Madison Metropolitan School District elections (2015)
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Two seats on the Madison Board of Education were up for general election on April 7, 2015.
Seats 1 and 2 were up for election. The terms of incumbents Arlene Silveira in Seat 1 and Mary Burke in Seat 2 were set to end in April 2015. Silveira did not file to run for re-election leaving Burke and the Seat 1 candidate Anna Moffit to win their respective races unopposed.[1]
While there were no contested board races, the ballot also included a $41 million referendum question. The referendum, which was overwhelmingly approved, came as the district and state grappled with proposed budget cuts. In early March 2015, district students joined protests over the death of Tony Robinson with the blessing of the school district.
About the district[edit]
Madison Metropolitan School District is located in south-central Wisconsin in Madison, the state capital and county seat of Dane County. In 2013, Dane County was home to approximately 509,939 residents according to estimates by the United States Census Bureau.[2] During the 2011-2012 school year, Madison Metropolitan School District was the second-largest school district in Wisconsin and served 26,817 students.[3]
Demographics[edit]
Dane County outperformed the rest of Wisconsin in terms of higher education achievement in 2012. The United States Census Bureau found that 45.8 percent of county residents aged 25 years and older had attained a bachelor's degree compared to 26.4 percent for Wisconsin as a whole. From 2008 through 2012, the median household income in the county was $61,790, compared to $52,627 for the state. The poverty rate in Dane County was 12.3 percent from 2008 through 2012. During that same time period, the poverty rate for the entire state was 12.5 percent.[2]
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Note: Percentages for race and ethnicity may add up to more than 100 percent because respondents may report more than one race and the Hispanic/Latino ethnicity may be selected in conjunction with any race. Read more about race and ethnicity in the census here.
Voter and candidate information[edit]
The Madison Metropolitan Board of Education consists of seven nonpartisan members elected to three-year terms. Each member is elected to a specific seat number that represents a specific group of schools.[5] If more than two candidates had filed for any board position, a primary election would have been held on February 17, 2015. The general election was held April 7, 2015.
To be elected to the board, candidates must reside in the boundaries of the school district for 28 days prior to the filing of a "Declaration of Candidacy" form. They must further be a resident of the apportioned area they are elected to at the time of taking office.[6] If redistricting changes the district representatives live in, they may continue to serve the remainder of their terms so long as they continue to reside in the school district at-large. They must also be 18 years old and citizens of the United States. Unless pardoned, those who have been convicted of a felony are not eligible for election to office in Wisconsin.[7]
Candidates had between December 1, 2014, and January 6, 2015, to collect between 100 and 200 signatures for their nomination papers. The signatures had to come from residents of the district which the candidate sought election to represent, but the petition circulators were not required to reside in the district or municipality. Circulators were required to be U.S. citizens and 18 years or older.[8]
Voters could register to vote in the election at the polling place on the election day. Proof of residence was required when registering to vote.[9] In March 2015, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Wisconsin's voter ID law allowing it to take effect. However, Wisconsin officials stated they would not enforce the law until after the election on April 7, 2015. No photo identification was required to vote in this election.[10]
Elections[edit]
2015[edit]
Candidates[edit]
Seat 1[edit]
Anna Moffit 
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Seat 2[edit]
| Mary Burke
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Election results[edit]
Seat 1[edit]
Anna Moffit won election without opposition.
Seat 2[edit]
Incumbent Mary Burke won re-election without opposition.
Endorsements[edit]
Moffit was endorsed by the Madison Teachers Incorporated (MTI), South Central Federation of Labor AFL-CIO and Dr. Floyd Rose, President of the Wisconsin Council.[11][12][13]
Campaign finance[edit]
Candidates received a total of $3,829.00 and spent a total of $2,304.34 in this election, according to the Madison City Clerk. Mary Burke filed as exempt from all campaign finance reporting in this election.[14]
| Candidate | Contributions | Expenditures | Cash on hand |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anna Moffit | $3,829.00 | $2,304.34 | $1,524.66 |
| Mary Burke | Exempt | ||
Candidates were only required to file campaign finance reports if they did one of the following:
- accepted contributions, made disbursements or incurred obligations in an aggregate amount of more than $1,000 in a calendar year
- accepted more than $100 from a single source in the calendar year, except contributions made by candidates to their own campaigns
Past elections[edit]
Information about earlier elections can be found by clicking [show] at the right. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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2014Seat 6
Seat 7Ed Hughes won re-election to Seat 7 without opposition. 2013Seat 3
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What was at stake?
