Was there a failure to communicate in St. Charles District 303?

It was all about communication both before and after St. Charles Unit District 303's referendum flopped. Superintendent Don Schlomann knew it Tuesday night. Leading referendum opponent Brian Litteral said Wednesday he's known it all along. The road to a different referendum outcome in the future may lie somewhere between their thoughts on why the referendum failed and what must happen next.

Schlomann on Tuesday night said the referendum was only a segment of the Summit 303 process. That segment failed to receive public support in the vote, but that won't stop the district from implementing all the suggested improvements summit participants called for that don't require the passing of a bond referendum. That will involve two years of tailoring the district curriculum and program offerings to better suit today's education environment of special education support, gifted programs and classes that target careers students may already be eyeing just to name a few changes. In between, Schlomann and the school board will try to improve communication with residents.

"I certainly think bad timing with the economy played into this," Schlomann said Tuesday. "But I also think we didn't communicate our needs to the community as well as we should have."

Litteral and his fellow members of Citizens for Fiscal and Academic Responsibility argued the communication process that led to the referendum was lacking the whole time. On Wednesday, Litteral said the results at the polls prove that.

"The whole process is what I would consider incompetent consensus-building," Litteral said. "Their whole premise was new buildings make better students. That's just willful ignorance of what the people were asking for. We told them to improve academics and create smaller class sizes. Then they marched all that aside in lieu of just building stuff. It led us to the conclusion this referendum wasn't really about what we wanted. When people keep telling you what you want, and it doesn't really feel right, that's a red flag. They need to put the marketing machine away. If they get back to improving academics and working on being good faith stewards of our intentions then how can I possibly have a problem with that."