A Kid Leaves a School. The Lights Still Have to Go On. (Hour 2)

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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Crichtlow powered by Up North News.

Now, for my Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Crichtlow.

Hey, good morning.

It is 7 0 6.

It is nice to have you back here up north on this Wednesday morning, July 30th.

Parker Olson is producing this shindig down in Madison Studio A2, and meteorologist Brittany Merleau is standing by.

Coming up later this hour is our weekly homeroom segment.

where we talk about education in Wisconsin, some of its strengths, opportunities, but also the threats.

And one of those is the way the state funding formula works for public education.

It stinks and it has for a long time for 30 plus years now.

There is a phenomenon happening in school districts called declining enrollment and

That makes sense from a demographic standpoint, but it's exacerbated by this voucher program that is sucking money away from our public schools so that even when there is declining enrollment in a public school district, the loss of state aid is being done in a manner that could be called disproportionate.

And the system is really failing school districts like here in Chippewa Falls.

And we'll talk to two folks, a school board member and a business manager about that along the way.

And in our eight o'clock hour, we've got a weird little crossover episode for you where Jim Santel, the former U.S.

attorney who's normally here on Fridays, will instead be part of our climate check this week with Melissa Baldoff talking about all the different climate lawsuits that are going on in the U.S.

and other countries in the world court and how

actions there more so than say in Congress might be our best hope to finally have some cleaner air around our planet.

That's all coming up but first let's get that forecast update from Brittany Merleau where I was looking forward to once this last bit of rain goes through I was looking forward to you know something dry and comfortable but I could see in the very early morning light this morning looking upriver I could right away see oh our friend the smoke is back.

Canada continues to be on fire and we're going to be noticing that today and tomorrow, Brittany.

Unfortunately, we sure are.

It's already out there this morning.

Haze across the state statewide and air quality alert as that wildfire smoke is back.

got winds out of the North West, so it's dragging it here for us, and that's going to stay the case throughout the day today.

Now we are looking at comfortable temperatures, unfortunately not the brightest, most beautiful day.

We are going to see more clouds than sunshine, pretty much mostly cloudy to overcast statewide all day with rain and some thunderstorms far south in the state.

That's already happening right now.

Temperatures in the 50s up north, low 70s south.

We've got heavy rain right now into Janesville, Beaver Dam area, working its way towards the Milwaukee area, probably around eight or so.

And it's packing some heavy rain at times.

We've already seen an inch, a little bit over an inch in Evansville and Beloit.

And of course, we are looking at up to two inches possible because this rain won't stop throughout the afternoon.

It actually continues into this evening and doesn't wind down until late tonight.

So we could see some flash flooding potential or some localized flooding where those storms just keep training over and over the same area again.

So be careful down south today.

Otherwise less rain chances up north.

You should stay.

mostly dry, just some pesky clouds still in the way, much more comfortable temperatures though, mid to upper 70s.

And it's gonna get a little breezy later on this afternoon and evening too.

So it'll feel refreshing at the very least.

Okay.

Well, refreshing is good.

I'm still, I mean, I know that this stuff is supposed to stay to the south and that's great.

I'm still a little gun shy.

I'm just far enough up north not to take the top down on the Wrangler yet.

Because you never know when something spotty comes up and I was looking at my Facebook memories and it was seven years ago when it was my first year with this Jeep and it was that the anniversary of that date when we were out to dinner and we started to see rain.

And there was no rain anywhere.

There was no line coming at us or anything.

And I pull up the radar on my phone really quick.

And it's like, you know, one of those little dots just kind of pops up right overhead.

And thinking, okay, it'll, it'll move, it'll move, right?

It didn't move.

The rain kept down.

It came harder and harder and harder.

And the little dot went from blue to green to yellow to red.

like a really bad zit.

And instead it popped all over my Jeep Wrangler and filled it with two to three inches of rainwater.

And then you found out that Wranglers have plugs, drain plugs at

the

bottom, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

My friends were like, aren't you going to go do something about that?

I'm like, what can I do?

It's already raining like crazy.

