FREEDOM,WI (WTAQ)- Freedom School District is picking up the pieces and asking questions after voters made a statement.
District voters made their opinions known by a vote with nearly a 2-1 margin, defeating both proposed referendums.
Question one asked voters for $66.7 million to build a new high school, renovate the elementary and intermediate/middle schools and make other improvements.
Voters voted No to Question One by a vote of 1811 to 1055
Question two asks for $740,000 per year over a five-year span for operating costs for the new high school.
Again voters said No by a vote of 1870 to 988
“If we would have lost by 100 votes, I think that would have been more understandable.”
Director of Business Services Maggie Gagnon said the district felt good coming into the vote, and will now have to have discussions they did not have yet.
“We really did not talk about what after, if the referendum did not pass. This is something we will be doing in the next couple of weeks.”
The District used multiple ways to reach voters.
Gagnon said they want to find out what circumstances led to the sound defeat at the polls.
“We are trying to first process the fact that it was unsuccesful by finding out what community members we did not reach, what we did not do to get the message across.”
Gagnon says school security measures were included in the budget, but discussions of what to do if the referendum failed have not taken place yet.
Along with exploring why the referendum failed, the District will also be talking about how to move forward.
