COVID-19 Plan

WLCSC currently has no contact tracing mechanism or live dashboard. Additionally, the initial COVID-19 reopening plan did not include a mask mandate because the governor had not instituted a state-wide one. While the governor has extended Indiana’s mask mandate to November 14th, the school board has not made a statement on whether they will continue to require masks in schools if the statewide mask mandate is not extended past that date.

WLCSC’s current COVID reopening plan can be found here. While the initial iteration of the plan did not include a mask mandate, the current plan does. The notable aspects of the plan include:

1. Onsite and e-learning options for students

2. A mask mandate when “social distancing isn’t possible”. Additionally, the plan makes provisions for “medical reason[s]”, though it’s not clear what those reasons would include.

The COVID-19 dashboard can be found here. The dashboard is updated every Friday, regardless of if someone tests positive earlier in the week.

District Budget

The write up below is from Dacia Mumford, school board candidate. For her full post and questions she has for the board on the budget, visit her website here.

Our school district receives revenue of about $5 million each year from property taxes that goes to the debt service fund. This $5 million is required to be spent on remodeling, new construction, and purchasing technology. This debt service money cannot be transfer to other uses (like hiring teachers), but this is irrelevant because our school district spends much more than $5 million on debt service each year. Between 2021 and 2038, the lease payments to the shell company that owns our school buildings are between $6 and $7 million each year, maxing out at $6.975 million. Doing all this construction at the same time has locked us into 20 years of lease payments that exceed our debt service tax revenue.

Where is the extra $1 to $2 million we will need every year to pay back our enormous debt going to come from? Over the next two decades, our school budget will have no flexibility to deal with needs or take advantage of opportunities. One disappointment is that by doing this construction all at once, we have missed the opportunity to improve our technology infrastructure to better serve our students. Our school district is spending much more than just “construction money” on construction and by doing so made a choice to prioritize construction projects over teachers, class size, student support, programs, etc.

The data comes from several reports that the school district is required by law to file with the state. The WLCSC Annual Financial Reports can be downloaded from Gateway one year at a time. These annual reports confirm that our school district is leasing back our school buildings and report the annual amount of past debt payments. Note that the spike in debt payments in 2018 occurred because the school district was still paying back the old debt that was about to expire while also taking on new debt. The Debt Management Report (copied to the bottom of the post below) confirms that our school district’s future lease payments in each year are greater than the current revenue from property taxes for debt service. The certified amount of tax revenue for each year to the debt service fund comes from Budget Form 4-B (Financial Statement – Tax Rate Report) for each year. Over the past 5 years, this tax raised about $5 million each year.

At the request of WL CARE, Angela Janes and Dacia Mumford helpfully created videos on the budget issues they have identified. You can watch Angie’s video here and Dacia’s video here.

Transparency

The community has presented multiple issues on school board transparency. The list below is not exhaustive, but it does include many of the frustrations we’ve felt and heard from others.

1. There is currently no way to comment or ask questions in virtual board meetings. This is a serious issue for both general accessibility concerns and because of the current pandemic. Karen Springer, Vice President of the board, stated in the WestSide Friends Facebook group on October 20th that the corporation’s technology department began looking into this issue. The next board meeting is on November 2nd.

2. The livestreams of board meetings are not reliable. The livestream on October 5 did not work, and community members had to wait for a video to be uploaded after the fact. 

3. The school board bylaws are currently extremely restrictive, stifling discourse and community concerns. One bylaw states, “All statements shall be directed to the presiding officer; no person may address or question Board members individually. Comments must be about programs, policies or procedures. Comments about building staff and/or children other than the speaker’s child(ren) shall not be heard in public session.” In other words, community members cannot direct comments to any specific board member or speak about a teacher or staff member by name. As evidenced in WL CARE’s story addendum, a significant number of students have tried to address concerns they have about their teachers through ‘official’ means but have gotten nowhere. Students and parents need to have some sort of recourse when this occurs. If a community member wants to discuss an issue they are having with a teacher or staff member during a public forum, they should be allowed to do so.

4. WL CARE was told, and confirmed through the bylaws, that Board President Karpick is considered the voice of the board and concerns should go through him. Therefore, when we sent our letter back in June, the only board member we sent the letter to was Karpick, with the assumption that he would raise the concern with the rest of the board. One of the representatives of WL CARE spoke with a sitting board member who told us that they had to ask Karpick to send them the letter, after seeing our group in the news. This is an incredibly pressing issue – our letter was signed by over 800 community members, and Karpick did not find it prudent to share with the rest of the board immediately. How many community concerns have gone ignored because Karpick did not pass them along?  

RDP Political Action Committee

The RDP Political Action Committee has been the source of intense controversy during this election. The RDP PAC was initially filed in 2016 under the name of “Support of the WLCSC Candidates Bittner, Marley, Masson and Schott.” It was then changed on 9/9/2020 to list as its chairperson Mayor John Dennis, who has since resigned, and renamed as “Support of WLEA Endorsements.” The WLEA endorsements, announced in late September, were of Doug Masson, Amy Austin, Brad Marley, and Tom Schott. While the WLEA represents about 100 teachers in the district, they have not stated how the endorsement decisions were made and who was allowed to give input in the process. 

A letter, signed by the PAC treasurer, was distributed to parents in early September, saying that the “future” of the school district would be decided on election day. The letter warned, “Some of these candidates want to control the school board and could change the direction of the school district including possibly getting a new administration.” It went on to state, “There is a high probability that teachers and administrators could leave WLCSC. Candidates who are running because of a personal agenda or grudge are not worthy of our support.”

Following backlash surrounding the rhetoric of the letter, Mayor Dennis resigned as chairperson of the PAC. No seated school board members who are not up for election have denounced the letter or the PAC.

The RDP PAC’s initial goal was to raise $40,000. It has raised $25,000 to date. Notable donors include:

1. Alan Karpick, school board president

2. Karen Springer, school board vice president

3. KJG Architecture, the architecture firm contracted for some of the district’s recent construction projects

4. Reiling, Teder, and Schrier LLC and Robert Reiling, corporate counsel to WLCSC

5. Martha Altschaeffl. Superintendent Killion testified on behalf of Altschaeffl when she was appealing her property taxes in 2016. Altschaeffl was also appointed to the library board upon recommendation from Superintendent Killion.

The full PAC disclosure can be found here.