But the next day was hot and sunny.

You pull those drain plugs out, you pull the floor mats out, and 24 hours later, it was good as new by and large.

But for that moment that is happening, you're thinking of all the places one little black rain cloud could show up and just dump on you.

It was that.

That was your storm.

That was my storm.

That was just for you.

Yes.

So I'd been hoping to take the roof down, but no, not so much.

Let's see.

I'm looking at Tom and Hartford on the text line.

Brittany, make the smoke go away.

Can't do that.

I'm trying.

I've got the shield, but it's not

working.

Lori from Hayward, can you please give a special shout out to Jack Kerchefsky, 101-year-old World War II vet who was honored at the Brewer's Game yesterday and thank him for his service.

Done.

Thank you for that.

I do

like that part

of the Brewer's game where they always thank somebody for their service.

That's a very nice thing.

Let's see, from Robin Tigerton.

Good morning, smoking 65 degrees.

I've got three yards to mow in the Tigerton area yesterday.

He mowed five yards.

Today would have been his mom and dad's wedding anniversary.

Wild Thing was the number one song when they got married July 30th of 1966.

Also says thank you, Brittany, for keeping us updated on the tsunami in the Pacific from the earthquake in Russia on her social media last night.

Central Wisconsin could have its first extended dry period since Mother's Day back in May.

Many farmers will be cutting their third crop of hay.

And for the first extended dry spell, many will be baling hay as a kid on a warm, humid weather.

It always meant baling hay.

That's true.

Sherri says she still gets a little itchy scratchy on days like this, just thinking about being on the hay wagon and stacking all the bales.

doesn't really work like that anymore, by and large on the farm, but Hans Breitenmoser told us yesterday, you know, he was going to attack that third crop of hay today, but it was a little, getting back to the other thing Rob mentioned, it was a little disturbing to wake up, look at the phone and the first thing you see is, you know, tsunami warnings all along the west coast and an 8.8 earthquake off the Russian coast.

I mean,

yes.

So scary.

I couldn't go to sleep last night.

I saw this happening and I was like, oh my goodness.

I mean, that is the eighth strongest ever recorded time for sixth with an 8.8 magnitude.

That can cause waves.

I mean, that could send a 500 mile per hour wave across the ocean, right?

So that's why those tsunami warnings were going off.

You could just see the videos

on

social media was chilling, just hearing that.

But thankfully, it didn't look too, too bad out there.

It

has

six feet above normal in Hawaii and about three and a half feet above normal waves in California.

California at the moment.

And it's so different now, again, because of technology and other advances, that it's nothing like 2004.

And, you know, a lot of us have a certain age, you know, those those videos of the tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people around the world, you know, that that has seared into our memories.

And of course, what happened in Japan several years later.

So I'm just hoping that because it wasn't

terribly serious this time that people don't get complacent in the future about these warnings.

We've seen what it can do, but I fear that people will someday forget and just take these warnings for granted.

You can't do that.

I fear that too.

People do that with the tornado warnings, and it just

breaks my heart.

Yes.

All

of these serious,

please.

Yeah, they're there for a reason.

And the reason is not to scare you, but to keep you alive.

Brittany, thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank

you.

All right.

Let's get back at the quarter past seven now to Pat and Parker celebrating the Milwaukee Burgers, because we're totally getting ahead of ourselves.

We are already assuming there's going to be a sweep this afternoon.

Now that we've jinxed it, let's tell you about the win yesterday.

because it was so satisfying.

I want to play that clip again from the Brewers radio network.

Have you got that

handy

with Andrew Vaughn?

I can set that up properly because the Brewers were already ahead.

They were leading the Cubs, but I don't have what any Vaughn hit his home run in.

I believe it was the fifth inning.

No, sixth inning.

Sixth inning.

Yeah.

Burroughs were already up, but this was the exclamation on top of it.

Andrew Vaughn, who already has 21 RBIs, since being called up from the minors on July 7th, had six runs batted in yesterday.

Four of them sounded like this.

Here's now Vaughn

in a drive.

