Gov. Jim Doyle will unveil his 2009-2011 budget proposal Tuesday. With the state facing a nearly $6 billion deficit, school districts are bracing for cuts. However, concern over K-12 funding isn’t new. Districts have been complaining for years that the school funding formula, which was designed to have the state pay two-thirds the cost of education, is leaving districts short of cash. WUWM’s LaToya Dennis examines what many people say are the system’s defects.
The way Wisconsin funds its schools is considered an enigma. Jack Norman prefers the phrase…
“Mathematically Elegant.”
Norman works for the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future. It’s a non-profit organization that researches economic policies and it wants the state to change the way it funds schools. Norman says the formula was developed in the early 90s and was a good five year plan, but it wasn’t designed for sustainability.
“I liken it to buying a used car that you think you’re gonna need for about five years. And then 16 years later you’re still driving that same car. Well it’s a wreck at that point and that’s sort of how it is with our school finance system,” Norman says.
The formula was designed to level the playing field between rich and poor districts. They’re divided into three tiers, based on how much they decide to spend per student. That usually depends on the property wealth of the district. The state then pays a certain percentage of the spending, giving more to poorer districts; and in fact, sometimes wealthy districts end up losing aid. Now that you‘ve had a primer on how the system works, let’s talk about what many see as its problems. Jack Norman says there are two that are major. One is that the wealth of a district may not tell the whole story about the people who live there.
“Many school districts in northern Wisconsin are property wealthy because they have lakes that are high priced resort land, but the year round residents are actually low income,” Norman says. Because those districts appear wealthy overall, they get less state aid for their students and therefore have to rely heavily on property taxes to fund their schools. Norman says a second concern impacts every district. “The problem is with what’s called revenue caps,” Norman says.
Those state revenue caps limit the amount of money districts can raise and spend on schools, unless voters agree to pay more in a referendum. The caps were designed to protect taxpayers. But Norman says the problem is that there’s a built in deficit. On average, school districts can increase their revenue by around three percent, but they’ve needed at least four percent to keep programming going from year to year.
“There’s a gap of a percent or a percent and a half and that gets cut by cutting things. That’s why all over the state rich district or poor class sizes are larger, there are fewer offerings, fewer special programs because school districts have to cut because of this imbalance between the revenue limit and what it takes to maintain programming, “ Norman says.
Norman says revenue caps should at least be kept in line with inflation. Another big factor the state considers when awarding aid is enrollment, and quite a few districts, including Milwaukee, have seen enrollment declines. The drop here is due to changing demographics and the school voucher program. The decline makes the district look wealthier than in the past, while struggling to educate more students with special needs. Those changes have translated into Milwaukee homeowners facing possible double-digit increases in the school tax levy. Earlier this month, a coalition of groups introduced a plan requiring the state to reduce the burden on taxpayers. Tonight, the governor will outline his proposal, and the current economy won’t make things easy.
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