The latest Madville Times poll finds little evidence to support the contention that folks who voted No on last week's failed $16.98-million bond issue don't support education. The poll asked about "Plan C: What building project should Madison Central propose next?" 95 of you took time to click your preference (thank you!):
- Renovate high school, drop the gym (38%, 36 Votes)
- Same $16.98M plan; just campaign harder! (36%, 34 Votes)
- No plan; we can't afford any building! (17%, 16 Votes)
- Other (click below to submit suggestion) (8%, 8 Votes)
- Build new gym, drop renovations (1%, 1 Votes)
As usual, margin of error is about as big as the broadside of a gym, but these numbers suggest that, even among the crotchety, contrarian blog-reading crowd, more than 80% want to fix up the high school building. Those who want to drop the new gym from the plan and focus on high school renovations are roughly matched by those who want to retry the $16.98-million plan that got 49.91% support at the polls last week. Only 17% take the absolute position that we can't afford any renovations right now.
Even if Governor Daugaard succeeds in cutting state aid to our schools by 10%, it appears there is overwhelming recognition that Madison High School needs some improvements. The hard part will be identifying the renovations we can't do without and prioritizing the improvements that fit into a surely tight budget.
I recall one letter to the editor during the campaign saying we can't get everything we want, but that we need to compromise to find a workable plan to serve the students. Amusingly, that letter came from someone advocating the $16.98 million new gym and renovation plan. I would suggest compromise means talking with the community, determining some common priorities, and designing an alternative plan that avoids the board's "domino effect" and makes it possible to do one thing, two things, or a whole bunch of things, step by step and independently, depending on how much money is available each year under Governor Daugaard's "new norm." Such a sequential renovation may not be architecturally optimal, but it may be the compromise we can realisitically afford and agree on.