Left center and deep.

Vaughn!

Who wrote this script?

The script of Greg Vaughn, Andrew Vaughn, hitting a grand slam and giving the Brewers a win over the Cubs 9-3.

They are going to go for the sweep this afternoon at American Family Field against the Cubs.

Coverage begins at 12.35 on Civic Media radio stations throughout the network.

Let's see that is now what 15 of the last 18 games when you include that

11

game winning streak

that's

record in baseball right now at 63 and 43 a two game lead over the Cubs in the National League Central Hopefully Jackson Cheerios right hamstring spasm is not a serious one 64 and 43 64 and 43.

That's

what Google is telling me

Okay.

Two games.

Associated

Press is telling me.

So you kids go fight it out later on.

Quinn Priester started for the Brewers.

He now has 10 wins on the season against only two losses.

And again, they'll go for the sweep this afternoon with Freddie Peralta on the mound.

And then the Brewers will be off tomorrow heading to the nation's capital for a weekend series against the Nationals.

Then down to Atlanta early next week.

And then they'll start a weekend series next week.

at home against the New York Mets.

So a lot to get excited about over the coming days.

You'll recall that last week when I did the show in Oshkosh, I had to spend the evening in Beaver Dam.

It was the closest place where you could get a hotel that wasn't 500 bucks a night.

And the Milwaukee General Sentinel had a very interesting piece yesterday about Beaver Dam.

It's something that I

I did not see.

I wish I would have taken more notice of as I was in town there because you could definitely tell in Beaver Dam, like a lot of cities around Wisconsin, you can tell where some businesses used to be and where there's not activity anymore.

And you wonder, where's the next thing going to come from?

Is the next thing going to come from somewhere?

And that is definitely going to be the case in Beaver Dam, where there is now going to be a big new data center.

going up.

One that hasn't been officially announced but is definitely on the way.

Hundreds of workers in skilled trades are starting to put up the buildings.

The farmland was sold at a premium price for a data center that's going to be working on artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

And the article is just all about the fact that they are now hiring for the construction, for the data center.

It is a walk-a-shot based company that chose Beaver Dam for the location of a 350,000 square foot Generac plant as well in part because of a blue collar community of culture there.

And so I was just very happy to see

all of this good work happening around the Beaver Dam area.

We're seeing as well data centers going up in Mount Pleasant and Kenosha and Port Washington.

Now all of this, as we have talked about within our climate check segments in the past, does come with some caveats.

There is something about, you know, all of the water that is going to be involved in cooling these data centers.

That's a lot of computing power and could have, you know, impact on wells in the area.

And more that we don't know about yet.

So I'm not telling you that these data centers are going to be a cure-all, but for the current next wave of jobs in Wisconsin communities, if done right,

These are things that are positive aspects for some of our smaller communities around the state of Wisconsin.

And it was just very nice to read about that.

A local update is coming up next for some of you.

Others will continue here and have our homeroom segment in 15 minutes.

I'm Pat Krightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

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That would include our weekend politics newsletters Sunday mornings with Pat Critello, which includes our question of the week, which this week deals with cryptocurrency, something that we don't have to deal with a lot here.

Although back to our topic of data centers, I mean, there's just more computing than ever before is needed to quote unquote, mine cryptocurrency.

I feel like we need a cryptocurrency 101 segment here about why it takes so much computer power to create the next Bitcoin or whatever crypto is and is it worth it for all of the energy that it takes, the electricity and the water and everything else it takes to do these immense complex computer calculations that create cryptocurrency.

And then there's a whole matter of buying it, selling it, spending it.

Who should make the rules?

We saw in Congress last week Republicans bending over backwards to make the rules friendly to the cryptocurrency industry while at the same time claiming that there are consumer safeguards and stability in cryptocurrency.

Call me skeptical.

But what do you think?

I'm sure some of you have friends, associates, if not yourself, who are all in saying this is absolutely the way of the future.

You just need to learn more about it.

This is a great development compared to those dirty paper dollars and you're all in.

Others will say nope, I just don't know enough yet.

