Category Archives: Local News

by | September 17, 2007 · 4:24 pm

School Funding Action: Capitol Visit 9/18

Tuesday September 18th is an in-service day for MMSD and a group of parents have decided to take this opportunity to bring their children to the Capitol to remind our elected officials of the need to do a better job funding education.

The details and some notes about talking points below:

First, the simple details (flier here):

  • Meet at the State entrance 10:00 AM, 9/18.
  • Senators Risser and Robson, Representatives Pocan, Pope Roberts and Berceau have all been contacted and are expecting us. The legislature will convene at 11:00, the elected officials have full schedules and we may end up speaking to staff in one or more of the offices.
  • MMSD is also represented by Senators Erpenbach and Miller and Representatives Travis, Black and Parsi. We will try to contact them in advance.
  • It has been suggested that the Chairs of the Assembly Education Committee (Brett Davis) and the Assembly Education Reform Committee (Donald Pridemore) also get visits (more on that below).
  • Under the circumstances, I think it would be a good idea to bring short, personal letters that we can leave with the legislators or their staffs (letters from kids would be great! My 12-year-old son is writing one letter addressed to “Senators and Representatives” and we will bring multiple copies).
  • With the tight time frame we will probably divide up (and conquer!).
  • Bringing signs would be good too (not allowed in chambers, but OK in hallways).

    That should take care of the who, where and when. The what got very complicated these last few days. I’m going to try to make this as simple as possible but need to give some background (skip down to the talking points at the end if you like).

    The state finance system is a mess, a big mess. The Wisconsin Legislature is in the middle of negotiations on the biennial budget but none of the proposals on the table address the fundamental problems of the school finance system, the big mess. However, except for some relatively small differences as of Thursday September 13, the parties all back different versions of something very much like the best proposal anyone put forth. Points of agreement include items like the standard annual revenue limit increases, increased SAGE funding and special education aid; all of which would help Madison’s schools and many other districts. This would be good news except for the fact that the GOP want this considered separate from the budget negotiations and the Democrats don’t want to separate anything.

    So all the parties have essentially agreed on the structure and level of school funding, but conflict remains. This may change by Tuesday when the Assembly is scheduled to take up their k-12 bill.

    I don’t think it is a good idea for advocates of school finance reform to take sides in this conflict, but use your own judgment. What I do think we all should do is thank the Legislators of all a parties for supporting in one form or another the good things this budget will provide for the schools and continue to push for systematic reform, to demand that they do better.

    The structural gap between allowed revenues and expenses in the current system, even under the best-case scenario with this budget cycle, will continue to create annual cuts in programming and services of about 1.5%. Special education aid from the state will still only cover about 30% of the costs and bilingual reimbursements from the state will cover less than 12% of the costs. Almost all schools and districts that take advantage of the proven SAGE class size reductions will have to find cuts elsewhere to pay for this wonderful but underfunded program. Over 100 districts have held referenda in the last year. Districts with declining enrollments and rising enrollments face different but equally destructive shortfalls under the current system. This system, the system the budget won’t touch, wreaks havoc in the biggest cities, the small towns, the rural districts, the North woods… Throughout the state educators and students find themselves struggling each year to do more with less.

    Representative Sondy Pope Roberts has introduced a Joint Resolution (with 60 co-sponsors) calling for the Legislature to create a new system with funding levels based on the real costs of education, sufficient state resources for districts to meet mandates and enough flexibility to address the diverse needs of districts in the state. This is the best shot to move real reform forward this session. A hearing by the Senate Education Committee has been scheduled for November 15th. The Assembly Education and Education Reform Committee Chairs have not agreed to schedule hearings.

    Based on the above, these are my suggested talking points:

    Thank you for supporting the band-aid relief in this budget cycle.
    o Revenue limit increases
    o SAGE funding increases
    o Special Education funding increases

    The system remains broken
    o Structural gap between revenue limits and costs
    o Underfunded mandates and programs
    o Diverse needs inadequately addressed
    o Schools and children are struggling
    o Wisconsin cannot remain competitive if this continues

    Real reform needed

    Pope-Roberts Resolution will move real reform forward

    Support the resolution

    More information links:

    WisPolitics Budget Blog (best source for both background and up to the minute info)

    MMSD Budget Info

    Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools

    Carol Carstensen’s brief explanation of the state school finance system

    Past Present and Future MMSD Budget Cuts

    Thomas J. Mertz

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    Filed under AMPS, Budget, Local News, Pope-Roberts/Breske Resolution, School Finance, Take Action

    by | September 12, 2007 · 5:28 pm

    White transfer story a stretch

    Letter to the Editor,

    White transfer story a stretch

    The headline in Sunday ‘s paper — “You can’t transfer, white kids told” — could just as easily have been “School district refuses to re-segregate” or “School district complies with spirit of Brown decision.” Of course, that would not be nearly as provocative as the one designed to sell more papers and allow members of the white community to believe they have fewer privileges than families of color.

