by counting the 2025-26 figure twice. It readjusts its baseline every year, because it does annual budgeting. The 2025-26 equalization aid change should, likewise, be in the adjusted baseline.

More to dig into in the days ahead. Stay cool, Waunakee.

With the July 1 general aid estimates from the Department of Public Instruction came more bad news for the Waunakee School District and its taxpayers.

06/24/2026

A reminder from prior posts as it was recently brought up:

WCSD, as part of its plan for the public to fill out the community surveys immediately after seeing its slideshow, chose to claim a lack of resources based on historical state funding from 2008 through the end of the current 2-year state budget (2027). They left out the substantial new state categorical aids since 2019 from their figures. So even granting all of WCSD's premises, the alleged deficit is overstated; but beyond that...

WCSD chose $9.1 million as the recurring (forever) referendum amount it wanted to address any alleged historical underfunding in 2024. That referendum passed.

A new operational referendum in 2026 cannot be justified by any pre-2025 historical claims. This page did not choose this metric or these figures, WCSD did.

06/22/2026

School Funding Tutorial - Part 5

Summer School Enrollment

Happy start of WCSD summer school. The number of specific children attending a WCSD school is not the same as our total enrollment. One reason is the open enrollment process described last time. Other reasons are where a school district can get partial pupil credit for other things.

WCSD can count summer school enrollees on a fractional basis toward its enrollment count, which unlocks state aid and property taxation authority. There's nothing remarkable about this fact. We bring it up for two reasons. First, summer school started today.

Second, it is a reminder that the way government works is more complicated than a lay citizen might know, but none of it is too complicated to learn.

06/13/2026

Summer Vacation time is upon us, and WRFC will be dark for a week or two.

When attempts are made to talk about WCSD's budget problems, do not forget what the community passed in 2024: $9.1 million recurring (i.e. forever) for operations.

The BOE told the community that is what it would take solve the long-term financial issues as they say them. The only intervening state budget increased resources for schools faster than inflation. All arguments about alleged historical underfunding should have been solved in 2024.

06/11/2026

https://app.smore.com/n/4dqx3-wcsd-board-of-education

WCSD scheduled four 'potential referendum discussion sessions' from July through October. They are listed at the bottom. The legal deadline for the BOE to pass a resolution to place a referendum on the ballot is around the beginning of September.

If they are scheduling discussion sessions in late September and October, there is no doubt that the BOE has already decided to go to referendum. The marketing/political campaign has been underway since last Fall when WCSD held an informational session to complain about state funding.

WCSD Board of Education