John Hartford, “Dont leave your records in the sun” (click to listen or download)
Last week, Milwaukee Superintendent William Andrekopoulos strung together the words “State, “Finance,” “Schools,” “System,” and “Broken.” At AMPS, we’ve strung those words together in a variety of ways ourselves or quoted others using these words on more than one occasion.
It thought it might be fun to see who else has said this or similar things about school finance in Wisconsin, who else has given voice to the truth that in Wisconsin, the school finance system is broken.
Here we go, not comprehensive and in no particular order.
We need to do a better job of looking out for taxpayers, and we will. It means making work pay, by encouraging and fostering economic development that pays family-supporting wages and respects the environment. It means ensuring healthy communities, through public health programs and a new, more powerful and consumer-friendly, organization of how we buy prescription drugs and health insurance. It means fixing our broken system of school funding, and making an ironclad guarantee to every Wisconsin child that this state will give you a good start in life a quality education that enables you to succeed in tomorrow’s economy.
The school finance system is broken and needs to be fixed or the quality of public education will suffer significantly.
Cooperative Education Service Agency #3, “Can Wisconsin avoid an educational crisis?” 2007.
Everyone agrees that the school funding system is broken.
Wisconsin’s school-funding system is broken, it needs to be thrown out, and the Legislature needs to come up with a better plan…
First, it’s clear that the school funding system is broken at the state level. I encourage you to join me in calling upon Governor Doyle and our state legislators to fix this broken system that every year forces school boards around the state to cut budgets.
Wisconsin’s K-12 education funding system is definitely broken. After 15 years of living under revenue caps and a funding formula that leave school districts with an approximate 1% deficit every year, our schools are increasingly finding themselves having to cut programs and staff. This is especially true in our rural schools where declining enrollment is an issue.
The Oshkosh school system isn’t broken; the state funding formula is. I disagree that we have to “fix” our school system because of the budget problems the funding formula creates. Until the state changes the formula, we should ask through an annual referendum to exceed the state budget caps.
The current system of funding public education in Wisconsin is broken.
Milwaukee Board of School Directors President, Peter Blewett, 2008.
The school funding system is broken and it was created broken.
Professor Emeritus, Economics, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, John Simonson.
Partners in WAES believe that Wisconsin’s school-funding system is broken beyond repair and should be linked to the needs of children, giving each of them—no matter where he or she lives—the opportunity to meet rigorous academic goals.
School Funding is Broken
- Mandates, needs and costs continue to grow faster than allowed revenues.
- Annual service and program cuts of 1-2% over the last 14 years.
- Over 100 districts in Wisconsin have held referenda in the last year.
- After 14 years of cutting, essential services are in danger.
The system is broken. We’ll have to raise taxes.
We want to be clear that we are painfully aware of the broken system of funding public education in Wisconsin,
Wisconsin has conducted several studies on how we can fix the funding of our education system. Isn’t it time that the governor and Legislature start looking at those recommendations and consider other ideas instead of foolishly tinkering with the same old broken system?
The school finance system is broken and needs to be fixed or the quality of public education will suffer significantly.
Dean Isaacson, Platteville School District Administrator, 2008.
Wisconsin is extremely fortunate to have one of the best public education systems in the country. But our school funding system is badly broken, and we are headed in the wrong direction. School districts throughout the state are cutting programs and staff and closing schools. Children have returned to school this fall to find fewer academic choices and larger class sizes.
If we are going to jump-start our economy, we need to find a better way to provide schools with resources to meet the needs of children so we can be assured that we are turning out future workers who can help our state’s businesses thrive.
Dan Burkhalter, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, 2007.
The state school finance system is “broken.
Pete Etter, interim superintendent, Black Hawk School District, 2007.
To be continued.
Thomas J. Mertz
AMPS 