    School district officials are not ignorant. They know that if every transfer request is granted, some of our schools will become even more racially segregated and inequitable.

    Also, it is interesting that your story focuses on the 140 denials rather than the 286 acceptances and, more specifically, on the 77 out of 140 denials that used racial balance as a reason for the denial.

    Incidentally, my own daughter was denied a transfer in 1999. I guess if she were white we could have had a feature story about it.

    — Gloria Ladson-Billings, UW-Madison professor, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education

    See also here:

    Thomas J. Mertz

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    Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Gimme Some Truth, Local News

    by | September 8, 2007 · 6:33 pm

    Why the State Budget Matters to All of Us

    From the Capital Times

    But school district spokesman Joe Quick said several provisions in the Assembly Republican budget could still create shortfalls or other problems for Madison schools.

    Chief among those is funding for SAGE, the program that creates smaller class sizes for at-risk students. As part of a deal to allow the Milwaukee school choice program to expand, Doyle proposed increasing funding for the SAGE program by $250 per pupil. Assembly Republicans cut that money, Quick said, which would mean $716,000 less for Madison schools, Quick said.

    Another GOP proposal aimed at reducing health care costs in schools would hit even harder. The Republican budget would freeze the amount local schools could raise from property taxes at $200 per student, instead of the $264 allowed by current law, if districts adopt health care plans that are more expensive than the state’s insurance plan.

    That provision would force a $5 million cut because the district has already approved its contract with Madison teachers, Quick said.

    “We’ve got contracts in place. We can’t lay off people now” to recoup those losses, he said. “Any cuts that would have to be made would get pushed off until the 2008-09 budget.”

    This madness has to stop. Make your voices heard (info here)

    Thomas J. Mertz

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    Filed under AMPS, Budget, Local News, School Finance, Take Action

    by | September 8, 2007 · 1:42 am

    Superintendent Search

    From MMSD, BOE president Arlene Sliveira

    Community input sought for new superintendent qualities

    An Invitation to Our Parents, Students and Community

    The Board of Education has initiated its search for a new superintendent of schools to replace Art Rainwater, who has announced his retirement as of June, 2008. To provide counsel to us in this important process, we have retained the services of Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, Ltd., a search firm that specializes in assisting boards with the identification and selection of superintendents.

    A very important step in this process is the identification of the characteristics we will be seeking in our new superintendent. We invite you to participate in the identification of these characteristics by attending a Community Information and Input Session and/or completing a Leadership Profile Assessment form which can be found below.

    The Community Information and Input Sessions, which will be facilitated by a member of the consultant firm, will be held on:

    Wed. Sept. 19 at 10:00 a.m. at the Exhibition Hall at Alliant Energy Center (1919 Alliant Energy Center Way)
    Wed. Sept. 19 at 7:00 p.m. in the auditorium at Memorial High School
    Thu. Sept. 20 at 7:00 p.m. in the auditorium at La Follette High School
    These sessions will likely be 60 to 90 minutes in length. Every effort will be made to provide Spanish and Hmong interpreters. You can avoid a parking fee by telling the parking attendant that you are attending a Madison School District function.

    Thank you in advance for your assistance with this most important task.

    Sincerely,
    Arlene Silveira
    President, Board of Education

    Spanish of text above
    Hmong of text above
    Leadership Profile Assessment Form
    The forms below are the same. You can either,

    complete a form and submit it electronically,
    or
    print the form , complete it by hand, and either bring it with you to one of the Community Information and Input Sessions or mail/fax it to the address/fax number indicated on the form.
    All forms must be submitted by September 20.

    More information
    Superintendent Search Process — news release
    Community input sought for new superintendent qualities — news release

    I just gave it my first try — this is hard!