I'm not saying no, but I definitely need to learn more.

And others saying no.

Absolutely not.

Either I'm convinced it's a scam or I'm just skeptical enough.

No way should the US government be using my tax dollars to be involved in cryptocurrency.

We just want to know where you are right now.

So we're taking your temperature.

So if you're a subscriber to the newsletter, you can respond right there.

Or you can subscribe at UpNorthNewsWI.com by clicking subscribe in the top banner.

And you can always, of course, send us a text message using the Civic Media app.

Or you can put a comment on Facebook or YouTube, or you can send us an email radio at upnorthnewswi.com to learn more and tell us your thoughts on crypto.

It's our question of the week.

This next story is far, far from Wisconsin, but it does involve one of our favorite sports here, baseball.

And it's just another sign of the times that we have an administration so hostile

to countries, well, all other foreign countries, especially those where the folks there don't have white skin, because one of the Little League international tournaments is going to be played here in the US without one of its teams, because the team from Venezuela was denied visas into the United States, and those kids will be forced to miss the Senior League, Little League World Series for the first time.

That's a series for players between the ages of 13 and 16.

And the Venezuelan team said they had been notified they would not get the appropriate visas.

They say, well, this is extremely disappointing, especially to these young athletes.

The Little League International Tournament Committee made the decision to instead advance the second place team, the one the Venezuelan kids defeated, from Mexico.

This is all because of a June executive order.

from President Trump that limits entry into the U.S.

from certain countries.

Basically, it's another version of the Muslim travel ban, but this time against other countries for ambiguous reasons.

Venezuela is one of the countries that currently faces a limited ban.

And again, it's based on Donald Trump's whims.

It's not every country that has a government that is not necessarily living up to Democratic ideals.

I mean, for those intents and purposes, we're not exactly living up to the full potential of our democratic ideals, but you're going to have these kids now who are not going to get a chance to take part in something that they have earned the right to play in.

And it simply begs this question.

Excuse me.

The Olympics are coming up in Los Angeles in a couple of years.

Um, Parker, as I take a sip of coffee, it's, uh, pretty clear to see.

There's some teams that are gonna think twice about coming here.

So Los Angeles for the Olympics or any other sporting event

There's the Olympics.

There's the World Cup.

There's so much going on in the US that Attracts world tourism.

There's so many people from around the world coming to the US especially for sports right now in the next coming years.

It's oh my gosh Tourism is cratering right now.

It's just so odd that you would want to make it more difficult

for people who are going to come and be tourists and spend money in your economy and make it hard for them to be here.

And let's not forget that sports was also one of the one of the beacons of America to the rest of the world.

Yeah, it doesn't happen as much as it used to, but especially in the old days of the Soviet Union.

It was sports tournaments where athletes would defect to the United States because they wanted to be here.

They saw the ideals that we espouse here.

And now we're just we're shutting off the possibility that anybody from other countries would want to come here to compete to participate to travel because they see such hostility and I don't know how the the MAGA folks think we're supposed to make that up in the economy.

They're not gonna say, well, the rest of us should go to Niagara Falls more often and be tourists.

I mean, it can't work that way because we're busy working, you know, extra time to afford the health insurance premiums that are gonna get jacked up.

So as we, and it's not just Los Angeles, it's not just the World Cup.

There are sports tournaments that happen here in Wisconsin.

There's international travel and business that...

is not going to take place here in Wisconsin as a result.

And of course, there's the trade war involving tariffs and other, you know, hostile relations that are all eating into our economy.

So our one little story there about a little league team in Venezuela.

may sound distant, may sound like it doesn't apply here, but it is essentially the canary in the coal mine for all that still could happen if we have an administration that is allowed to, you know, rampage unchecked through all the goodwill and diplomacy that the United States has built up over the years and essentially is dousing that beacon to the world that we had always been for all these years.

We'll have our homeroom segment coming up right after the Midwest Farm Report across the Civic Media Radio Network.

I'm Pat Crightlum.

