Funding for K-12 education ‘broken,’ school leaders say

by Beth Kraft

At a press conference held on Thursday, June 25, at the CESA 10 office, the message from local district administrators regarding public school funding was clear—enough is enough.

Speaking out against provisions concerning education in Wisconsin’s pending biennial budget, nine school district superintendents, including Mondovi’s Cheryl Gullicksrud, converged in Chippewa Falls to share a variety of concerns with the ways in which they say the budget will affect funding for their schools.

Small school districts will be particularly hard-hit by the pending legislation, several superintendents said, as they are left with very few, if any, areas in the budget to make cuts.

The proposed expansion of the voucher school program is particularly troublesome, the group stressed, noting that public schools stand to lose nearly $8,000 per high school student. Just $6,600 in state funds follow a public K-12 student.

Connie Biedron, Altoona superintendent, said the state budget on the table may be the “tipping point” at which decisions made in Madison are going to begin negatively affecting students locally.

“I think we’re going to look back at this budget in years to come and see it as a turning point,” Biedron said.

The superintendents said they have tried talking to their legislators, but their concerns seem to be falling on deaf ears.

Several area lawmakers were invited to last week’s press conference, including State Assembly reps Chris Danou and Warren Petryk and state senators Terry Moulton and Kathleen Vinehout, but none attended the event.

Portions of the budget concerning education seem to be motivated by politics and money, the superintendents argued.

“It’s driven by ideology,” said Abbotsford superintendent Reed Welsh of the budget provisions. “It’s not data-driven, it’s not research-driven.”

Neillsville superindendent John Gaier noted that many small school districts have already been forced to request referenda to increase revenue caps, which negatively affect taxpayers and are a burdon on small school districts.

“The state is backing away from its responsibility,” he said of public school funding.

The voucher system is creating a “reverse Robin Hood effect,” Gaier said, in which the poorest districts, in terms of property values, are having funds taken away to give to private voucher schools. 

All three local school districts, Mondovi, Gilmanton and Eleva-Strum, have each passed at least one referendum for operational expenses in the last five years.

Eleva-Strum last fall passed its second revenue override, while Gilmanton’s referendum is on a recurring (or indefinite) basis—the toughest kind to pass.

“Thank goodness for how cherished those schools are in those communities,” commented Gaier.

There aren’t many private schools in the Chippewa Valley, the group pointed out, meaning that taxpayer dollars are essentially leaving the local area to fund students’ education elsewhere in cities like Milwaukee, Kenosha and Racine.

Zero increases to state funding compounded by declining enrollment in smaller school districts in recent years mean that salaries have remained stagnant in many districts in an effort to keep pace with rising operating costs.

“These freezes are significant for a small district,” said Cadott superintendent Damon Smith.

Attending the press conference in one of her last days as Mondovi’s district administrator, Gullicksrud said attraction and retention for staff has become difficult at Mondovi in recent years because the district cannot afford to increase wages. Bus drivers are especially tough to come by right now, she said.

“We’re losing people to just run our buildings,” Gullicksrud noted.

Several of the superintendents argued that laws that govern public education don’t even belong lumped into the state budget. The majority have been inserted with no public input in the form of hearings or otherwise.

“If they did it through a public policy-making procedure, it wouldn’t get passed,” said Smith.

He noted “there will be winners and there will be losers” among school districts based on the contents of the state budget.

However, based on the concerns presented at last week’s press conference, it seems that the small, rural districts are coming out on the losing end.

Funding for education is supposed to be “fair and equitable,” Welsh pointed out, but the current funding formula doesn’t reflect that.

Voucher schools are not required to meet the same state testing standards as public schools, the superintendents noted, yet they will now be entitled to additional funding.

“If they’re going to have state funding, it needs to be an equal playing field,” Biedron said.

Colby superintendent Steve Kolden noted he’s not against parental choice, but funding two school systems in Wisconsin using public tax dollars just isn’t going to work long-term.

He said funding for his district looks to decrease over $100,000 this coming school year as public school state aid is reduced across the board.

“That’s a teacher-and-a-half,” Kolden said.

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau has estimated that Wisconsin’s public schools will lose $600-$800 million in the first 10 years of the proposed voucher expansion.

As a result, rising local property taxes and further referendum votes to support local public schools may become the norm, superintendents explained, making it very difficult to maintain current programs and services.

Kolden noted a gradual “slip” in the quality of public education could come out of cuts to public education, and it could have a trickle-down effect on other areas.

The administrators present agreed that quality education is linked to improved mental health through available services and keeping prison populations down. Those things could change if public education continues to be under-funded, they said.

Aside from the voucher expansion issue, superintendents also pointed to other budget provisions they feel spell trouble.

Among them are allowing homeschooled students to participate in extracurricular activities in the districts they reside in and eliminating the requirement for teachers to obtain a teaching license.

Welsh expressed concern over the potential for two sets of rules and discrepencies over eligibility if homeschooled student-athletes were allowed to participate on school teams.

Lots of kids have stayed in school and kept their grades up because of sports, Welsh pointed out. He feared districts could run into issues with students dropping out because of bad grades, only to be allowed to participate as a homeschooled student.

Eliminating teaching license standards was also a flash point for the local superintendents.

Allowing individuals with no bachelor’s degree to teach essentially “dilutes the value” of education, argued Loyal superintendent Cale Jackson.

Many districts have said they do not intend to hire teachers who don’t hold a college degree, but it bothers them that it was passed into the state budget in the first place.

“We need to take a stand and we need to address these things,” urged Welsh.

Kolden and others noted they have held numerous conversations with their area representatives, but nothing seems to change.

The superintendents’ closing message was that legislators need to hear from the public in order to right the ship—there’s nothing more that school leaders can say to influence the decisions made in Madison.

“They need to start understanding the long-term impact of where we’re going,” Kolden said.