    The form is OK, although I have problems with some items and problems with the whole rank 1-14 approach (I’d much rather rank each item on a scale, say 1-5 than give an absolute 1-14 weight). This item:

    Understands the respective, yet complementary, roles of the Board and the Superintendent

    really bugs me. The implication is that this is fixed and absolute. It isn’t and it shouldn’t be. The individuals involved and the circumstances they face create a dynamic that continually changes. The line between undue deference to administrators and micromanagement by Board members isn’t clear and never will be. With only 14 items, this is a waste of space and time. What would it tell anyone if we all rated this #1 (or #14)? A waste.

    The toughest one is:

    Tell us your vision for the School District for the future.

    That’s the one that made me give up and decide to go back later after some thought.

    What’s your reaction (use the comments)?

    Thomas J. Mertz

    1 Comment

    Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Contracts, Local News

    by | September 6, 2007 · 2:15 pm

    Two Legged Stool

    The Wisconsin school finance “system” is often called a “three legged stool,” with the legs being 2/3 funding from state revenues (1/3 from local and federal sources), the QEO to limit teacher contract costs and the revenue caps to limit local property taxes (note that this is mostly about tax issues and not about education).

    The Legislative Fiscal Bureau just released an analysis that shows 43.8% of the districts in Wisconsin receive less than 65% of their revenues from the state.

    Two legged stools are designed to fail. So is our school finance system.

    Thomas J. Mertz

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    Filed under AMPS, Budget, Gimme Some Truth, Local News, School Finance

    by | September 4, 2007 · 8:32 pm

    Charter Problems in Oshkosh and Appleton

    $600,000 of federal funding for charter schools that the Appleton district was counting on and $150,000 of funding for Oshkosh is in jeapardy.

    At issue is the degree of autonomy the charters enjoy. In order to receive the monies, the schools must give the federal authorities “proof showing that the charter schools have autonomy in such areas as curriculum, budgeting and governance.” In Wisconsin, charter schools are legally “instrumentalities” of their school districts, an arrangement that may make it impossible to meet the federal requirements.

    Barb Herzog of the Oshkosh district explains the predicament:

    Barb Herzog, executive director of administration for the Oshkosh school district, said while all three schools already have their own governing board, the district doesn’t have an interest in making charter schools totally independent of the school board because there aren’t funds to do that.

    Herzog said if the charter schools were to become totally independent they would have to become responsible for staffing, building, insurance and other costs on their own.

    “Even though the charter grants are substantial, it still wouldn’t be enough money to do that,” Herzog said. “They rely on support from the district.”

    Never count your chickens until they hatch; never count your federal money till the check is cashed.

    Thomas J. Mertz

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    Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Local News, National News, No Child Left Behind, School Finance

    by | September 4, 2007 · 8:13 pm

    Quote (paraphrase) of the Day

    From State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster’s “back to school” interview (more here).

    One thing the superintendent says schools need as soon as possible is a state budget. School districts have a sense of apprehension she says because they don’t know if allocated state aid will meet growing operational costs.

    Thomas J. Mertz

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    Filed under AMPS, Budget, Local News, School Finance

    by | September 1, 2007 · 2:25 pm

    We are Not Alone #15

    One of the things about school budgeting in Madison (and Wisconsin) that is not well understood is that the “budget” passed by the Board of Education in the Spring or Summer is at best a compilation of educated guesses. The headline from this story on the Onalaska district says it all:

    Onalaska school budget set … sort of

    The maneuvers with the MMSD budget this Spring confused many, partially because it wasn’t obvious how much guess work was involved (the fact that in order to “balance the budget” administrators and Board members bandy about numbers like $2746.34 as if they were real exacerbates this confusion). Here is a partial list of items that were projections or guesses this Spring in Madison:

  • How many students in the district
  • Where these students would be
  • The terms of the teacher contract
  • The terms of the educational assistant contract (unsettled for over a year and still pending)
  • The level of allowed revenues per student under the revenue caps
  • The definition of state categorical aids
  • The amount of state categorical aids
  • Private and governmental grants
  • The costs of utilities

    • Under these circumstances it is understandable that the district can and must “find money” for many unanticipated expenditures as the year goes forward and the Board and/or administration revisits decisions and projections. These kind of “changes” only appear problematic because few grasp how contingent and tentative the “budget” is.

