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We begin with Nightlight with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bogg.
Pete and Greg are joined by Herman Ponser, a professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health at Duke University to talk about his book.
adaptable in a science behind how our bodies use energy.
Welcome back.
This is Nightlight with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach.
We are coming to you live on the Civic Media Network.
Our next guest is a professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health at Duke University.
Joining us now on Nightlight is Dr. Herman Ponzer.
Dr. Ponzer, welcome to Nightlight.
Thanks for having me, guys.
It's so great to have you here.
You know, I was reading this article you wrote for Scientific American about your daughter's
birthday party and you use these analogies about birthday cake and how we eat it now as opposed to when we were kids.
Can you tell us a little bit or tell the listeners a little bit what you mean about when you talk about an energy budget regarding our bodies and metabolism?
Oh, yeah.
Energy is what makes life happen.
Without energy, without calories, there is no life because everything that your body does requires energy.
Whether you're growing up or growing old or your immune system or moving around, all of it, you need energy for all of it.
We can think about an energy budget the same way we think about a
a cash budget, right?
We have income and expenditures.
Our income is our food that we eat and the expenditures are all the things that our bodies spend those calories on.
Again, everything from your brains to your heart, to your immune system, all of it.
When we think about, so like, I guess I say like when I found out that your title, which is evolutionary anthropologist, I think a lot of people can think themselves, oh, we're going to be talking about civilizations and all this stuff.
But when we're talking about metabolism, you know, we see a lot of
Hmm.
I don't know.
We see a lot of things on social media that try to tell you what your body can and can't do, metabolism, calories, all these things.
But from your studies, what are things that people should know that they just can't get away from when it comes to their own metabolism as far as thinking they can manipulate it, change it, what it's really maybe set the way it is, but what are the hard truths people need to know about their bodies when it comes to this topic?
Yeah.
So, you know, the reason that an anthropologist
cares about metabolism is again, it's just essential to understanding how our bodies work, even how our systems work, right?
We evolve as hunter-gatherers.
What is that?
That's a way of getting calories, right?
Some hunt, some gather, we share those calories and it had a huge effect on our evolution.
So, energy is everywhere if you're an anthropologist.
And of course,
These days, it's relevant to our daily lives because of questions like obesity and diet and exercise, right?
The energy expenditure, you know, our metabolism is wrapped up in all of those kind of big questions.
And one of the things that we've kind of discovered in the work that I've done over the last few years is that a lot of what we learn, especially on the social media space about how we can boost our metabolism or that kind of thing.
Most of that's just total hooey, you know, none of us is real.
You know, so for example, probably the biggest one.
this idea that you can boost your metabolism either by eating some special food or even really using exercise to boost your metabolism.
It's actually really hard to change the calories you burn every day.
If you exercise, of course you burn more calories while you're exercising, but over time our bodies adjust so we don't burn as many calories.
The net effect isn't as big as we would like it to be.
This idea that there are super foods that boost your metabolism, that's all pretty much
So, you know, I think we think about our metabolism as something that we can really control and easily manipulate.
And this is the reason that we're having all these problems.
That's usually never the case.
Wow.
That is depressing.
Even better.
I mean, you know, metabolism becomes this black box that we blame.
You know, as you gain weight in the middle age, you think, oh, well, my metabolism is slowing down.
Like I'm in my forties.
My body certainly feels different than it did when I was in my 20s.
But your metabolism is no different.
You know, in terms of the calories that your cells are burning every day, it's no different when you're 44 than when you were 24.
It's just hard to believe, but it's true.
I'm sorry to interrupt, Pete.
Would you just repeat that for all the folks out there?
Because honestly, I think it's true.
We're told all these things over our lives that your body does this, that, and the other thing.
But I want you to say that, again, our metabolism doesn't change over time.
It's just, it's the way it is.
It's really rock steady from the early 20s.
So the last golden era for all of us, metabolically, is like high school into college.
Oh, God.
That's it.
