To get their attention on Nov. 3!
Another election is approaching, which means the Madison school district has its hands out for more money. Time to do like Sister Mary Rosaria and slap that hand with a steel-edge ruler!
The Madison Metropolitan School District seeks a one-time infusion of $317 million to fix stuff, buy a new boiler, etc. (Let’s hope they get a Menard’s BIG® card for savings on gasoline at Kwik Trip.) Got to think spending on bricks and mortar will be a hard sell when buildings have been empty since March and won’t fill back up until after Christmas — if then! Distance learning, home schooling — once the hobgoblin of the teachers union — is now the new normal. And can’t MMSD ever schedule maintenance?!
The schools also want to blow past state revenue limits by $33 million forever and a day. What they’ll spend this money on, not even Ali Muldrow knows for sure. Add it up, class, and you get $350 million, which will cost the average homeowner $470 in property taxes. It’s “one of the most expensive ballot proposals in state history,” according to former mayor Dave Cieslewicz. At a time when many businesses are shuttered and workers on layoff or unpaid furlough!
⇒ The indentured servants at Stately Blaska Manor, the unlettered field hands at Blaska Experimental Work Farm (and Penal Colony), and the gray lab coats at the Policy Werkes have been instructed to vote NO! on the two Madison public school referenda on the ballot November 3.
Vote NO Confidence!
Frankly, we’re not pleased with MMSD’s product. Madison parents may already be voting with their feet. City schools hemorrhaged 1,006 students — a 3.7% drop. MMSD has/is:
- Preaching from the discredited 1619 Project that America is inherently racist.
- Encouraged kids to question their sexual orientation without parents knowing.
- Dumbing down the grading system.
- Spinning their wheels on the racial achievement gap, and most egregiously
- Capitulated to the harassment and vandalism of social justice warriors to expel — not the troublemakers — but the police!
⇒ Why is anyone surprised that the chaos in the classroom is now playing out in stolen car shoot-outs on Madison’s boarded-up streets?
Madison is enduring a teenager crime wave. Kids as young as 12 years old are stealing cars in record numbers and running them into houses. Killing each other in high-speed shootouts — an innocent 11-year-old girl is dead as a result. Executing a beloved physician and her husband at point-blank range. Careening 91 mph on a city street dead-on into a promising young scholar, killing him and seriously injuring his honors-student passenger.
Deplore this failed school board candidate as you will. Perhaps former mayor Cieslewicz retains some credibility. He writes in Isthmus:
I don’t like the direction of this school board … Their decision to eliminate school resource officers in the four high schools, and to do so before they had any plan regarding how to ensure school safety without them, was irresponsible. … The overall morale of teachers and administrators is low in large part because the administration fails to back them up in disciplinary issues. Nobody can learn in a chaotic environment.
Cieslewicz reminds us that Black leaders came out against the referenda early. They note that 90% of Black students still can’t read or do math at grade level, despite all Jennifer Cheatham’s new age nostrums.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: If enough of us vote No! perhaps the Madison school board will listen to Madison instead of the bullies at Freedom Inc.
Does any of this add up for YOU?
Blaska Policy Werkes 
39 responses to “Vote NO! for better schools”
The Gotch will not be voting “NO.”
He’ll be voting <i<HELL NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Gotch
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When I see those “Yes” yard signs, often perched next to the BLM & Biden signs, I see people who are easily manipulated. How could any thinking adult want to keep funding a system (no questions asked!) that clearly isn’t working for a large number of students and families?
Virtue signaling is easy, especially when you live in an epicenter of progressiveness. It’s not the same as genuinely caring (like Blaska does) about whether these kids actually get a decent education and are prepared to become functioning adults.
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(W)hether these kids actually get a decent education and are prepared to become functioning adults.
Sheesh, isn’t that what it’s i>ALL about?
Educated people think for themselves and make their own choices.
Any wonder why Lefty’s dead set against that?
The Gotch
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“Educated people think for themselves and make their own choices”
Yes, that was the case at one time, but schools & universities have become epicenters of liberal indoctrination.
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“schools & universities have become epicenters of liberal indoctrination.”
The Gotch refers to it as INDOCTRIcation…but tolerantly…
The Gotch
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So since when does a closed building not require heat and electricity, and maintenance?
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“So since when does a closed building not require heat and electricity, and maintenance?”
They need FAR less of all three (3).
Reconsidering the axiom that there’s no such a thing as a Stupid Question!
