Education Week - February 12, 2020 - 15

state to take over a district in fiscal distress, though several black school board
members in the state say the law is a violation of local control and the 1965 Voting
Rights Act, arguing it would disproportionately affect majority non-white school
districts.
Wisconsin embodies many of the conditions that would seem to make dissolution a
necessary tool, at the same time illustrating
why the process is so messy, emotional, and
nearly impossible to carry out.
More than a quarter of its 446 school districts are in fiscal distress, according to the
state's school board association, due to a series of statewide tax cuts, an aging population, and a changing economy.

Wisconsin's Experience
Residents in Wisconsin grew deeply
suspicious of state lawmakers, district
administrators, and teachers' unions in
the 1940s and 1950s as they closed more
than 4,500 of the state's 5,000 one-room
schoolhouses within the matter of six
years, wiping out the community identity
of hundreds of small homestead towns,
according to Campbell F. Scribner, a University of Maryland K-12 historian who has
extensively studied Wisconsin's K-12 governance model.
That hostility only intensified in the 1960s

described the severity of the fiscal
outlook, which had worsened in the
prior months as bills piled up and students left.
Just to open up its doors this fall,
the district would have to close one
of its two elementary schools and lay
off dozens of teachers and staff members, Dyer predicted. All after-school
activities and sports programs, which
have helped retain many of the district's families, would be on the chopping block, she said.
The three board members who
resigned that night described years
of online harassment, emotional
trauma, and severed friendships, and
said they were unwilling to do any
more damage to the community they
grew up in.
"The numbers don't work," a tearful Carrie Ollis said before resigning.
She's said she's been called a thief on
Facebook and a member of a mob
who should be jailed. "Nothing gives
me confidence that we will be able
to turn things around. There's not
enough money or time."

What Lies Ahead
The coming months will be pivotal.
Financially struggling districts with
little cash flow often take out shortterm loans to pay their bills. But the
local First Citizens State bank stopped
loaning Palmyra-Eagle money last
summer when it asked to be dissolved, and a credit-rating agency
downgraded its score, questioning
whether the district could afford to
make payments on more than $12 million the district owes.
"There's a black cloud hanging over
us," said Bloom, the superintendent,
who has been trying to persuade
credit agencies to upgrade the dis-

and 1970s during the busing wars.
"Conservatives who moved to the suburbs took up the cause of local control,"
Scribner said. "While they were busing
black kids across district boundaries, conservatives started saying, 'No, no, no, we
have local control. You can't bus anybody.'
That thwarts any effort by the state to consolidate or dissolve districts."
Wisconsin's dissolution process was overhauled in 1990 and effectively punted the
authority to the state's school board association. So far under that process, no district
has been allowed to dissolve.
With so many districts in the state in fiscal
distress, and the state curtailing how often
districts can go to voters for more money,
many residents were watching the PalmyraEagle process closely.
In November, more than four months
after Palmyra-Eagle residents voted to dissolve, a panel made up of one state appointee and five school board members from a
variety of towns from across the state, was
dispatched to the district to decide whether
it should dissolve. If the answer was yes,
the panel also would have decided where
to send the students and staff, and how to
divvy up the district's debt and assets.
As the meetings progressed, panel members quickly realized the complications of
the town's troubles: community schisms,
plummeting enrollment, and widespread

trict's credit. "The state rejected our
request to dissolve and then did nothing to improve our fiscal situation."
The uncertainty affects planning
for the coming school year-administrators have yet to publish a course
catalogue or design its 2020-21 calendar because so many ideas have been
thrown out on how to keep it in operation, including moving to a four-day
school week.
Kari Timm, the district's high school
principal, said with all of the teacher
turnover (a quarter of the staff at the
high school has left in the last year),
she's struggled to fill students' eightperiod days with coursework. She's
started shopping for virtual learning
programs for the district.
"It broke my heart seeing all of our
kids up there on stage crying and asking the state not to close our schools,"
Timm said of the state panel hearing.
"But emotion is not a check you can
cash."
Several teachers at the school, many
with young children at home, said
the months-long dissolution debate
only brought them closer to their colleagues and their students.
"I figured, this could be our last
year, so let's make it our best," said
Tammy Anderson, a high school social studies teacher who's worked in
the district on one-year contracts for
32 years straight. In recent weeks, she
and her students have started the day
off with a writing exercises where they
sum up their feelings in three words or
less: "anxious," "scared," "nervous,"
the students wrote.
Many teachers described frustrations with colleagues who, in the
middle of the school year, left for
surrounding, more financially stable
districts, what they said amounted to
abandoning the students when they

disagreement about whether the district is
salvageable.
Compounding the panel's dilemma, only
two of the surrounding eight districts originally wanted any of the district's students.
One of those two, Whitewater, pulled out of
a plan to split Palymyra-Eagle in half once
administrators realized none of the Palmyra
residents wanted to attend the district.