2015[edit]
Issues in the election[edit]
$41 million referendum goes to ballot[edit]
- See also: Additional elections on the ballot
Residents of Madison approved a $41 million referendum in the school board elections on April 7, 2015. The Madison Metropolitan Board of Education approved the referendum question on December 15, 2014. The majority of the money, $39 million, was allocated for additions and improved accessibility renovations for over a dozen schools. The remaining $2 million was designated for improving technology. The referendum raised homeowners' taxes by approximately $63.[15][16]
Issues in the district[edit]
Students protest Tony Robinson shooting with school district's blessing[edit]
- See also: Madison 2015 municipal elections
“Justice for Tony,” more than 1,500 students chanted as they left their schools on March 9, 2015, to protest the shooting of Tony Robinson, an unarmed biracial 19-year-old, by a Madison police officer. Middle school, high school and college students converged on the City-County Building to demand a meeting with the city's mayor Paul Soglin and Police Chief Mike Koval.[17]
Madison Metropolitan School District officials allowed students to attend the rally with parental permission. They also asked community leaders to join the students to help ensure their safety and provided seven buses to take students back to school after the rally. Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham also attended the rally.[17]
“In general, we thought it was important that if students chose to demonstrate, that we ensure they are safe and provide positive adult presence to support our students as they express their concerns, grief and questions,” said district spokeswoman Rachel Strauch-Nelson.[17]
Few details had been released about the shooting, but according to police, Robinson assaulted police officer Matt Kenny on March 6, 2015. The two were inside a second-story apartment, and Kenny received minor injuries before fatally shooting Robinson. Kenny had been following a call about an assault, including someone who was “yelling and jumping in front of cars.”[17]
A state law requires officer-involved deaths to be conducted by an outside investigation. The state Division of Criminal Investigation is leading the inquiry into Robinson's death.[17]
Superintendents write to state government over proposed budget cuts[edit]
Madison Metropolitan Superintendent Jen Cheatham signed a letter with 18 other superintendents across the state, asking the Governor of Wisconsin and the State Legislature for a consistent funding plan. The letter was written in February 2015 in response to the budget proposed by Gov. Scott Walker (R) earlier in the year that called for a reduction in per-student funding by $150 for the 2015-2016 school year. The budget then increases per-student funding by $165 for the 2016-2017 school year.[18]
In the letter, the superintendents discussed their desire for a consistent funding plan. They also shared concerns that the proposed budget cut for the 2015-2016 school year would require cutting staff, salaries or benefits in order for their districts to stay afloat, which they worried would make it nearly impossible to retain talented teachers. They said they believed inflationary growth was necessary to maintain and grow their educational programs.[18]
Walker's call to change the state's assessment system and allow districts to choose their own assessments from a state-approved list was also mentioned in the superintendent's letter. They asked the state government for one assessment system, saying an accountability system consisting of different assessments would create confusion.[18] The full letter can be found here.