You never had as fast a metabolism
was when you were two years old, it turns out.
That was the really the, it peaks, we all peak too soon.
You know, and then it sort of slides, and that's why is it so high?
Well, because your sales are so busy doing all the work of growth and development, right?
And as that slows down, and you finally hit like your adult size, adult frame, you know, early twenties, guess what?
You're kind of done, your metabolism is gonna be right there wherever it is, wherever it's parked, it's there until you're, you know, basically until you're 60.
And it starts declining a little bit then.
But like, yeah, the idea that your metabolism is the root of your problems or that a slow metabolism means you're destined to gain weight or that you can really meaningfully change your metabolism a lot by going to the gym.
I'm sorry, guys.
It doesn't really work that way.
Well, I'm out of here because I want to get skinny.
He's just oversized, by the way.
He was my best
year for a lot of reasons.
Yeah.
You learned to talk.
I mean, you know,
probably feeding yourself mostly.
So last time you really impressed anyone.
It's like, look at him walk.
Look at him talk.
And then they were done with you.
Then everybody catches up.
You had a posse, you
know?
It's so funny because I've done no research compared to you, my own rudimentary trial and error, but I remember being on the treadmill about three years ago for like 30 minutes and I burned like 55 calories.
I'm like, well, this is pointless.
Like how do you, because you said that in an article I read recently that between 20 and 60, your metabolism doesn't change.
And that shocked me.
How do you, is it just eating less?
Is that the only way for better metabolic health?
Well, if what we're talking about is losing some weight, like let's say you've got some extra weight that your doctor says, look, you need to lose some weight, you're going to be healthier if you do.
If that's you, then the best lever you have, the best tool in the toolbox for this is eating less.
And, you know, there's lots of ways to do that.
You know, people try different diets and all the different, all the diets that work work the same way.
Whether it's your low carb or vegetarian Mediterranean, if you're losing weight, it's because you're eating fewer calories.
And that's really,
That's it.
But people have a different experience with that.
Some people say, oh, on this diet, I felt like I was full all the time.
I didn't feel miserable.
That's great.
Well, then stick with that diet.
But so that's all diets work the same way.
And diet's really the best way to manage your weight.
Well, and I think that everything you're saying there, so I'll bring up a point.
We talked to a friend of ours on the show last week about this.
She runs a wellness center in Madison.
When it comes to this topic of losing weight I mean what we see now are folks who are selling products whether it's shots pills Superfoods creams salves drinks whatever it is everyone's trying to sell something that will lose you weight But really when it comes down to it It's always the same thing you have to manage what you eat and get some exercise in there too That's always good for you and that's always the basis because if you're gonna take on a diet
That's fine, but then you should make it.
And I'm asking this as a question.
If you're going to take on a diet, then that means you have to make that diet your...
consistent diet it can't just be well I'm on this diet for six weeks and let's see what happens because after six weeks what happens then you're like well I can eat nachos now and then what happens is your body takes over and your body wants to get back to where it was and then if you stop exercising then you start gaining weight because your body's at it and then you start feeling awful about yourself and you're right back where you were six weeks ago because you thought this little bottle of pills would do you well.
Yeah, I mean I think you hit the nail on the head with that if you don't have any of these lifestyle changes that you know people want to adopt and you know for all the right reasons usually but If it's something that you can't stick with because it makes you feel unhappy or miserable You know what I like to say is look I'm not a doctor and I'm not a dietitian or a wellness person But I am an anthropologist I study people for a living and what I can tell you is if you don't like it you won't do it And that's true the world around you know I've had a chance to work all sorts of fun places around the world and it's the same everywhere if you're miserable you stop
So, yeah, and that's why, well, sort of an example, probably the only thing that's been really new and effective in the past 10 years or more in obesity research are these new GLP-1 drugs, right?
Those really are effective.
Are they the first thing you should do?
No, the first thing you should do is try to find a diet and lifestyle that gets you to a healthier weight, of course.
But the reason those pills work or the injections work is it's just because it makes you eat less.