The Gotch
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Leftists frame it to sound like if we don’t keep funding this debacle, that we’re anti-school. Far from it!
Why should we continue to pay for Madison’s ineptness? They forfeit a chunk of federal funding because they lose 1,000 students to other school districts (hmmm, wonder why that is?), and WE should have to pay for it?
A huge chunk of kids can’t even read at grade level, for crying out loud. Madison school district and union coddles troublemakers with their cockamamie behavioral plans. Heck, they can’t even keep order at their own meetings.
Tell me, why should taxpayers have to keep paying for Madison’s ineptness?
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Produce a lousy product. Increasing costs. No security. Demoralized staff. Customers leaving in droves. Rinse, repeat.
All this for only 500$ per household?
How Progressive can you get?
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Bingo! And leftists dare to try to shame us for not wanting to support this debacle?
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In Ghostbusters, Ray Statz, (Dan Akroyd) is taking out a third mortgage when he turns to Dr. Peter Venckman (Bill Murray) and alarmingly says, “You’ve never worked in the private sector, … they expect results!”
Well, … the results are in. MMSD has worse minority achievement scores than Milwaukee. Lardheppus. Taxpayers grade teachers, … a D-. it’s the same old story; Public Sector Unions protect their stranglehold on the status quo gubmint gravy train and Leftist indoctrination ideology. Teachers’ Unions claim that public education in Wisconsin is dramatically underfunded. If they just had more money, they could turn it around. Taxpayer money then pours into our schools like a waterfall and there’s still no improvement. Rinse. Repeat. Referendum. It’ll eventually pass.
The real problem with our public education system isn’t money, it is the teachers’ unions. They do everything possible to prevent schools not only from firing lousy teachers, but also from rewarding talented teachers. Merit pay? The unions hate it. Private schools? Vouchers? School Choice? Even though everyone knows they deliver a better education than public schools, unions fight to keep as many kids as possible locked in failing public schools.
We’ve had whole schools shutting down so that lazy teachers can waste their time protesting on the taxpayers’ dime. During “The Daze Of Rage” one teacher even dragged her entire class down to the anti-Walker demonstration.
Want to improve education in your community? Then, you’ve got to take on the teachers’ unions once again. Selfish Teacher Unions are costing good Cheddarheads millions of tax dollars.
Public school teachers will begin to care about Wisconsin’s students and their parents, just as soon as we kick in our “fair share” of their union dues. This is most certainly true.
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I think you are undeniable correct about the Teacher’s Union. Which is why, when I ran for MMSD Board last year, I was the only candidate who didn’t see the point in wasting my time or dignity in asking for their endorsement. I’m proud of the fact that I actually managed to get MTI’s endorsement for BOTH my other opponents in the primary! (And no, I have no intention of running for MMSD board again.)
Black, on the other hand, did, and I’ll say he did it with his customary amusing aplomb.
Different strokes…….
PS: More details on the teacher who “dragged her entire class down to the anti-Walker demonstration” please.
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Wisconsin Teacher REPRIMANDED After Students Allowed to Protest Gov. Walker on Field Trip
Pr!ck should have been summarily $#!t-canned for being in violation of his contractual obligation to refrain from proselytizing his students.
He wasn’t the only one; this is textbook Lefty, which involves all manner of UNETHICAL RATIONALIZATIONS, but is acceptable because…welp…just because!
The Gotch
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This is interesting Gotch. Was the field trip timed to coincide with the protest or did they just happen to be there when it was going on? If the field trip was an innocent overlap of scheduling – or even if it wasn’t – seems to me that any good teacher would be SURE the students got to witness the protest. No question about that. So then it boils down to whether the teacher was actually encouraging the kids to take sides. Yes, they clapped, but was the teacher leading this or in any way encouraging them to take part? My nose would say yes, but it isn’t clear from the report. (Ask me sometime about my high school trips around town to work in support of a school referendum when I should have been in class.) It seems to me that this is the crux of the issue before calling foul and I can’t get this from the linked article. Do you know any more details about this particular case?
Needless to say, and especially with a child still in school, I do know of plenty of cases of blatant ideological brain-washing of Madison’s children by MMSD.