Coming up later today on the civic media radio network the Maggie Dawn show from four until six coming up today in the four o'clock hour Morris Pearl will discuss the wealthy who don't want a tax break part of an op-ed in the Washington Post recently

And also in the four o'clock hour, Lisa White, a candidate in the 17th State Senate District, where there may be a number of Democrats looking to run against Howard Markline, the State Senate co-chair of the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee, that all coming up on the Maggie Dawn Show later this afternoon across the Civic Media Radio Network.

Let's take some time right now in our homeroom segment to talk a bit about declining enrollment, state aid, and school referendums.

And regular listeners understand how this carousel works.

And so rather than listening to me blather on about it, we wanted to bring in an expert, a business manager from one of the school districts where declining enrollment is an issue and explain how the current state funding system.

Either helps or hurts school districts that are hit with declining enrollment, which again is happening for a couple of different reasons.

It's not just demographics.

It's not just, you know, a generational drop in birth rates.

It's also the growth of the voucher program, peeling away kids whose parents are sending them to private, usually religious schools and now getting taxpayer-funded assistance subsidies to do so.

It only makes the declining enrollment problem worse for districts like Chippewa Falls, where Chatchiro Bridge is the business manager and joins us this morning.

Chad, good morning.

How are you?

I'm great, Pat.

Good morning to you and thanks for having me today.

Well, we appreciate it.

We really respect the job that you do and we know what a challenge that it is.

So let's just start overall with the matter of declining enrollment.

I mean, there are only so many school districts that actually are growing population.

We don't have that baby boom going on anymore.

So we know that declining enrollment is, you know, kind of a regular way of life in so many of our Wisconsin

school

districts.

But do we have a system in place right now so that business managers like you can look at these numbers and say, well, enrollment's declining, but not in a way that's going to cause us to have to make some dire financial choices?

Yes, it is definitely a problem statewide, not just for Chippewa Falls.

I should point out, I think we were an anomaly.

over the past 20 or 30 years, while many school districts, you know, certainly in Northern Wisconsin and even in the Chippewa Valley were declining enrollment, we were on a growth pattern.

So it was a little unique here in Chippewa Falls.

We kind of stood out as a place that was growing.

And I think, you know, primarily it's the demographic shift that probably has caught us the most.

I think we were going to start to experience a decline.

at the start of the pandemic.

That was kind of the first indicator for us that, you know, our lower birth rates entering our kindergarten grades were starting to get smaller.

But I do think that the pandemic probably exacerbated that problem just a little bit.

It helped or encouraged people to pursue other educational options, you know, be it virtual, be at home school.

A lot of school age kids went to work during that time.

the warning virtually was something that what we found out wasn't the best for the majority of our population.

So if, you know, I think there's a lot of reasons for declining enrollment.

Certainly the first you mentioned the demographic shift, part of it's not scientific and people just don't have as many kids as they used to.

And when I say that a lot of people nod their head.

Yep.

A lot of people we know either don't have kids or have one kid or

two kids you know three was a having three kids was a fairly normal sized family a good number of years ago but you just don't see families that large anymore.

Secondly I think we have an affordable housing problem in our community and when I say that I don't mean low income housing I mean just the affordability of living whether it be rental property or purchasing a home you know the medium home price is higher than

two income earners with good jobs can't afford.

That's not going to encourage families to come to our community.

Another piece that we often wonder about is jobs.

We're a big employer for the size of the city of Chippewa Falls.

There are a lot of jobs in our community, but are they jobs that cause people to move here?

We believe that a good portion of our jobs here are commuter jobs, meaning

people who live in the periphery of Chippew Falls drive here to come to work.

And then also, much like many communities, there's a shortage of daycare spaces available.

We're pretty blessed in Chippew Falls to have very high quality daycares.

There just aren't enough of them.

And if we have commuters coming to Chippew Falls for employment, perhaps bringing their kids to daycare just makes that lack of daycare space.

all the much worse.

And like you mentioned, there are other educational options, which is probably a good thing for parents and students to have choices in education.

But ultimately, those factors all contribute to kind of the statewide decline in enrollment.