That's the trick.
without feeling like you're hungry all the time, right?
So it really always comes down to the diet.
When you're in Tanzania gathering data and, you know, studying the health and eating habits of small villages, what did that teach you?
And how does their overall health compare to those of modern-day Americans?
Yeah, thanks.
So
This really got me started on this journey of doing metabolism work that ended up being relevant to the obesity question.
My colleagues and I wanted to understand how many calories do you burn every day if you're a hunter-gatherer?
Humans evolve as hunter-gatherers.
No population today is a time capsule.
But if you're a population that is still hunting and gathering, like there are a handful of these cultures left, there are a way to ask the question.
If I grew up in that culture, what would my body be like?
Well, how many calories will they burn?
And so we went to Tanzania.
We worked with this amazing community called the Hadza community.
They hunt and gather wild foods, no machines, guns, plumbing, electricity, nothing.
They live in grasshouses in the middle of Savannah.
They hunt game with bow and arrow, women gather wild plant foods.
It's amazing.
And it's a lot of work.
They get tons of exercise just by virtue of daily life takes a lot of effort.
And so we knew going into who are so sure that they would be burning tons more calories than Americans do because they're so physically active.
And so we go there, we use this, you know, state of the art technique that we would use your friend probably from the wellness center, we familiar with this.
We use this in the US all the time, this isotope tracking technique to measure calories burned over like a week, week and a half, get the data back and our shots to find out that it's the same energy expenditure as Americans.
Even though they get more activity in a day,
that most Americans get in a week.
And so that was the big shock.
And so, you know, that's where we were sort of coming at it, change our perspective in our direction of our research, coming at these kinds of questions, because we realized how much metabolism is sort of adapting to lifestyle in an interesting way.
That is, I mean, again, all this information that I've been reading about you and what you've been talking about here is blowing my mind because this is something I personally have been interested in for a long time.
I'll talk a little bit about what I said with our, and she's a diet, she's a registered dietitian too.
I just remember like she doesn't just run, she runs a wellness location, but she's a dietitian as well.
But for me, weight loss has always been a huge struggle and I've,
found my own path in the past year.
That's really worked for me, but it's gone through a lot of evolution on its own, not to use your term loosely on there, but like when you have conversations with folks like us in just like regular situations like dinner parties or out in the world, or the students you teach, how do you put out this information in a way that is one, again, no pun intended, digestible, but also, so like you're kind of, I feel like you're coming at us with the hard truth about our
bodies, but there are a lot of folks again who have these thoughts because they watch TV and movies and whatnot.
How do you present it in a way where they're like, okay, I get this.
I understand more of it instead of just saying, well, the guy on, on TikTok said I could lose weight by just looking up at the sky for 10 hours.
Yeah.
Gosh, I mean, you raise really important to the questions there that are bigger than this discussion.
There's the sort of the death of expertise issue, right?
Where if I am on TikTok for five minutes, I know as much as somebody who spent their career studying some phenomenon, right?
I mean, that's everywhere.
So it's bigger than my research.
The answer is, I think, you know,
First of all, having conversations like this, I'm so glad to be able to talk with you guys about this, right?
I mean, I think it's important to do this.
And it's important to talk to the scientists who are doing the work and not just the people who are, you know, taking that science on board into their own practice or whatever.
I think that's important too.
But I think going to the source, I think is one way to do it.
You know, and trying to be open about what the data is saying, what they don't say, you know?
So like people, you know, it just is not true that you can
manipulate your metabolism in an easy way, the way that we're often told.
And that's hard to sell as there's no money in telling people that.
There's no exercise program to sell.
But it's the data.
So I don't think if you enjoy it and have a fun time talking about it, people like to talk about it.
Let's
pick
up right there.
We're going to do a very short break.
Our guest is Dr. Herman Ponser.
He is a professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health at Duke University, very similar to doing a radio show.
back with many more questions for our guest after this.
This is Nightlight with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach.
