More than half of the public school referendums in the state failed to gain approval from voters in Tuesday 's election, sending some districts back to the calculators and calendars.

Of the 61 referendums, 30 passed and 31 failed.

In the tiny Weston School District, a request of $644,000 was denied by 31 votes, 395-364, while in expanding Jefferson, the voters decided the district did not need to spend $45.6 million for a new high school.

In both cases, superintendents thought the schools ' messages, while unsuccessful, were clear: Pay now or pay more later. The districts may return with recalculated referendums in the fall because the formula for state aid is not going to change.

"It was very disappointing, " said Tom Andres, Weston superintendent. "(The defeat) impacts our kids, our staff and the future of the school. "

"It is the responsibility of the adult generation to do what they can to educate the youngest generation, " he said. "I hear all this talk about infrastructure, the bridges and the roads, but the most important structure I can think of is the schools. This is a hard one for us. I don 't believe people are anti-education, they may just feel that Weston needs to dissolve or consolidate. "

Wednesday, Andres was looking for cuts, considering everything from combining bus routes to cutting co-curricular activities, textbooks and staff development. "We will do what we can do to survive at the mandated minimum level, " he said. "We may readjust a bit and come back in November " with another referendum.

Will ask voters again

That 's the same route Jefferson is expected to take, said Superintendent Michael Swartz Wednesday while contemplating a 1,665-1,417 loss on the district 's $45.6 million question.

"My recommendation to the board will be to go back to the electorate in September or November, " said Swartz.

Before that, however, "We have to go to the people who voted no and ask them to step forward and tell us why, so we can address those issues, " he said.

"We can 't fix it if we don 't know what 's broke, " he said, "and it doesn 't negate the fact that we have an aging, defective and deteriorating building. "

Mark Luebker, district administrator of the Plum City School District, sounded stunned Wednesday when asked to assess the strategy that led to the biggest referendum clobbering in the state. Plum City 's request for $1 million over three years was denied by a vote of 747 to 96. The district 's Web site was a model of no-frills directness in describing the need to exceed the state mandate in revenue.

Luebker blamed the economy.

"Partly it is due to people being very, very concerned about the economy across the nation, " he said. "They do understand there is a need for schools to have additional income, but there is also a concern about whether they are going to pay their bills.

"We 'll make the needed cuts for the 2008-09 year and re-evaluate the need for a referendum because the problem isn 't going away. "

'Scared' by the economy

The grass-roots-marketed building plans of the Southwest Wisconsin Technical College in Fennimore were approved by voters in a seven-county area by a margin of about 60 percent to 40 percent, school officials said. With 97 percent of the vote counted, the $31.9 million question cruised with a 12,559-8,807 margin.

"The economic conditions really put a scare into us, " said Pete Bickel, SWTC spokesman, of the school 's first referendum.

"We know it was a tough debate for some people. We were looking at this as a mandate for education, honestly. The strength of it was that it was truly a product of many years of assessing the community 's wants and needs. "

And also what it didn 't want, he added, explaining that 's why you won 't find a gymnasium or auditorium in the school 's building plans.

"They didn 't even make the first cut, " Bickel said.

Looking for cuts

At Wisconsin Heights School District, where a $5.6 million referendum failed a year ago in an acrimonious contest, an $800,000 referendum failed Tuesday, something a new superintendent will face in the fall.

School Board member Tommy Turk said the board hasn 't decided what cuts are necessary because of the loss, by a vote of 1,025-950, but he predicted school budget difficulties statewide because of the mandated revenue caps.

"It 's too bad that state can 't figure out that the formula isn 't working, especially for declining-enrollment schools systems, " he said.