And we're actually gonna see a demographic shift in our total population.

And Chippewa Falls, the largest portion of our population is an older generation.

which at some point in time, you know, will turn over.

I hate to say it that way, but as when that occurs, you know, we're curious about what's going to happen with real estate and homes and, you know, what kind of, what's going to turn into those properties?

Are they going to become rentals?

Are they going to become family homes?

Are they going to turn into something else?

Yeah, these are all valid questions when you talk about commuter employment.

Another one of them is virtual.

We've seen some small communities essentially reinvent themselves by saying

Hey, we're the place where you can live and we've put in broadband internet so that you can continue to, you know, work from up north in your office in Chicago, you know, or New York or wherever the case may be.

Chippewa Falls has also seen, of course, like other communities, you know, jobs come and go, whether it's, you know, Cray Supercomputers or Mason Shoe back in the day.

You know, just

a big shift in technology versus manufacturing and high tech manufacturing.

I spoke earlier this hour about Beaver Dam and how its fortunes are being turned around by a data center that's going in and that might be the linchpin for new enrollment.

But again, every school district is facing its challenges with declining enrollment at some point in time for all the reasons that you outlined.

Here's where we get into the notion of how does state aid?

help or hurt in that situation.

So the two examples I always use are classrooms and school buses.

You might go from a classroom of 25 kids to 22 kids.

You might have a school bus that goes from carrying 40 kids to 35 kids.

You still got to turn on the lights.

You still got to put gas in the bus because it's going to take pretty much the same route.

Just skip a few houses.

And yet with declining enrollment,

How is it that you lose state aid?

Is it a one for one thing or is there a way that that can be augmented without having to go to the property

taxpayer?

I'll touch on that a number of shift gears for just a second.

So state aid is really a factor of the expenses the district makes per property value per student.

So if we have a high student population and a high property value, that kind of works out pretty well economically.

But if we have a

a low student population and a high property value.

And you think about some of our more northern region school districts, at least that's the best example here.

We have locally, you know, they have a very low student population, but a very high property value.

The state aid formula doesn't really benefit them at all, but it really comes back to the revenue limit.

Revenue limits were put in place for Wisconsin schools back in 1994.

And it was really kind of a three pronged approach to

ultimately controlling property taxes at the time.

And they called it the three-legged stool.

It was based on the premise of a revenue limit, the qualified economic offer, and two-thirds funding of education at the state level.

Well, qualified economic offer went away with Act 10 in around 2011, 2012.

And then the two-thirds funding commitment for state aid has also gone away.

So the only prong that's left is revenue limits.

And ultimately, for a lot of schools that were not in declining enrollment, the revenue limit just hadn't kept pace with inflation.

And for us, during the time of the pandemic, there was a lot of federal money that was thrown at education.

And the intent of that money was to bolster education.

Well, here in Wisconsin, there weren't revenue limit increases.

And the message was loud and clear, use your federal dollars to plug your budget hole.

We were all saying, hey, okay, well, that can work.

We understand that, but we have to have a way to backfill that federal revenue when it goes away.

And then the last biennial budget, I think our state did as good as they can.

They did increase the revenue limit, but it was only about half of what was lost from the exit of federal funding.

We were saying that in this 2527 biennial budget, our state is going to have to double down because school districts were still short of revenue.

They didn't get inflationary increases during that time.

And it was at a time when we've seen some of the highest inflation rates in the past decade.

So that kind of has compounded over time.

And if you recall, Governor Evers used his veto pen.

to give school districts a $325 per pupil increase for at the time it was 400 years.

Well, there's 398 years remaining in that.

So we are going to get a $325 per pupil increase.

That's great, but it doesn't backfill any of that revenue.

And when we talk about this $325 per pupil, it's a good increase.

It's less than 3%.

So it sounds like a lot of money, but it's really not.

It's really just, you know,

plus or minus inflation here or there.

And I always say before Act 10, when revenue limits were indexed to inflation, we were seeing consumer price index in the revenue limit at $271 per pupil.

