Seceding from Unified?

By Brent Killackey

Saturday, June 17, 2006 9:13 PM CDT

RACINE COUNTY - Whether going door-to-door or taking phone calls from constituents, Caledonia Village President Jonathan Delagrave said one issue comes up more frequently than any other: The Racine Unified School District and whether Caledonia can form its own school district.

"Generally, the Racine Unified School District is not looked at as a great school district from a Caledonia taxpayer point of view," Delagrave said.

In Delagrave's opinion, breaking away is worth a look.

Over the course of the summer, Delagrave plans to bring up the issue at the Village Board level and see where it goes, he said.

"Maybe it doesn't make sense and I'm not advocating one way or another," Delagrave said. "It's time for Caledonia or Caledonia and Mount Pleasant to look at the merits of possibly forming their own school district. We owe it to the village taxpayers to do so. We owe it to the moms and dads of Caledonia who have their kids in RUSD."

Been there before Caledonia's secession from RUSD isn't a new idea.

School Board member Brian Dey helped lead an effort six years ago to get Caledonia its own school district. Dey, a Caledonia resident, said something about Caledonia's status as a town spelled an end to that effort.

But Caledonia now possesses village status, giving a stronger identity to its residents. That, combined with frequent Unified referendums and stagnant test scores, seems to have pushed the issue of secession to the forefront again.

"Given the (district's test) results and even the most recent results, you can hardly blame the communities for wanting to get out," Dey said.

Caledonia has been underserved by the district for a number of years, Dey said. For example, there are few school buildings in the village and some, including Olympia Brown, have been suggested for closure. Caddy Vista, an elementary school in Caledonia near the border with Milwaukee County, was closed in the 1990s.

"If Unified would serve the area properly, there'd be no need for them to secede," Dey said.

Delagrave said Unified currently was an impairment to bigger-picture issues of attracting businesses and jobs.

Randy Bangs, the other Caledonia resident on the School Board, said he's not surprised by the secession sentiment, although he hadn't been contacted by any constituents about it. "The underlying issue here is that Racine Unified is not making the progress that people in the community expect and deserve in order to feel comfortable with the status quo," Bangs said. "That is what I believe is driving this."

Bangs' overall thoughts on secession are mixed.

"As a board member I would be very torn, because on the one hand I serve the entire community," Bangs said. "I was elected by Racine Unified, so I would not want to advocate for anything that would have an adverse impact on the district. On the other hand, I cannot hold against a community its interest in spurring its own growth and own success."

Board member Russ Carlsen said every month he hears a sentiment that Caledonia should secede. But whether it's a sentiment shared beyond Caledonia isn't fully known: "I don't really hear this from Mount Pleasant," Carlsen, a Mount Pleasant resident, said.

Complex process Even if a secession movement takes form, it's not a quick or easy matter.

A 1998 state law spells out a two-year process requiring, among many other things, a petition with at least 20 percent of the total number of electors residing in the affected school district, hearings before a special boundary appeal board, and eventually a referendum involving all district residents to decide whether a new district should be formed.

No school district has gone through the process of creating a new district under the law, according to the state Department of Public Instruction. Typically, districts look to consolidate for efficiencies rather than split apart.

However, the Shawano-Gresham School District is currently navigating the process and waiting for a Nov. 7 referendum to decide whether a split will occur, according to DPI.

If an effort to establish a new district in Caledonia gets serious, it will have to answer many questions: * Will it be more costly to Caledonia residents to operate a separate district? Unified gets additional state aid because of the number of students in poverty. "I doubt very much that they could build a tax structure that they have right now � if they went on their own," said Carlsen, who didn't object to Caledonia's secession. A Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance analysis of the proposed Shawano-Gresham split projected higher tax rates in one of the new districts.

* Would the impact on the balanced racial distribution of students in area schools bring about the possibility of court involvement? * Would the remaining Racine Unified School District benefit? It would create a greater concentration of students in poverty, but the resources could also be focused on those students in a smaller school district with less bureaucracy.

* What would the impact be on local municipalities? "It might have a negative impact on Racine Unified, but that doesn't mean it would have a negative impact on Racine itself," Bangs said. If it helped Caledonia thrive, there could be positive impacts on the city of Racine, spurring development and a thriving Downtown.

"It's a very complex issue," Bangs said. Even if the current talk doesn't immediately materialize into a secession movement, many community leaders expect the issue will remain in the background as the area grows.

"I do think it's eventually going to happen," Dey said.

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