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Pete and Greg continue their conversation with Herman Ponser, who's a professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health at Duke University, where he breaks down common misconceptions about exercise and weight loss.
Welcome back.
This is Night Light with Peach Wamba and Greg Bach.
We are in the middle of a great conversation with our guest.
He is a professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health at Duke University.
Dr. Herman Ponser is with us over the stream.
Herman, I wanted to ask you about water because metabolically speaking, that I probably have never said or sentenced like that before, but
First time for everybody.
You hear people say you need two gallons of water a day.
Then I've heard
people say, actually,
too much can tax your kidneys.
From a metabolism standpoint, what is a healthy amount of water to keep our bodies functioning and metabolically solid?
Yeah, you know, this is one of those questions where it's like, what were we doing for the 200 million years before anybody was walking around with a thermos to make sure that you had the right amount of water?
The answer is your body tells you when you're thirsty.
And if you drink when you're thirsty, you know, you're probably doing the right amount of drinking.
And, you know, anything counts.
So, you know, people say, well, if you're drinking coffee, that dehydrates you.
That doesn't really, that's not really correct.
Coffee is water.
And, you know, with this, I'm extra fun stuff.
So it's great.
And so, you know, depends on your recipe, I suppose, but that any, any beverage, you know, is fine within obvious limits.
I mean, you know,
But so the answer to that question is it depends on your body and it depends on your diet.
Like how much water are you getting in your food?
Because that counts too, right?
So if you eat a lot of food, a lot of water in it, fruits, for example, then you're going to have to drink less.
So there's no one answer to give you.
But rather than making it complicated, let's make it simple and say, if you're thirsty, drink.
You know, if you are going to the bathroom and you notice it's always bright yellow, then maybe you're not drinking quite enough.
But besides that, you're probably fine.
There you go.
Now, I mean, we could, I mean, I feel like we could talk to you for another five hours on this topic because there's
a
lot of great things.
But one thing that, you know, I wanted to touch on before we had to let you go was you released a book this time last year called adaptable how your body, how your unique body really works and why our biology unites us.
And that, I mean,
is a grand statement and we spoke about it a little bit earlier when you talked about your work in Africa but really what is the if someone's picking up this book what are they going to get out of this as far as like not just how they know their body but how we on this earth are all connected in the ways our bodies operate.
Absolutely I mean adaptability is the human superpower.
right?
That's why there's eight billion of us and not anywhere near that number of any other primate on the planet because we're so adapted we can live in any ecosystem anywhere.
And that adaptability comes from our bodies adaptability and our cultural adaptability.
And so understanding that's really important.
But here's what I wanted to do with the book in the same way that I don't think people understand their metabolism very well.
And I've done some writing about that to try to help, you know, debunk some myths about metabolism.
I've been teaching physiology for
20-some years.
And what I know, because I'm confronted with it the first week of school, every semester, every time I teach it, is that people don't get a great training.
They don't have a lot of fluency in how their bodies work.
And that's not just a metabolism.
It's your brain.
It's your heart.
It's everything.
And, you know, I thought, gosh, I wish we could have, I guess I wish I could help with that.
You know, I wish we could, I can invite people in to sort of take a tour of the body and see how cool it is because the human body is amazing.
Yes.
And
You know, look, every, just about every hot button issue that we debate today, how about vaccines?
How about IQ and educational attainment?
How about race?
How about sex and gender?
All these things, all these topics require some, how can you have that debate if you don't understand how the body works?
How can you talk about vaccines if you don't know anything about immune systems?
And I'm not telling you-
It never stopped anyone before.
Well, exactly.
And you know, and the point of the book is not to get people to think like me, that's not at all the point.
But if we don't have a fluency, then we can't even have a conversation.
Right.
So that's what I wanted to do with the book is like, Hey, let's crack it open.
Let's talk about how our muscles work.
And then let's talk about why it is that when I watch the Olympics, I know which countries are going to get gold medals.
Right.
That feels a little bit scary.
Like, wait a second, is that a racist thing to say?
