What to do about Fitchburg?

Last week a group of residents in the Swan Creek development in Fitchburg submitted a petition to move the children from that neighborhood out of the Madison School District and into the Oregon School District. According to an article in the Fitchburg Star, moving the kids to Oregon would reverse a 2003 decision that transferred the neighborhood to the Madison School District. The request has been denied before.

The article says parents in the neighborhood want to move their kids to Oregon schools so there is more certainty for their kids. They feel like they are always going to be on the table to be shifted to another school. They also feel like they were misled about schools when they bought their homes. If this is true, it is unfortunate that the developer misled them, but it is not the fault of the Madison School District.

Honestly though, for people like me that bought homes in Madison near schools that are now being threatened with moves and closings partly because of growth in Fitchburg, it's hard to feel sorry for the residents of Fitchburg. They bought a house in a large city that doesn't have a school district of its own. Of course they were always going to have an uncertain future and it probably wasn't going to be a fun process given the ridiculous state funding program that makes school districts like Madison addicted to fast-growing areas like Fitchburg in order to maintain a decent level of funding.

I do feel bad that they were misled by their developer and about the overcrowding problems at Leopold. But then I look at the referendum vote totals from last spring and it's hard to feel sorry for them. Fitchburg residents voted down every single question on the ballot.

They were asked to build a new school at Leopold to accommodate the growth in the area and they voted it down 837 to 813. They were asked to support exceeding the revenue cap to help run the new school and they voted in down 1017 to 632. Worst of all, they were asked to support additional funds for maintenance of Madison schools and they voted it down 849 to 799.

If the Fitchburg area residents don't want to help themselves attain their own school and don't want to support basic school needs like maintenance, perhaps we should let them go to the Oregon School District. But of course, there is still the problem that Madison needs the new kids in Fitchburg to maintain state funding levels. Something the state legislature needs to fix soon. So what to do?

It seems like the residents of that area would only be satisfied if they had their own school built in that area. But again, they bought a house in a city without a school district. Shipping their children elsewhere for school should have been considered a given. So should a new school be built there or should it be built on the far west side of Madison where this is also growth?

The Madison School Board and the candidates running for the two seats available this spring have a tough battle facing them. They really do need to work out a long-term solution soon both for the residents of Fitchburg and the residents of Madison. Both areas would be served well by a long-term solution, something the residents of Fitchburg say they want. But if the long-term solution has a large price tag, and how can building new schools and classrooms not, will the residents of Fitchburg even support it?