By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
Since the Burlington Area School District has decided on the three referendum questions on the April 4 ballot, School Board Member Phil Ketterhagen has maintained the majority of his issues come with Question No. 1 – Karcher Middle School.
On Tuesday night, Ketterhagen, along with his wife Bonnie, presented what they titled “The Flip Side” – a different viewpoint on the new middle school question.
Ketterhagen briefly touched on the other two questions regarding expanded athletic space and a new performing arts center. He called the latter a want and not a need, and said the athletic space that is currently at a premium could be found elsewhere.
The large part of the hour-long presentation focused on a new Karcher Middle School. Bonnie Ketterhagen stressed that the meeting was legal for her husband to host, and the point of the meeting was to “give voters another view of what’s been discussed for three years.”
Phil Ketterhagen then took over the microphone, and immediately presented a picture. He asked the audience if they saw a duck – or a rabbit.
The key, he said, was perception of the same picture – and the same was true for the information he was presenting.
“I don’t care if you see the information I’m giving you one way or the other,” he said.
Some of the key points of Ketterhagen’s presentation:
- The Burlington Area School District is in declining enrollment, and will be through at least 2020.
That information came from the Applied Population Labs study the district commissioned back in 2015, and shows the district will drop from an expected enrollment of 831 students from grades 5 to 8 next year to 750 students by 2021.
- The community survey done in December showed the strong possibility that a referendum question to renovate, rebuild or tear down Karcher and build new would not pass.
Ironically, the option with the least number of “no” votes – 45 percent – involved building the school new.
Ketterhagen maintained at the meeting that the School Board did not consider a “maintenance only” referendum, and pushed forward to build new.
In that same survey, the numbers show 70 to 78 percent approval with school updates, and that the majority of respondents approved studying a potential referendum further, Ketterhagen said.
- Because of declining enrollment, Ketterhagen said the new middle school – with a maximum capacity of 990 students – would be massively overbuilt for the students using it.
He also said the planned Montessori wing isn’t being built large enough to include additional numbers if the program draws more Montessori students to the district.
While Ketterhagen didn’t say that he – or anyone else – would or should vote against the referendum, the data he presented supported that position. The crowd of about 40 people appeared to be mostly supporters of Ketterhagen’s position, with applause at comments after the presentation.
A resident of Spring Prairie who came to the meeting said that he went to school in a building “not a quarter” as nice as the current high school, and did fine.
“Quite frankly, in this district, there’s a lot of money that just gets wasted,” the man said. “Get your act together.”
Among the others in the audience, however, were BASD Superintendent Peter Smet, who contradicted a man in the audience who stated his source in the City of Burlington police department said there was “heroin in our grade schools.” City of Burlington Police Chief Mark Anderson also later refuted the claim.
School Board Member Barry Schmaling and his wife, Dana were also in the audience. Dana Schmaling, a long-time district employee, tried to address the so-called “open learning spaces” that Bonnie Ketterhagen condemned as unworkable, as proven in the 1970s.
Schmaling said that the “flexible” learning spaces being proposed would accommodate small group work, and to allow classrooms to collaborate on dual-subject programs, such as English and social studies, or math and science.
One member of the audience, though, issued a word of warning. He said he is nearing the age with his children where he has to decide where to enroll then. Currently, he said, because of the aging facilities in BASD and the ongoing financial battles in the district, he may enroll them elsewhere.
Ketterhagen said he felt he was doing his job by putting the information he did out there Tuesday night.
“Showing you the rabbit, or the duck,” he said.
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