No, you're talking about training and culture and tradition of different sports in those countries.
Right.
So like, let's break it all down, make it fun, I hope.
and talk about these systems in a way that's honest, and again, hopefully builds fluency into how your body works.
That's awesome.
Our guest is Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology, Dr. Hermann Ponser.
So this has been great because what I've learned today is that I burn as many calories sitting on the couch watching TV as hunter-gatherers do in Africa.
That makes me feel pretty
Oh,
I want to ask you, you teach college kids.
Yeah.
What is their response?
You know, when I was in college, I don't even think I thought about this stuff, maybe because it wasn't taught to me, but also because I think I probably thought I had all the answers and wasn't worried about a spare tire at that age.
What is their response to what you teach them along these lines?
I think they are hungry for real information.
I think the next generation, thank goodness, seems to have a pretty sensitive BS detector.
at this point, because it's grown up with a lot of this stuff.
And I think they can tell when it's real.
And so, you know, and I think, I think also they haven't had the information, right?
I mean, you know, high school, like my parents are high school teachers, public high school teachers.
I love the school systems and I, but I also know the limitations and how hard it is to get this information across.
And so I think people don't, it's just not there, right?
And so I think there's a real openness to it.
And I'm sure some of them go home and say, you can't believe it.
This guy just told me he's fooled it.
But I mostly hear people who are open and want to hear more.
Today's lecture was the reproductive system.
And let me tell you, there's some questions out there about how birth control works.
And this is great.
We can talk about the body.
We can have it real world, relevant to what we do every day.
People are open to it, man.
Let's, Greg, I think we should talk about birth control next time.
Me too, yeah.
Two gentlemen.
I feel like as two gentlemen in their 40s and 30s, Pete, should really have this discussion.
And invite all the ladies too.
Let them listen to our words of wisdom.
Yes.
Yeah, that's right.
This
was a lot of fun.
Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Ponser.
And please come back again and continue to enlighten us, because this is a fascinating topic.
And teach well.
I'd love to be back, guys.
Thanks so much.
All right.
Thanks so
much.
That's Dr. Hermann Ponser, professor of evolutionary anthropology.
Greg, that's a big title and global health at Duke University.
Here's the title.
We are coming right back.
Big business
card.
Big
business card.
Exactly.
We'll be back after the news, ladies and gentlemen.
Don't go anywhere.
This is Night Light with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach on the Civic Media
735
I'm Brian Noonan.
You know,
Much of the attention on Tuesday's election was on the state Supreme Court race, but voters also had to decide on funding referenda for dozens of school districts throughout Wisconsin.
Preliminary results from across state show that of the 75 referenda questions, 46 passed and a lot of those passed by very, very slim margins.
Here to help us take a closer look and make some sense out of it all is Jimmy Koska.
He is the Civic Media Sports Director, also a news contributor, and he's a member of the basketball school board.
Jimmy, thanks for being here this morning, a lot going on with these.
So let's talk about the margin of victory first in some of these.
How tight were some of these referendum measures?
You know, it's amazing because the last few years here at Civic Media, when I've added these up,
Notice the trend of of some very tight margins with with these and I was tracking things that were maybe a hundred votes or fewer that kind of decided Some of these referenda, but this year For this election, I was really surprised at just how excited it was, you know And especially in a couple of places now a lot of the referendum this cycle were
smaller school districts, especially in northern Wisconsin.
And for a lot of districts, these were operating referendum.
The vast majority were operating referendum that really just help keep the lights on, pay for staff, keep, you know, keep services, keep the lights on.
These are not, we're building a football stadium.
We're not adding to the school, especially in an era of declining enrollment.
This is for a lot of school survival.
And with the results, when I looked at it, one of these passed by a single vote in the unofficial tallies from
from Tuesday night, another pass by just two votes, Butternut and Shell Lake respectively.
And when I look further into some of the close margins from the past few elections, yeah, it's a trend.
I mean, these these are really tight, really contested.