Validity of contracts questioned after Act 10 ruling[edit]
The Madison Metropolitan School District and Madison Teachers Inc., the district's teachers union, said their labor contracts were valid through June 2016, despite the fact that the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld Act 10, a collective bargaining bill that cut back the bargaining rights of public employees, on July 31, 2014. According to Rick Esenberg, founder and general counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, however, those contracts could be questioned in court, as any contract containing provisions barred under Act 10 could be seen as illegal. Though Act 10 allowed only bargaining for pay increases, the district's labor contracts through 2016 also included workplace policies, such as job transfers and paycheck withholding.[19][20]
Legal counsel to the Madison Metropolitan Board of Education was at odds with Esenberg, advising that the contracts would remain valid no matter the court's ruling on Act 10 as they were entered into before Act 10 became effective.[20]
The dispute headed to court as the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, on behalf of Madison resident David Blaska, filed a lawsuit against the district on September 11, 2014. The lawsuit claimed taxpayer money was illegally spent in different parts of the district's employee contracts. Marcia Standiford, communications director for the district, says the district administration believed it was on solid ground when the contracts were negotiated.[21]
In October 2014, district officials and union leaders asked the Dane County Circuit Court to strike out portions of the lawsuit that referred to union dues and fair share payments, as Blaska was not a teacher or employee of the district. According to district officials, that meant he had no factual standing to make those specific allegations in the lawsuit.[22]
Debate over Tech Plan[edit]
Rival community groups in Madison debated the virtues of the district's five-year Tech Plan proposal during school board meetings in January 2014. The $31 million Tech Plan proposed incorporating enough computers into area schools to ensure one-to-one instruction, which would increase annual expenses from $1.5 million during the 2013-2014 school year to $8.4 million during the 2018-2019 school year.[23]
The School-Community Alliance for Public Education (SCAPE) advocated for a more thorough review of the program by the board. SCAPE believed that the annual cost of the Tech Plan deserved greater scrutiny by district residents. The group also suggested that one-to-one computing might not be valuable enough for K-3 students to warrant higher expenses.[23]
The Leopold Parent-Faculty Organization supported implementation of the Tech Plan based on their own experiences with one-to-one computing. The organization raised private funds to purchase iPads and other technology for students in south side schools. Organizers noted the broad popularity of this initial investment and expressed concern about the district's outdated technology infrastructure.[23]
The school board pre-approved the Tech Plan on April 28, 2014.[24]
Key deadlines[edit]
The following were key deadlines for Madison Metropolitan School District 2015 elections:[8][25]
| Deadline | Event |
|---|---|
| December 1, 2014 | Candidate signature gathering period began |
| January 6, 2015 | Signature submission deadline |
| February 9, 2015 | Campaign finance report due |
| March 30, 2015 | Campaign finance report due |
| April 7, 2015 | General Election Day |
| July 20, 2015 | Campaign finance report due |
Additional elections on the ballot[edit]
- See also: Wisconsin elections, 2015
One seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court was up for election on April 7, 2015. The general election for city offices in Madison was also on that date. Elections for mayor and alderperson appeared on the ballot.[26] Statewide, a constitutional amendment question regarding the selection of the state's supreme court chief justice was on the ballot.
District bond referendum question[edit]
In addition to the school board and other races, district voters saw a referendum question on the ballot, which they approved with 82.2 percent of voters in favor of the measure.[27] The question, which was approved by the school board on December 15, 2014, asked voters to approve an issuance of $41 million in bonds for the district. These funds were allocated for additions and renovations, improving accessibility and providing a infrastructure upgrade for the Tech Plan.[28] A full list of the projects planned to be funded by this referendum can be found here.
Based on the average value of $237,678 for single-family homes in Madison, homeowners annual assessed property tax increased by $61.80 for 10 years due to the referendum.[29] The need for the bond issue was described in the Facilities Planning revised report as follows:
mmsdtv, "Referendum 101," March 9, 2015 |
| “ | With an average building age of over fifty-two years, maintaining and improving the district’s fifty school sites requires constant effort. The investments we are proposing will help improve sixteen school facilities across the district. It will provide additional elementary classroom space where it is needed the most, ensure that all schools are able meet the basic accessibility needs of students, staff and families, and address much needed renovations and technology infrastructure needs. ...
While this plan is focused on the immediate needs of the schools, it is also an important first step in a long-term facility planning process. Master facility planning, which considers issues such as future community development, long-term enrollment trends, and comprehensive instructional planning, is essential for anticipating the future needs of our students, schools, and community. This project represents a first step, focused on several urgent facility needs in the district, which will create the proper conditions and time necessary for master facility planning. Thriving schools require well-planned facility investments that support students and teachers, while providing solid value for taxpayers. We believe the projects included in this proposal will achieve those goals.[30] |
” |
| —Madison Metropolitan School District (2015)[31] | ||
Text of measure[edit]
The referendum appeared on the ballot as follows:[32]
| “ | MADISON METROPOLITAN SCHOOL DISTRICT REFERENDUM
"Shall the Madison Metropolitan School District, Dane County, Wisconsin be authorized to issue pursuant to Chapter 67 of the Wisconsin Statutes, general obligation bonds in an amount not to exceed $41,000,000 for the public purpose of paying the cost of constructing school additions and improving learning environments, making our schools more accessible to students, families and community members, renovating school buildings and upgrading technology infrastructure?" |
” |
Results[edit]
| Madison School Question (2015) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Result | Votes | Percentage | ||
 Yes | 45,471 | 82.2% | ||
| No | 9,874 | 17.8% | ||
Recent news[edit]
The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms Madison Metropolitan School District Wisconsin. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.
