2024 Facilities 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 $507 million for the public purpose of paying the cost of a school building and facility improvement project consisting of: renovations, construction of school buildings and/or additions, including air conditioning and heating improvements, and for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) labs and classrooms, the arts, libraries, cafeterias, and co-curricular, activity and shared community spaces at Malcolm Shabazz City High School, Milele Chikasa Anana Elementary School, Black Hawk Middle School, Cherokee Heights Middle School, Crestwood Elementary School, Samuel Gompers Elementary School, Orchard Ridge Elementary School, Ray F. Sennett Middle School, Sherman Middle School and Akira R. Toki Middle School; possible related demolition; district-wide accessibility, safety, environmental sustainability and building infrastructure improvements; and acquisition of furnishings, fixtures and equipment?

The 2020 facilities referendum focused exclusively on the four comprehensive high schools, as well as Southside Elementary and Capital High. Here, in 2024, we are prioritizing our middle schools and elementary schools with the most critical needs, specifically in the areas of heating, cooling, and plumbing.

Our annual operating budget for maintenance is about $5 million. It covers maintenance to keep buildings clean, safe, and in the best condition possible. With decreasing state funding and increasing pressure on our operating budget, like most school districts, we need to go to referendum to fund larger capital projects. Many of our surrounding school districts have also recently gone to facility referendums to invest in their facilities. 

In addition to factors like community and Board input, determinations regarding whether to renovate or replace buildings were made using a cost-to-replacement ratio analysis. 

Due to a variety of factors, renovating a building is not always the most long-term, cost-effective or prudent approach to achieving the ultimate needs of the district, students, staff and community. 

A cost-to-replacement ratio analysis considers both the long-term costs and qualitative impacts on student and staff experience, quantifying the tipping point where the costs
associated with renovation and/or additions are higher in the long-term than simply constructing a new building to replace the old. 

The analysis asserts that if the cost to renovate exceeds 60% of the cost to replace, then replacement may be more financially prudent.

Across our district, we have buildings with more needs than could be addressed by a single referendum. It was critical to weigh a number of factors in determining the selection of schools listed in the 2024 facilities question. Some of this includes heating, cooling, plumbing, accessibility and safety. 

While geographic location and other considerations factored into school selection, priority was given to those buildings with critical HVAC and plumbing needs. Some of the mechanical systems have reached their “life expectancy” and manufacturers no longer produce some of the replacement parts for them.

Two sites per year.

Construction would be expected to start in 2026. Regarding a full timeline, though, that determination has yet to be made; we will be able to share more details about the anticipated schedule once we have completed our community engagement sessions and brought on our partners, including an architectural firm, a construction manager, an owner's project manager, and other key members of the design and building team.

There is a direct connection between updated facilities and high-quality teaching and learning. Twenty-six of our school buildings are more than 60 years old—far beyond their intended lifespan. We can no longer sustain the infrastructure of these buildings. For example, replacement parts cannot be purchased because they are no longer produced and need to be created in house. 

In addition, materials used when the buildings were built do not meet today’s environmental or sustainability standards. 

It is difficult to cast a view too far in the future, because so much of why referendums are necessary is tied to state legislation, which is subject to change.

However, unless the state makes meaningful changes in the way it funds public education, districts like MMSD will continue to have to seek support for operational and facilities initiatives from the communities they serve.

We maintain policies and guidelines that dictate the decisions we make regarding requests for proposals and how we bring on partners for capital projects. We do not employ the workers responsible for the day-to-day labor involved in these projects. If there needs to be work on our policies in terms of hiring local and minority-owned businesses, that is something we will prioritize, and we value community input on the topic.

Our schools help to define the neighborhoods and communities they serve. Taking any of our schools offline has the potential to overburden other schools accommodating those displaced students, create districtwide transportation issues, and negatively impact taxpayers’ property values.

When considering potential capacities of our new spaces, we will work closely with our design team to ensure that we are not building in excess, but also that we are not limiting ourselves either.

When we get to that stage, we will have sessions where staff—as well as impacted students and their families—will be able to provide their thoughts on what they want the new spaces to include. 

When we renovated our high schools, we spent a lot of time working directly with the staff in those buildings, learning about what was important to them to preserve, and what they wanted to see changed. We will do the same with staff impacted in this referendum as well. 

The community sessions that we have been hosting to date, and that we continue to host, are a starting point for those discussions, but further forums will be scheduled after the vote in November.

The good news is, we have significant recent experience on this front, thanks to our 2020 facilities referendum.

In short: This will be a coordinated effort that will require significant planning, but we will work with professionals to help us determine occupancy schedules, and we are confident that we’ll be able to manage the process well.

We last changed boundaries in 2008, when Olson Elementary School opened.  Going forward, we will need to review attendance areas, to gain further insights regarding enrollment projections.  We have engaged Vandewalle & Associates, a local urban and community planning firm, to examine anticipated enrollment trends for all of our schools, as well as expected housing developments, and will rely on the data they provide to inform our future planning.

Our 2015 facilities referendum primarily focused on schools with capacity and space issues. In addition to Van Hise/Hamilton, schools with more diverse enrollments, like Kennedy, Hawthorne, and Sandburg elementary schools, received additions to address these concerns.

MMSD currently has 23 schools with fully functional welcome centers; of the schools that do not have these spaces, six will be addressed by this referendum.  

Every school has a controlled entrance that allows office staff to talk to visitors through a camera/intercom.  These exterior doors are secured and can be remotely opened once office staff know the purpose of an individual's visit.  

MMSD has been actively reviewing the schools that do not have fully functional welcome centers, and is exploring the feasibility of future projects that would allow us to convert the remainder of these schools if funding becomes available.

The numbers shown in the Facilities Condition Assessment are taken from a point in time that's now a year, give or take, in the past; as such, given fluctuations in material and labor costs, in they are not concrete.  Additionally, that report does not take into account the logistical considerations involved in the proposed additions/renovations—things like technology hardware, equipment, environmental services costs, move management, storage costs, consulting costs, and management services costs, as well as costs associated with demolition, asbestos mitigation, the use of potential swing spaces and transportation. 

Operations is a recurring referendum; once the base of $100 million has been achieved, the tax impact on the owner of an average-value ($457,300) Madison home will be approximately $1049, where it will remain from that point forward. 

Facilities is a non-recurring referendum; assuming that the projects cost the full $507 allotted, the owner of an average-value Madison home would be expected to pay an additional $27 per month, or approximately $324 per year, until roughly 2048.