And as a school board member of myself, when we did a referendum, we had taken a survey of
what level of funding the community would support.
So the question was asked at different levels like would you support 30, would you support 20, 10, just to figure out where people might set it to.
And everything we were told by the person that put together the poll and analyzed the data was that if you try to go above what the community is telling you they will support, it is almost guaranteed that you will fail.
So we actually went in
just under what the community said they would support and ours ended up passing by about 80 votes.
Well, we weren't alone in this in the last three years because in this week, you know, we saw besides the two that passed by just single digits, you know, under 83 votes, Gilmontons passed by 83, 11 passed by 83 or fewer votes.
And
those
are really outstandingly tiny margins where if you look at it as a percentage, that's within, you know,
about five to 10 percentage points.
So yeah, the margins were very tight for a lot of the ones that passed, as are some that failed.
Some failed by fewer than a couple dozen votes as well.
Jimmy, from your perspective as a school board member who's gone through this process, who was tracking these referendums, how difficult is it for these districts to keep going without
without this money.
I mean, especially, you know, we were talking about BASC about how difficult would have been for your particular school district without the voter support?
A lot of district, it depends on kind of the finances of the area and the property values and things like that.
It's really complicated.
And we could probably spend the entire show talking about school funding and how it's done.
I'll be honest with you, I'm not a math guy, but I've had to learn a lot about it in four years on a school board.
Like it's probably the most important thing to learn to be honest with you because people have to
ask that question
well, you know, we already have high property taxes, how could a school need more money?
And you have to explain to them just how the funding formula works between property values, enrollment, things like that.
And it's really complicated.
There's not really a simple way to boil it down.
But if you look at a lot of the districts that did try to go for operating referendum, they were smaller rural districts like the one that I'm in.
And for this cycle, a lot of them
We're really looking at this as a matter of survival.
In fact, for a couple of them that failed, and I think especially one of them, Houston's furthest probably going to be the one that you look at in this cycle.
Consolidation or dissolution are now very squarely on the table.
In fact, Houston's furthest come out right out and said they have to transition next year into consolidation and dissolution because
they don't have, there's no way to keep operating at what they have.
Some of the smaller districts that did see it fail, I think of, you know, like Siren or Lena or some of these smaller ones, where the referendum did pass.
Winter is another one.
You know, they post that that's not the option they want to pursue, but financial reality is they can't operate with no fund balance or cash reserve that, you know, the reality is without the operating referendum, they don't have the money to continue.
operating long term.
This is not unique to these districts in this referendum cycle.
I think pretty much every small district in the state is facing this.
There's declining enrollment at about three quarters of all rural school districts in Wisconsin.
According to data from a couple years ago, it's probably
updated since then but just in the last couple of years when we went through it and looked at the data we were one of those districts we had seen our enrollment drop in our district by over a hundred in just five years and we're talking a matter of going from like 800 to 700 students so it is a problem that's facing everybody I know for our district we are one of the fortunate ones that has had you know strong you know financially
policy.
So there was a very large fund balance to draw on and cash reserves.
But that only lasts a long and some schools aren't as fortunate as they've had to dip into that in instead of having an operating referendum to pay for things.
So there are some schools that don't have that.
That's why they were looking at operating referendum and why some of them are now posting those big strong words of consolidation and dissolution in their referendum message.
He's civic media sports director also our news contributor and he's a member of the basketball school board.
Let's talk a little bit about this consolidation, Jimmy, because it's not a thing really in Wisconsin yet.
I would have thought in order to stop that, it would have spurred more of these smaller districts to back the referendum.
What do you make of this, the districts that said, listen, if we don't get this funding, we're gonna either have to dissolve or consolidate, and it still didn't sway enough voters to get them the money they needed.
I think that with recent...
you know, reassessment of property values, for example, especially again, as we talked about in northern Wisconsin, rural areas, where they reassess properties, it reduces the mill rate to a point, you know, $4 in some places, $4 mill rates, which means that the schools can't
with the tiny enrollments they have in some of these places, where people don't live in some places in northern Wisconsin area I'm from.
