Frederica Freyberg:
The West Bend School District, north of Milwaukee, is struggling with the vexing problem of trying to get property taxpayers to foot a bigger bill in the midst of a recession. That would have been a double-digit levy increase. Public outcry forced the district to scale back to just 9 percent, but some want to pay a lot less than that. Something much less could spell deep and painful cuts, according to district leaders. By way of background, West Bend schools have a $60 million budget for 2009-2010 and lost $2.4 million in state aid in the last state budget. The district expects to lose the same amount next year. That comes on top of 15 straight years of budget reductions under state revenue caps. West Bend Superintendent of Schools Pat Herdrich is preparing for Monday's school board meeting where cuts and caps and taxes will be on the table. Superintendent, thanks very much for joining us.

Pat Herdrich:
Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
Why does your district need to levy so much more to run your schools?

Pat Herdrich:
West Bend is in a little bit of a unique situation. In the region, obviously all schools are struggling with the school financing system right now. West Bend entered into the revenue caps 15 years ago as one of the lowest-spending school districts in the state. As a result, our capped level has been significantly lower. We're the 19th largest, but we're the sixth lowest in revenue in the state of Wisconsin, and we're growing as a school system. So while we're adding more children, we've actually been cutting programming straight for the last 15 years. We have 500 more kids in the school system now than we did eight years ago. So that ends up being part of the context. So the hit in state aid again actually is compounding already large class sizes, program reductions and the fact that we're really struggling right now determining how we balance a strong value for education against the losses that we've consecutively had.

Frederica Freyberg:
What's the total additional dollar amount needed to run the school district in the manner that you would like to?  

Pat Herdrich:
We actually were proposing the levy impact. It was about a 3.7 percent increase on just the budget portion of it. And the levy, when we were going up by the 12 percent, it was going to be $118 for the year additional in school taxes. Ninety-eight dollars of the $118 was a result of the loss in state aid.  

Frederica Freyberg:
What is the worst case scenario for West Bend schools if in fact you can't get this levy increase?  

Pat Herdrich:
We are taking a look at actually combining additional classes starting in second semester. We would be looking at taking 12 additional teachers out of the high schools, 10 additional teachers out of the middle school, combining kindergarten and first grade classes and actually changing teachers mid-year. We'd be doing additional reductions in maintenance starting in November and December. So obviously the conditions are pretty significant. As we're heading into next year, we know we have another $2.4 million in aid reduction. So we clearly are at risk of no longer being able to offer programming or increasing class sizes, we're projecting between 35 and 40 students. We actually are seriously considering taking a look at a four-day school week. It's very rare in the state of Wisconsin. The only districts that have actually done it nationally are large, rural school systems. We actually are spending at that level, though, so now we're at a point where it ends up being a reality for consideration for us. We're going to drop half of our varsity teams next year and combining our two high school teams together.

Frederica Freyberg:
Critics suggest you could do with less, fewer administrators or larger classes. Hundreds of tax protestors showed up at a recent meeting. What do you say to those critics?

Pat Herdrich:
We already have one of the lowest administrative levels in the state for the volume of kids that we're serving. School administrators, while people think of administration as not necessarily directing classroom care, it is a critical safety issue. It is a leadership condition when you're taking a look at trying to make sure that you're sustaining strong programs, safe schools and support for teaching and staff. Our teachers are critical.

Frederica Freyberg:
How serious would you regard this situation in West Bend?

Pat Herdrich:
We are at very much a critical juncture for this community. Our community highly values education. We're ranked among the top two reasons to move to West Bend as a community. We value programming. We are really at the point of offering less opportunities for children that this community has grown to deeply value. We're looking at eliminating music and the arts, physical education and having classroom teachers teach that. Our program is going to take a significant hit.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now, very briefly, you described West Bend as kind of the canary in the coal mine on this issue. How so?

Pat Herdrich:
With where we entered into the revenue caps, we are going to actually forecast what's going to be happening to most of the districts across the state. We know the funding formula is fundamentally problematic. We know that something has to happen. Legislatively they've tried with a number of different committees over years to restructure it. There's very little political will right now to change the formula. We are large. We're low-spending. We have programming people value, but it is heavily at risk. So we are the one that is really going to show the way for many school districts across the state and the damaging effect of where we're at right now with the loss of state aid.

Frederica Freyberg:
We need to leave it there. Thanks very much, and good luck.

Pat Herdrich:
Thank you.