I’m grateful to have any choice at all. Usually, members of the Madison school board run for reelection unopposed. But this cycle both incumbents who are up for reelection have opponents.
That’s the good news. There is some additional good news in that each of the challengers seems smart, capable and committed. But while I’m glad challengers Dana Colussi-Lynde and Danielle Molle have put themselves out there, neither is the kind of candidate the community needs. What we need are candidates who will raise the most important issues and offer real choices.
Now, to be sure, I will happily vote for both of them because any change to this dismal board has to be a step in the right direction. Incumbents Blair Mosner Feltham and Nicki Vander Meulen have been part of a board that is leading the district to new depths each year.
Year after year, test scores continue to lag the state and nation, truancy rates remain high, fiscal management would be criminally negligent but for the fact that there is no fiscal management at all and the racial achievement gap hasn’t budged despite the fact that it is the main thing the district has focussed on for a couple of decades.
You’d think that a community that claims to value public education as much as this one does, would care. But we don’t. We hold no one to account for this performance. Incumbents get reelected or run unopposed and unjustified spending referendums get approved overwhelmingly. Nobody even bothers to take a hard look at the numbers.
Despite the fact the incumbents have opponents this time, this April will bring no change. Both Mosner Feltham and Vander Meulen will be reelected hands down. I’ll vote for their challengers just to send yet another weak, unheard message of protest.
I had hoped that the sticker shock of huge property tax increases in the bills received in December might have ignited a meaningful movement for reform. But there’s no evidence that it has. I hear plenty of grumbling, but nothing in the way of a genuine revolt or at least a demand that all that money improves results.
What we really need is a true debate sparked by candidates who will lay out clear, strong and different agendas than the ones held by the incumbents. We need challengers who will say that taxes are higher than they need to be, not because the state doesn’t spend enough money but because the district spends too much. Over the last decade we’ve added more staff for fewer students and we’re building new, larger buildings to house schools that are even now at half capacity with projected declining enrollments. In the fastest growing city in the state our enrollments are steady at best and actually declining over time. Why are parents opting out? We’ve been harping on the racial achievement gap forever and nothing improves. Why? Despite this board’s laser focus on all things identity, Black kids don’t show up for school at much higher rates than their white classmates. Why is that? School shootings continue apace and yet nobody is calling for the return of SROs to the high schools.
Those are the real issues that we need a healthy, honest — and sure, sometimes tense — debate about. Instead, as reported in today’s State Journal, the candidates had a sleepy forum this week in which they discussed cell phones. Yes, cell phones should be banned in schools. Okay. Next issue. (Incredibly, Vander Meulen is actually against the cell phone ban.) The achievement gap was addressed, but in such bland terms that it’s impossible to make out what anybody really said. And everybody agreed that the state needs to shovel a lot more money into schools. Nobody bothered to point out that in Madison we’ve made up for that by passing every referendum on offer for twenty years — and our results have gotten worse during that whole period of full funding.
By just about any measure the Madison schools are a mess and it’s not the state’s fault. It’s the fault of long-term mismanagement and misplaced priorities at the local level. And there is no real hope for change on the horizon.
I’ll leave you with those cheery thoughts as we hunker down for what might be our last blizzard of the season. You might find a college basketball game or two to watch this weekend.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 