Walk until you smell it. Keep walking until you step in it.
                                                                                     – Proverb
 
1. School board members unanimously vote to double their own salaries.
 
2. A school superintendent makes a third of a million dollars per year plus benefits to include guaranteed percentage annual salary increases, annual retirement contributions by the district totaling over $45,000; plus medical, dental and life insurance benefits, plus travel expenses, plus moving and living allowances, plus thirteen sick days per year, plus 30 vacation days, plus other days. The two year contract passes the board unanimously without discussion. 
 
3. A district financial services officer states, “It really puts us back on the top of our competitors,” referring to school district staff salaries in comparison with neighboring school districts, thereby establishing money over academic standards. 
 
4. A $278,000 contract is approved to monitor the ‘feelings’ of elementary students in thirty-two schools by having them select an emoji on a computer screen once a week. The software uses ‘natural language processing and machine learning” reviewed remotely by unspecified personnel to render anonymous responses and determine emotional trends. Parents are not mentioned. The contract renews after three years for $133,000 per year. 
 
5. A school board member is arrested downtown for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest in a public incident videoed by witnesses in a city which denies body cameras for police. Colleagues of the defendant assert police acted inappropriately based on hearsay and amateur evidence and condemn police for the arrest. Inventive terms such as “retroactive justification”, “pretextual charging” and “high-discretion charges” are used to assume an elevated and authoritative tone against police in the performance of their sworn duty. 
 
6. After approving two property tax referendum in 2024 involving $507 million for facilities and $100 million for operations, raising district property tax levies by 20.4%, another 8.5% property tax increase is proposed with additional referenda foreseen to address employee benefits and increased wages while district enrollment declines. The State of Wisconsin is blamed for not allocating more money for public schools. 
 
7. Salary compression reconciliation involves quite a few syllables to represent how $3.8 million will be used to give teachers with five to ten years experience an additional $200 per year while teachers with 30 to 40 years experience will receive an additional $5,000 or more per year which still amounts to less than $200 per year calculated against tenure. 
 
8. District taxpayers with no children or whose children graduated decades ago continue to pay thousands in property taxes and suffer property tax increases for which they receive absolutely no benefit whatsoever. 
 
9. No emoji is offered by the school district to describe how taxpayers feel. 
 
10. No emoji is offered by the school district to describe the aroma. 
 
John Fons
Republican Candidate Wisconsin Assembly District 79