They don't live in these areas permanently.
They don't have kids going to schools.
It means they can't draw enough in local money to fund their operation.
That's why they have to go to referendum.
There's not another lever to pull.
This is all they can do.
And unfortunately, in places like Winter, it means that the referendum is asking for quite a bit per student, over $10,000 in some cases per student.
That's a big number.
And when local taxpayers see this, maybe knowing that their taxes are growing up anyway because of assessments in the last few years, post-COVID assessments have in some places more than doubled the property values of some places.
And local taxpayers just
can't handle it, especially because it's not just schools that have to go to referendum.
We're seeing cities, we're seeing counties go to referendum to pay for
basic essential services like EMS or having a fire station that isn't 100 years old or just enough money to just fund the things that keep cities moving, right?
And if you go to some places, you look at some cities, some municipalities, not only do they have referendums on the table for a school and they see the mill rates increase for that, but again, it's those basic shared services like police and fire and things like that, that if they don't have the money for, they have to ask in a referendum.
They have to build a new community pool.
They have to do all these different things.
And property taxes as a result, if you've looked at any of the polling here for Market University, for example, when they've done the law school poll, for the last four or five years, it's really flipped to become very strongly.
People are more in favor of lowering property taxes than...
paying for public education.
They've asked this question for a couple of decades, and you can just see the flip in that to where that number has gone up, the property tax support has gone up, and the number of passing referenda has gone down.
How much pressure, you know, as a school board member yourself, how much pressure are these school boards under knowing that a vote could come down to just a few ballots?
I mean, we've mentioned the districts where it was only one ballot.
We saw several referendums like Dodgeville.
This was a referendum on the ballots.
This time around, it had been on the ballot just last election.
So how much pressure does this put on the school board members at this point?
It does put pressure on school boards and administrators because
in a lot of these cases.
This isn't the first time they've caught a referendum.
I mean, a lot of these schools, the odds are a great example.
They put up a question just about every year, and they keep adjusting the number to what they can actually do.
I mean, there's been a lot of cuts almost every single one of these that I looked at.
There were 75 ballot measures on Tuesday.
Almost every single one of them cited that
in the operating referendum that they had already taken steps.
They've already made cuts.
They've already gone through and eliminated some services.
They've already cut, you know, they don't fill staff positions when they come up, if somebody retires or resigns.
They've already taken some of these steps.
For a lot of them, you know, it's
the financial responsibility part of it.
That's what that's what a school board's responsibility is.
How do you manage taxpayer dollars?
Well, in this case, there's a point where there just isn't enough.
And that's why they go to this.
This is this isn't easy for somebody in an elected position to do.
I mean, I'm speaking for myself.
It wasn't like it was super difficult for me because we looked at the need and saw that our school added and had a facilities update in 65 years.
We had kids going to a building that was 125 years old where I was inside on a tour and I could see outside.
from inside.
That's not good.
it's
Yeah, definitely historical.
But you know, you're supposed to be inside in a closed building, right?
But these are these are things these are very, very big realities that are being shared across the state by
any number of school board members that show up, whether they're new, whether there's somebody that's been on the board for 30 years.
I think everybody's in the same boat.
That's why you're seeing some unusual unprecedented steps of administrators, for example, from an area, sending letters to elected officials in the legislature saying, look, we need something to change.
Whatever is happening now, it's just not sustainable.
I'm one of those people.
I don't think it's sustainable to have this referendum model because you're
literally taking the school funding issue and you're asking people in your your community so already being seeing their property taxes go up already seeing referenda for.
all the other shared services.
Now they're being asked to step in and fund schools on top of it.
I don't see that as sustainable.
So what's going to happen?
Well, we're going to see it in Hustisford, where they have to, next school year, operate with bare bones, just the bare bones mandated classes with almost no support staff, that they are mandated by law to offer.
They also now are saying they have to dissolve.
after next school year.
