Wall Street Woes Whip Whitefish Bay Credit Rating

At my high school graduation in Maryland a long long long time ago, the speaker delivered what may have been the shortest truth ever told to a assemblage of college-or-career-bound kids.

"Have a ball," said then Ag Secretary Orville Freeman (his daughter was in our senior class), "but pay your bills."

That should be the guiding message for five Wisconsin school districts whose managers gambled big, and lost, on risky ventures a few years ago, but are resisting facing the music.

The Whitefish Bay School district, we learn, is absorbing another credit downgrade because it got involved in high-risk, high-flying investments, with borrowed funds, that turned toxic.

West Allis-West Milwaukee and Waukesha join Whitefish Bay, Kenosha and Kimberly Area district, too - - and there seems to be no bailout on the horizon, save from the local property taxpayer.

Gambling with public funds should have been a non-starter, but like a lot of homeowners and starry-eyed investors, these few school boards, their staffs or consultants got irrationally exuberant (read: greedy).

Eventually they are going to write off the losses and settle their debts, lest they continue to pay lawyers and accountants with money that should be going for textbooks, tubas, teacher salaries or good, old-fashioned tax relief.

The party is over.

Pay your bills.