More Cuts Ahead
After the panel's 6-1 decision to keep the
district alive, panel members, local administrators and community members all said
the process felt rushed, relied too much on
emotion rather than fact, and was incongruent with the state's expansive open enrollment system and antiquated funding
formula.
The panel was "faced with a question that
had no perfect answer," said Wisconsin
State Superintendent Carolyn Stanford Taylor, whose appointed member was the only
member who voted to dissolve the district.
Palmyra-Eagle administrators now face
the prospect of more than $2 million of cuts
in the coming six months in order to keep
the district operating.
And last week, the district was sent a bill:
It owed more than $15,000 to the state to
pay for panel members' hotel costs, food,
and time spent in the district.

needed them most.
But they also talked about late-night
debates with their own spouses over
whether they should stay for another
year or start looking for another job.
"I want to be here," Scott Hein, who
leads the school's marching band, jazz
band, concert band, and volleyball
team. His wife is expecting a baby in
the coming months. "I want to be with
these kids."

Underlying Problems
The structural problems that led to
Palmyra-Eagle's predicament remain.
Over the last decade, enrollment
fell from 1,200 to 700, much of that
due to parents taking advantage of
open enrollment. With the current
uncertainty about the district's fate,
close to 100 students have left since
the beginning of this school year; one
3rd-grade class at Eagle Elementary
has just 12 students enrolled.
For every student the district loses,
it eventually loses close to $7,500 in
revenue from the state. To put that in
perspective, a beginning teacher costs
the district around $40,000 a year.
And for every teacher who quits
or program the district cuts, it risks
losing another student to open enrollment, which allows unsatisfied
parents to transfer their child, tuitionfree, to neighboring districts.
In the days after the state rejected
the district's appeal to dissolve, Eagle
residents started a Facebook group
encouraging parents to enroll their
children in surrounding districts.
There were offers for car pools, posts
about the deteriorating services in the
district, and tutorials on how to apply
for the open enrollment process,
which starts in February and goes
through April.

Only nine states in the nation give
themselves the explicit power to dissolve a
district, according to Edbuild, an advocacy
organization that pushes for states to
overhaul their K-12 spending methods.
They are:
* Arkansas
* Kentucky
* North Carolina
* Oklahoma
* South Carolina
* South Dakota
* Texas
* Vermont
* Washington
SOURCE: Edbuild

The attractions may seem obvious.
The Mukwonago school district's
high school, which Eagle residents
drive by to get into Milwaukee, offers more than 30 AP courses, a bevy
of electives, and a downhill ski team.
It recently underwent a $50 million
renovation to include a performing
arts center and new gymnasium.
"All you have to do is look at the
numbers," said Eagle parent Cheri
Geraci, a social worker who drives her
kids more than 100 miles a day to the
neighboring district. "We'd rather go
to Mukwonago."

Weighing Options
Those determined to stick it out
are exploring extreme options: one
elaborate pitch during the recent debate included moving to a four-day
school week, closing and selling off
one of the elementary schools, and
having local residents volunteer to do
maintenance work, such as painting
hallways and cleaning the gym floor.
Chris Winkler, who runs a trucking
company based in Oak Creek, Wis.,
sent a letter to the state panel considering the dissolution saying that he
wants to move his wife and grandchildren onto his estate in Palmyra, which
includes a barn and a horse-riding
arena. He pledged to make a matching donation to support the school's
after-school programs and some of
its capital needs.
"We chose Palmyra because of
what it is and stands for-the values
country life teaches, the sincerity
and caring of neighbors and community schools where the kids know
each other," Winkler wrote. "Keeping Palmyra schools open is about
ensuring my grandchildren and the
children of Palmyra are happy and

fulfilled in schools that are part of
their community."
Board members who quit and administrators say while those efforts
are admirable, they still don't add up
to the $2 million the district needs to
avoid cuts and are not sustainable.
But others say the district's doubters
lack hope.
"There are people who believe in
us," LeRoy said. "We have thick skin
and broad shoulders. Failing is not an
option."
Last month, the Ace Hardware store
that anchors Palmyra's Main Street
sold out of purple lightbulbs. As the
district's plight gained national attention, its varsity basketball team, the
Panthers, set off on a winning streak;
sports columnists predicted it might
have a chance at this year's state
championship.
A wave of Panther pride swept over
the town. Residents lit their porches
up in a purple hue, plastered booster
signs across their yards and, at the
local fish frys, talked strategy with
varsity players.
It was hard to tell at a recent game
that the district just a week before had
been on the brink of dissolution and
is now looking down the barrel of $2
million in cuts.
During timeouts, the pep band,
cheerleading team, and dance squad
roused the packed audience. School
board members, teachers, and former
administrators served cheese nachos,
Doritos, and hot dogs to a long line of
fans.
Students in the pep squad from both
Palmyra and Eagle said their home
address mattered little once they
came to school.
"The future is uncertain," said Lane
Scheel, a 17-year-old senior. "But
we're all Panthers here."

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Education Week - February 12, 2020

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