So they got the rest of this year, they're going to go through kind of a transition year where they're up to even offering some tuition share agreements to send kids to other districts so they can learn and then they would dissolve.
And what happens in this solution is, I don't know, I know there's not a lot of time here to explain it, but it's not like the taxes go away.
Now you're just paying your mill rate for a whole different district and you locally no longer have a say in
in that issue because now you're at the mercy of another district and what they do and paying their mill rates.
You lose that local control and now, especially if you're looming in this community, you really lose, especially in these smaller towns, you're losing the backbone of your community in a lot of cases.
I will say this at a small district having just five administrators.
I see what they have to put up with on a daily basis.
I see our superintendent helping out in special education because there just isn't enough.
staff to go around.
Administrators don't just administrate in most of these small districts.
They are coaching, they are refereeing, they are working with your special needs students, they are everywhere.
And I can't thank them enough for all the work that they do.
Any educator, teacher, para, librarian, anybody working, custodian, bus driver, you have my full and full pledge support because I know how hard things are right now.
It is not a matter of administrators not doing whatever it is they think they're not doing.
I can give you a lot of examples of people
going above and beyond.
And if you want to read Jimmy's whole breakdown, go to civicmedia.us and read all about what Jimmy talked about with these referenda.
Jimmy, thanks very much.
Good talking to you.
We'll talk to you again when we come back.
Do you remember your commencement speaker?
Do you remember their message?
We'll figure it out.
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Fairly solid and better than expected.
It's Daybreak with Brian and
Tiffany from River Falls listening on 93.5 The Tap and Eau Claire says, it seems pertinent to talk about the fact that JD Vance owns stake in a company called Acre
trader and they facilitate the sale of farmland to foreign investors.
Maybe this is connected to the controlling of the food supply.
I forgot all about his stake in that company.
So I'm so glad that Tiffany reminded us of that.
But yeah, I think that is, this administration is all about basically making sure that they are making more money and making sure that
they are getting their hands in things versus doing what's best for people.
It's all about enriching themselves.
So I
think
He wants to get to agriculture agent Mr. Kimball from Green Acres in Hooterville's office option.
I would like to hear that too.
I want to know what Mr. Kimball.
says to us and then we got a text from a new textor from who was listening on WXCO.
The working man voted himself out of the middle class and the farmer voted himself off the farm and those both tragically are ringing more and more true every day.
All right, listen.
We've been dealing with heavy stuff all morning.
It's time to talk about the important issues.
What is going on with Reese's?
Things have been screwed up.
Well, now they're being put back because instead of cheaper coatings, which Reese's has been doing, and then Reese's is a subsidiary of the product of the Hershey Company, and they've been using a cheaper coating instead of better chocolate.
And you can taste the difference, especially if you're using the eggs.
They
just
is
There is more.
I will say, yes, I agree.
There's more peanut butter in like the Reese's egg than there is in a Reese's peanut butter cup.
I, for short term, for a seasonal, I don't mind it.
I go by the, the, listen, can we also stop with all the craziness?
Can we just go to the original peanut butter cup, chocolate and peanut butter.
Two
great tastes that
That's what it's supposed to be.
Now they, Hershey's also claims that if you, you know, consumer taste, well, don't.
cater to consumers because consumers are dumb.
They like waxy chocolate.
Real chocolate lovers like chocolate, creamy chocolate, which is why they're also going to make KitKats creamier.
Good.
I do like those a lot.
I just don't like it when you start messing with a traditional thing that everybody knows and loves, right?
And I agree, shapes for the holidays are fun.
But at the same time, when you start messing with the ratio of how it's all gonna work out, then I get a little skeptical.
I'm about to
Oh, it's so bad.
Faced to the
Oh,
amazing.
Whoa.
I was just...
I was authorized by the conversation of creamy chocolate because that's where my mind was going.
No, I would 100% agree with you on the fact that in other countries, we are subpar as far as, not only chocolate, but a lot of our food products, honestly.
We are completely subpar here in this country.
fantastic day.
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