Hard times in Beloit: Deliberating educational finances in an era of scarcity
with Robert Asen, University of Wisconsin-Madison
February 28, 2013
3:30 p.m.
University Center 317
Downtown Phoenix campus
The pronounced localism of American education means that local community wealth significantly shapes district deliberations about finances. In absolute and relative terms, Beloit residents lacked money, which constituted a material and symbolic constraint for school-board members as they deliberated about taxes and budgets. In this presentation, Asen examines budget and tax deliberations in Beloit across the two years of fieldwork, which arose as a sustained topic of debate in 18 board meetings, committee meetings and public hearings.
Robert Asen is a professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a public deliberation expert and a co-recipient of a half-million dollar grant from the William T. Grant Foundation to study public deliberation and decision-making in three school districts in Wisconsin.
