Poll: Voters would rather close or consolidate schools than raise their taxes; Madison $pending up 7%
It’s said that the hardest animal to kill is a school mascot. Maybe not so much, anymore.
According to polling from Marquette Law School released this week, about 63% of registered voters say they would rather see schools close or consolidate than pay more to keep schools open. A majority also said it’s more important to hold the line on property taxes than to fund local schools.
And while many of the hundreds of schools that have closed or consolidated in the last two decades were in rural areas, there’s not much of a geographical divide among voters on the questions, said polling director Charles Franklin.
About 72% of rural respondents said they’d rather see schools close or consolidate than raise their taxes, compared to 64% of urban respondents. Suburban areas are least likely to want to see schools close or consolidate, with 56% supporting it over higher taxes.
“If you’re a fairly small school in a town in a rural area, you probably only have one high school or one elementary school, and so closing and consolidating means, what other town nearby that may have been your football rivals in the past are you going to consolidate with?” Franklin said. “But on the other hand, the alternative is, how are you going to pay for these schools to stay open when the school-age population continues to shrink?”
The poll, conducted Oct. 14-22, surveyed 818 registered Wisconsin voters and has a margin of error of 4.3%. The partisan makeup of the poll was similar to that of previous polls, with 36% identifying as Republicans, 32% identifying as Democrats and the rest who said they were independents.
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Madison school board is jacking upits annual budget by a healthy 7 percent. Expect to pay an additional $335 on your property taxes. Teachers are getting a 4.63% pay hike. Some contrast: Social Security COLA increase is 3.6%. WI Retirement System annuity increased 2.1%. Why do Democrats want the state to pick up K-12 costs? To better disguise the profligacy of our K-12 school system. Spending is the problem, not funding.