I think of one presentation, for example, by a gifted and engaging 8th grade MMSD younger but experienced teacher a few years ago. Got to know her a bit when we carpooled to that event. She proudly related to her supportive audience how she had all her students making posters in her class before sending them off to go the Tony Robinson protest at the Capitol. Similar, I guess, to the 3/14/18 gun protest whereby all of MMSD high schools coordinated a “student-led” march on the capitol by high school students. (Even elementary students were rounded up by their teachers/staff to take part in that school walk-out.) She mentioned how she was concerned that they’d just use the Robinson protest as an excuse to skip school, and was so proud when they actually attended the protest. I checked up on her about a year later and do believe that she may have lost her job over this and other similar activities. Or may have just been a suspension. Do you remember that one?
Too bad the school didn’t just correct her inappropriate behavior before parents had to complain. She seemed to be a truly creative and passionate teacher who had a lot to offer her kids, and would probably have been a great long-term asset to MMSD.
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Madison liberals will pass the referendum by a comfortable margin despite all the evidence against doing so. Why? Because voting against it will mean you’re anti-education–and, of course, a racist. This little trope–though patently false–has become so ingrained in Madison’s collective psyche not even the ghost of Dr. Freud could exorcise it. It’s the same reason Downtown and State Street are a boarded-up, ramshackle ghost town: Madison would rather slather paint on a vacant storefront than admit it screwed up by allowing BLM thugs to destroy what used to be the most vibrant part of the city. Once again, image trumps reality–the Madison way.
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At this point the boarded-up Square and State St. — an enormous, epic, and embarrassing failure on the part of the city’s and state’s Democrat weak leaders — point to this reality: They think Trump is going to win again.
May as well leave it all boarded up till November. Although if Trump wins again I think plywood is a weak defense. Hopefully our pathetically weak Governor has some plan to protect the State Capitol from the Burn/Loot/Mayhem group.
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AdamC – Very good point, hadn’t thought of that.
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I will vote NO but as a longtime Madisonian I have little confidence in fellow residents to smack down this ridiculous school spending bill which is totally overboard AND which we cannot afford.
The real question is why are we not voting on a school tax REFUND???
We should be getting money back…. the schools will have been closed for nearly a full year if not longer. Online education is an ineffective joke. Why is every school district employee getting paid full salary and benefits when schools are closed for a year or longer???
I assume the lights are off and electricity usage is way down. Why are they asking us for more money when it’s obvious all their buildings seem to be shut down indefinitely???
Will be voting NO but unless majority joins me I’ll likely be overtaxed and am already researching a future home outside Dane Co.
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“The real question is why are we not voting on a school tax REFUND???”
Dang yer eyes, AC, The Gotch had to get out last year’s property tax bill; as if he needed another reason to hoist…
The 2019 MMSD portion jumped 10.9 % over 2018. The only larger % increase was the Tax On Fools, I mean the Lottery and Gaming Credit, @16.2 %; c’mon, how f*cked up is it that?
Anywho, doing the same thing and expecting different results is what again?
The everLUVIN ironic kicker? We AREN’T doing the same thing monetarily, and while the results ARE different, they just aren’t in a…um…good way.
MMSD confuses effort (p!$$ poor, misguided, doomed-to-fail effort, but effort nevertheless) with results, as in societally beneficial-n-individually uplifting results.
Yet they blithely ask for more…Lots More!
The Gotch
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If the MMSD teachers & all employees had to be Madison residents, I suspect they would be producing a better product and the School Board would look and act more like Blaska then Mudrow. Because in large part they would be eat their own cooking and paying their own salary.
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Yup, I agree with most of you in saying that there should be no increase in our taxes to support the schools. Didn’t they come to us some years back whining and crying for money to fix up the schools? Where did that money go?
And with black children who cannot read, write, spell or do math at grade level, we are just feeding a system that does not produce any good results. Why do so many young black men go into a life of crime here in Madison? Cause thanks to the school system, it is the only job they are suited for.
And that statement is not me being a racist, that is the reality here in Madison.
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Irony indeed ! David says, “Cieslewicz reminds us that Black leaders came out against the referenda early. They note that 90% of Black students still can’t read or do math at grade level, despite all Jennifer Cheatham’s new age nostrums.”
True Dat ! A commenter on Cieslewicz’ Isthmus opinion says,
“Yikes!”
“I didn’t realize that the cost would be so high on my tax bill. And I agree with you on this school board. I don’t TRUST them to do anything of value for black KIDS. All they talk about is EQUITY, but I hear nothing about teaching kids to read or do math, the TWO THINGS that would actually MOVE THE NEEDLE on equity. They took cops out of school and act like that is some magic bullet. It’s not. Cops are still going to be in the schools. It’s mind boggling. I can’t wait for the next election to see who will run against this tribe of DO NOTHING social justice warriors.” Caps are mine.