So 271, 13 years ago versus 325 today, really doesn't make up a gap anywhere.

So in the revenue limit, that's made up of two factors.

It's state aid and property taxes.

So if

There's an increase in the revenue limit.

It should technically be split between state aid and property tax.

The legislature did not put any money into the state aid formula.

So when we look at this year's revenue limit, it's going to increase taxation at a time where state aid is not going to go up.

So it's going to create a local burden here.

And really for any school district in the state of Wisconsin, there will be some aid distribution based on

Each individual school district statistics, but for us we're very close to average so we would expect it to be fairly neutral So when we we went to Chippewa Falls school district went to an operational referendum in 2024 and we did that for three years We had some declining enrollment issues some exit of federal funding issues that were creating a deficit for us

We wanted to we did a three-year operational referendum two and a half million dollars a year for three years because we wanted to get through this biennial budget process to determine if Revenue revenue was backfilled there would lessen the need for an operational referendum, but if it was not sufficient

we would have to go back to an additional operational referendum at some point in time.

And I definitely see that that's in the carts for many school districts when you put zero new dollars into it.

It's a great explanation of the situation.

Chad Trowbridge, the business manager for the Chippewa Falls Area Unified School District, thank you very much for the background on it, Chad.

I know what a challenging time this is, but thanks for taking a little time to offer up some explanation and background for our listeners.

Thanks for having me, Pat.

I appreciate it.

You bet.

Have a great day.

A local update is next for some of you.

Others will talk to Jimmy Koska about some of the stories that he is following.

And as a school board member himself may have a few things to say about, you know, coming up from our homeroom segment.

And in our next hour, we'll be talking to Earl Ingram.

We'll be getting an update from James Kelly from Civic Media about headlines he's covering around Northwest Wisconsin.

So much still ahead here on the Civic Media Radio Network.

I'm Pat Krightlow.

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We've got some familiar voices coming up across the Civic Media radio network throughout the course of the day here.

Matt and Aaron are coming up after this program from 9 to 11 with Jane Mattener and Greg Bach.

Dr. Kristen Lierly will be joining Jane and Greg at 9.30.

Dan Schaefer from the Reconpopulation Area and Civic Media Political Editor will be joining them just after the 10 a.m.

news here.

And then on the Todd Alba show, starting at 2 o'clock, well, yours truly will be there to kick off the show at 2.05 and then Trig V. Olson.

Senior Advisor to the Lincoln Project will be joining Todd as well across the Civic Media Radio Network.

Civic Media Radio Network also employs this young man named Jimmy Koska who's also the sports director.

He's also a school board member in Bosquebell and it's always fun to watch him in the on-deck circle during our homeroom segment.

Sometimes he's just itching to get in there and say something about you know what we're saying about school boards and education.

And other times he hears a guest and Jimmy, what was it you just said about Chad Trowbridge's explanation about declining enrollment?

I just think it was funny because you were trying to set it up like, hey, we might talk a little bit more about this with Jimmy coming up.

And I'm like, oh, no, Mr. Trowbridge did a fantastic job of explaining all this.

I don't need to say anything.

He did awesome.

Have nothing else to add.

Just get this show by podcast and listen back to it again.

And you'll get an amazing explanation of the situation that we have out there, which I know we've covered in the past.

Plexities of how we pay for schools in this state and the burden that that puts on every local school board member Many of which they're just moms and dads or taxpayers that just want to do a little bit of public service serve on their school board and then

Boom, here's a bunch of three-ring binders.

Try to understand how this state formula works.

Good luck, you

know?

Yeah, a lot of our board meetings are spent sometimes just asking about, like, why is it like this?

Like, how are schools funded?

What is this line in the spreadsheet mean?

It is really, really complicated, even for people who spend time working on it.

It was interesting listening to your previous guest talk about just kind of the future of a district the size of Chippewa Falls.

because that future kind of already exists in smaller school districts where the population has aged out.

I think the average population right now in the county I live in is actually 59 years old.

