The West Allis West Milwaukee School District sent me a survey asking my thoughts on funding initiatives. They need to increase budget for improvements — both immediate and long term.

I wonder how many citizens have enough information to make recommendations?

I answered “unsure” to most of the questions. I came back to the same questions over and over again:

1. How are you leveraging the existing constraints? What outcomes are you getting?

2. How are you scaling what works?

3. With so much educational material online and free, how do you bring more of that content into the classroom?

4. What is driving the need to increase funding per student? How much of that increase is tied to maintaining and upgrading existing physical capital? How much of it is labor market demands?

5. If additional funds were not approved via referendum, how might the school district leverage private partnerships to educate? And if that’s not possible, how will they weigh the cost of cutting programs?

These are just my questions. I can only imagine what questions someone with kids might have.

When I realize how much I don’t know, I begin to realize that the only decision I can make is the decision to learn more. I wish that was an option on the survey.