To that commentator: A. Don’t hold yer breath -instead teach a family member CPR. B. Make sure you qualify for a home equity loan. Not for improvements -just fer taxes….
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That commentator would be me.
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Yes, that was me writing that comment. I may have to move out of Madison if the referendum passes. I will not be able to afford the taxes soon.
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AAR, your comment on Isthmus nailed it. Nope, actually it drove a SPIKE into their ridiculous and expensive referendum. Well spoken, sir !The DPI results have shown that schools need to teach, and teach well, in the future, yet policies and plans by the MMSD are still regressive and useless.
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“I may have to move out of Madison if the referendum passes.”
Your leaving would be a net loss to our Fair City
FEM…F*ck ‘Em All
The Gotch
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I’m voting hell no!
They want us to “invest” in a broken school system in which a portion of students can’t even read at grade level or for behavioral plans that coddle trouble makers. No thanks.
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These stupid fux are not worth the time it takes to comment on them
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What you subsidize you get more of, what you tax you get less of.
Put that on yard signs.
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“Put that on yard signs.”
In The Gotch’s locale, most yards are above capacity sign-wise; beyond that, actually, IMHO!
The Gotch
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Definitely a naybomb for me on both questions. Writing in Nikki Sixx for DA and other members of the ‘Crue for other unopposed county posts. Except for Vince Neil, he isn’t getting written in, he didn’t make the cut. I think I’ve seen “The Dirt” one too many times on the Netflix. Anyways, the remote learning is an abject failure and vacant schools are in no need of repair or tax dollars. If the foreclosed shooting gallery of a bungalow next to me can sit vacant with a recent winterizing, then so can East High. My goodness, a philanthropic private citizen with decent reading/writing or math skills could make a better dent in the achievement gap by simply offering tutoring to students on Craigslist! How the mighty MMSD has fallen…
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Heh! One of The Gotch’s FAVORITE tunes is Girls…Girls…Girls…cranked up to 10!
The Gotch
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Gotch when he’s not at the keyboard : 2:27, 2:51 and 3:08. And I know you weren’t really listening, Gotch, but I did have to work on that last riff (4:21). Those were the good old days, too bad they closed up our favorite place in Madison…… 😦 – Amos
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Our favorite place?
The Gotch
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Oh come on, Gotch. Videos don’t lie. Yeah, I know that East Wash has changed in the last few years, but good memories shouldn’t die that easy……..
On a more serious note, I just checked out Visions to confirm where they “used” to be – could have sworn I heard they had closed several years ago – and found this report form earlier this year. https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/madison-committee-s-recommendation-no-strippers-at-visions-strip-club/article_12787993-96bc-5009-a6e3-90268833f871.html
Nothing like what happened to the businesses on State St, but another example of how Madison government treats local employers who aren’t directly financed by taxpayers?
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Never been a big strip club aficionado and was only to Visions once (07/07/1987), some of the employees came to an after-set at a house I was tending; a long night’s journey into day…
Did attend The Dangle a time or two earlier on, to watch the…um…routine of an acquaintance; that Rita K. was somethin’ else!
Ah…misspent youth!
The Gotch
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From : “The worst week…” : “Despite all this, many aging white rock stars have been brainwashed by their managers into believing that America is such a dangerous place for black people that they vow to leave this country should Donald Trump be reelected. Stevie Nicks and her desiccated vagina are threatening to do it. Tommy Lee swears he will take all ten inches of his dignity and move to Greece. Bruce Springsteen says he will fart on New Jersey and run to Australia if Trump wins.
That’s right — white rock stars are so fearful that black bodies will ooze blood in America’s streets under a second Trump regime that they will fly first-class to predominately white countries in order to, I’m not sure, set an example for black people?”
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The district shut down the schools because it’s afraid of a covid lawsuit. They’ll never admit to it, because interests. MMSD enrollment dropped by more than a 1000 this year. Didn’t look, but those children’s parents probably left for the suburbs because MMSD won’t deal with violence in the schools. On top of that, the district is in total denial about it. What’s the birth rate in this town? Sub 0.6? The state is strapped for money. Not a great time for expansion.
Get real. There is no need for more schools right now. We can’t even use them, by law. Come back after everyone is vaccinated and/or immunity rates are >70%. Get the violence under control and stop denying it’s happening.
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For anyone considering quality of life in Madison keep in mind that BLM is just waiting for their next opportunity to show their rage.
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