So you can see it happening already in more rural areas of the state where with property values and property use and things like that and how that...

you know, how that contributes to some of the some of the issue facing, you know, school funding.

I thought there was a really interesting piece written by Jamie Nutter of CESA 3.

He's the director of CESA 3.

About six months ago, he wrote a piece talking about ways to help with school funding.

And one of those ways was it sounds

pretty simple, but it, you know, in a way, it's also very smart.

And that's just to work, you know, with municipalities on building additional housing, just getting more people into a district to lessen that tax burden on others.

And I mean, as a concept, it sounds a little, a little bare, but the way he went in depth into it.

worth a whole segment on its own.

But there are some definite challenges facing school districts, declining enrollment, obviously being part of that.

But there are a lot of things that are tied to other policy as well.

It's not just, hey, it's school funding policy.

That's the only issue here.

I mean, he hit on everything that we talk about, whether it's broadband funding, infrastructure, housing, all those things contribute to some of the challenges facing schools right now.

All right, let's get something that is not not quite so complex and that would be drinking fountains or bubblers depending on your your vernacular in your part of the state and La Crosse has some rather historic drinking fountains or bubblers, but as is the case with a lot of things historic

They may not necessarily be in step with modern day requirements.

And it's led to a bit of a problem bubbling up there.

You see what I did, Jimmy?

So what's LaCrosse's bubbler problem?

Yeah, so the bubbler problem.

And they don't use these words interchangeably.

The existing.

places people can drink water at, they refer to as bubblers because they are true to the Wisconsin brand bubblers.

They're old, they're green, they're everywhere in the city, and they've been shut off this year because they are not ADA compliant.

So no one's been able to use them in all these heat waves we've had this summer, right?

So the city council, the officials, the mayor, it's actually the mayor, Chandel Washington Spivey, who proposed this, to put in drinking fountains that are ADA compliant around the city so that people can have free public access.

to drinking water, which as you know in La Crosse, one of the big issues is homelessness.

Also, obviously with it being so hot, it's just nice for people to be able to grab a drink of water here and there, right?

So there's a resolution going through committee right now in La Crosse to address the situation of the existing bubbleers.

not being ADA compliant and putting in ADA compliant drinking fountains instead.

But there's also a contingent of the city council and city officials that want to preserve these old green bubblers that are not ADA compliant and preserve them for historical purposes.

One of the resolutions even calls for adding like plaques to these things.

Just say, hey, this honors the history of Wisconsin.

You know, even the word bubbler originates in Wisconsin.

Let's preserve some of the history, even if it means keeping those things off.

So there's kind of two competing things happening with this issue at La Crosse.

And I'm fascinated by these things in local government, personally, because it really speaks to that issue of trying to solve a modern problem, but also trying to honor some of the history in a lot of these places.

And it can be drinking fountains, it can be buildings, but these things that come up in local government can be absolutely fascinating.

But

Jimmy, I'm curious, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, dates back to 1999.

And it doesn't sound like there's like any pending lawsuit right now against the city.

So, I mean, it's been 35 years.

Why now?

Are they saying, well, they're not compliant, so let's shut them off before we get sued?

I mean, call me suspicious, but I almost wonder if it's a way to address the problem of homelessness and not offer these facilities for people.

I don't know that, but I just, I find it odd that a 35 year old law is being invoked right now.

Yeah, it is odd and it is something that has been called out to by the people that are advocating to keep them in place because I think one of the council members even had said.

that nobody's asking for these to be turned off.

Why can't we turn them back on?

And nobody's complained about this.

It's really, really fascinating, like I said, because of all the issues you mentioned as well.

Well, and again, just because something's old doesn't mean it always has to stay there either.

You can always put a new green drinking fountain in there that is compliant, costs money, but not everything old has to sit there just because it's old.

Jimmy Koska, thank you for the update as always.

We appreciate it.

Have a great day.

Thank

you.

All right, Earl Ingram is coming up along the way and then we'll have our climate check with Melissa Baldoff and former U.S.

Attorney Jim Santel in our eight o'clock hour on the Civic Media Radio Network.

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