See also[edit]
| Madison Metropolitan School District | Wisconsin | School Boards |
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External links[edit]
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑ Abbey Smith, "Phone communication with the Madison Metropolitan School District," January 7, 2015
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 United States Census Bureau, "Dane County, Wisconsin," accessed September 24, 2014
- ↑ National Center for Education Statistics, "ELSI Table Generator," accessed January 27, 2014
- ↑ Dane County Clerk's Office, "Election Results," accessed January 27, 2014
- ↑ Madison Metropolitan School District, "Organization," accessed February 5, 2014
- ↑ Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, "Wisconsin Candidate Eligibility," accessed September 22, 2014
- ↑ Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, "Candidates: Getting on the Ballot," accessed September 22, 2014
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Wisconsin State Legislature, "State Statutes: CHAPTER 8," accessed September 22, 2014
- ↑ Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, "Voter Registration," accessed September 22, 2014
- ↑ The New York Times, "Wisconsin Decides Not to Enforce Voter ID Law," March 23, 2015
- ↑ Facebook, "Anna Moffit for School Board: Wall post," January 4, 2015
- ↑ Facebook, "Anna Moffit for School Board: Wall post," February 28, 2015
- ↑ Facebook, "Anna Moffit for School Board: Wall post," January 31, 2015
- ↑ City of Madison: Office of the City Clerk, "Campaign Finance: Madison Metropolitan School District," accessed August 5, 2015
- ↑ WKOW, "$41M referendum question up for vote in Madison Metropolitan School District," December 16, 2014
- ↑ Madison Metropolitan School District, "Referendum on School Facilities," accessed January 19, 2015
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 Wisconsin State Journal, "Tony Robinson shooting protest at Capitol draws 1,500, many of them students," March 10, 2015
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 NBC 15, "Superintendents send letter to lawmakers over budget concerns," February 18, 2015
- ↑ Channel3000.com, "Madison teachers' union leader: Act 10 ruling ‘morally bankrupt,’" July 31, 2014
- ↑ 20.0 20.1 The Cap Times, "Madison school district, teachers union say labor contracts still valid after Act 10 ruling," August 1, 2014
- ↑ The Badger Herald, "Madison School District faces collective bargaining lawsuit," September 15, 2014
- ↑ The Cap Times, "Madison school officials, MTI say claims regarding union dues, teachers' rights don't belong in Act 10 lawsuit," October 9, 2014
- ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 Madison.com, "Parents ask what's the rush on Madison schools' $31 million tech plan," January 22, 2014
- ↑ NBC15.com, "UPDATED: MMSD Board pre-approves budget items/technology plan," May 19, 2014
- ↑ Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, "CAMPAIGN FINANCE REPORT DATES," accessed September 22, 2014
- ↑ City of Madison Clerk, "Campaign Finance and Candidate Information for 2015," accessed January 8, 2015
- ↑ Dane County Clerk's Office, "2015 Spring Election: Official Canvass," accessed April 22, 2015
- ↑ Madison Metropolitan School District, "Solutions Provided by the Referendum," accessed March 26, 2015
- ↑ Madison Metropolitan School District, "School Building Referendum Resources," accessed March 26, 2015
- ↑ 30.0 30.1 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Madison Metropolitan School District, "Facilities Planning Revised Report," December 22, 2014
- ↑ My Vote Wisconsin, "Home," accessed March 26, 2015
| 2015 Madison Metropolitan School District Elections | |
| Dane County, Wisconsin | |
| Election date: | April 7, 2015 |
| Candidates: | Seat 1: • Anna Moffit
Seat 2: • Incumbent, Mary Burke |
| Important information: | What was at stake? • Key deadlines • Additional elections on the ballot |
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