    MMSD has historically produced budget projections within 1% of the actual total expenditures (they are rightly proud of this), but individual budget lines vary greatly from the projections (I did some random checking some months ago and found multiple variances of 15% or more). Even the 1% in a budget of nearly $340 million is $3.4 million.

    Usually by this time of year (even in year when the state biennial budget is passed) some of the pieces begin to fall into place. This year the political dickering over the state budget has left much unsettled as the school year begins. Back to Onalaska:

    One problem with the budget is no one knows where the money will come from or how much local property taxpayers will have to cough up for the year. That is because the Wisconsin Legislature has not come up with its own budget and set the amount it will give to local school districts. The state pays approximately two-thirds of the school budget.

    “There are numbers on the page but we won’t know the big numbers until October,” said Larry Dalton, the district’s finance director. He predicted a local tax levy of about $11.2 million, which would mean a higher levy than last year but a much lower tax rate for taxpayers. Dalton said the rapidly rising equalized valuation in the school district — now more than $1.6 billion — means the tax rate will be 2.2 percent lower than last year.

    If the state comes through with about the same proportion of costs as it did last year, Onalaska taxpayers would have another historic low in the local tax rates for schools at about $7.26 per thousand in property value.

    This last line points to another area of confusion, one I intend to explore at greater length in another post. For now I just want to emphasize that often in Madison and elsewhere, school districts both reduce their mill rate (level of taxation) and increase their spending (due primarily to a growing tax base).

    Thomas J. Mertz

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    Filed under AMPS, Budget, Local News, School Finance, We Are Not Alone

    by | August 21, 2007 · 10:41 pm

    Where is the Outrage? Where is the Anger?

    From Marjorie Passman (excerpted in the Capitol Times, full version below).

    Where is the Outrage? Where is the Anger?

    Has anyone noticed the education budget proposed by the State Assembly? If so, where is the outrage, where is the anger?

    Because of the Republican promoted revenue controls on school districts, Madison schools have been compelled to reduce services by roughly 60 million dollars over the past dozen years. For the first time they have increased class size in elementary schools; the opposite of what should be occurring to promote increasing quality education, and next year’s budget cuts will reach into every curricular and extra-curricular area – there is nothing that will be left untouched. So how does our State Assembly plan to help? It proposes to fund our schools at $1200 less per student than the national average. Wisconsin should be THE leader in public education, not less than average. Our children deserve better.

    According to the Wisconsin’s Department of Administration, rough estimates of revenue limit reductions under the Assembly 2007-09 Budget Plan seem to indicate that MMSD will be reduced by $4,932,419, and we will lose 66 teachers as a result. In fact, all school districts will suffer. Ashland’s total revenue loss is $444,902 with 6 fewer teachers, the Green Bay area will see a $4,008,270 loss with 54 fewer teachers, and Chippewa Falls will be down $966,865 so 13 teachers will have to be released.

    Lest parents think that they can move out of Madison to nearby school districts, think again. The combined losses of the McFarland, Middleton-Cross Plains, Monona Grove, Oregon, Sun Prairie and Verona School Districts comes to a whopping 5 million dollars with a corresponding decrease of 59 teachers. There is nowhere to run.

    And don’t fall for the claim that more money is actually going into education. More money may be going into the general fund for tax property relief but it is not earmarked for education. We all know by now that such undirected spending never finds its way into our children’s classrooms.

    No longer can anyone claim that our state spends big bucks on education, that government spending must be brought under control by slashing taxes. It is certainly time to bury these old misconceptions, and to end this stubborn impasse on educational spending. The new school year is upon us. Shouldn’t the citizens of our state know what their school budgets will be before classes begin?

    Our children deserve better than this political nonsense.

    Marjorie Passman

    There is a lot of outrage in our house, and from groups like, Take Back the Assembly. Now we just have to keep spreading the outrage!

    Thomas J. Mertz

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    Filed under AMPS, Budget, Local News, School Finance

    by | August 10, 2007 · 6:38 pm

    Republican Education Offer

    Not an offer you can’t refuse.

    The Republican’s have sketched their new line in the sand on the education portions of the state budget (the linked document references this Legislative Fiscal Bureau analysis).

    There is a very little movement and the GOP is still clinging to limiting the growth of the revenue caps to $200 per member. The rhetorical bait and switch on school funding, state contributions and property taxes also remains.

    Keep those cards, emails and calls going.

    Thomas J. Mertz

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    Filed under AMPS, Budget, Local News, School Finance, Take Action