Does public K-12 funding need review?

The problems appear worse each year for school districts attempting to balance budgets

Editorial by Sean Fitzgerald

 For whatever reason, the business community often doesn’t concern itself much with the affairs of K-12 education.

Even though local schools are preparing the next generation workforce and most business owners pay the largest portion of their property taxes toward school districts’ account receivables, headlines about education don’t resonate loudly among business leaders.

Call it ambivalence – or maybe we’re just worried less now that the Obama administration is running the country.

But there’s a critical funding dilemma facing K-12 education in Wisconsin, and the problem has been exacerbated more and more during the past few budget cycles.

As one of our top stories of 2009 profiled in the recent January edition of B2B, communities throughout the region have watched their schools enter into the annual budget planning process projecting deficits ranging from several hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions. Faced with such grim prospects, school boards and administrators threaten parents with the possibility of closing down selected neighborhood schools, cutting particular sports and extracurricular activities, eliminating those courses considered as electives, and slashing teachers from the payroll.

The exercise of paring down a school district’s annual operating budget has increasingly meant laying off teachers, a measure taken by several districts in 2009. Communities across the Fox Cities from Kaukauna to Neenah eliminated teaching positions for this current school year, and many of those same districts have proposed cutting additional teaching jobs for the next 2010-2011 school year.

It’s not the solution most school board members or administrators want to see, but it’s evolved as a necessary last resort in the face of a state-legislated funding system for public education that caps the amount property owners can be taxed.

One solution entering budget discussions less and less is to put additional spending up for public referendum, asking voters to go to the polls to authorize more revenue for schools than their state-imposed spending caps would allow through the tax levy alone.

Perhaps that’s a result of fewer successes in recent years. Last year, referenda to enhance districts’ operating budgets failed in Appleton, Oshkosh, Oakfield and Ripon.

Smaller amounts of support were approved in Oshkosh and Ripon, but only for additional taxes to fund long overdue maintenance projects in school facilities.

During the first half of 2010, only two districts are taking their cases to voters to borrow large sums for school construction and improvement projects. Green Bay is asking its taxpayers to borrow $16.7 million this April, while Hilbert is making its fifth attempt at a borrowing referendum in six years, asking voters this time to approve a $4.7 million package in February.

The future of public education financing is spiraling downward in Wisconsin as districts run into increasingly higher operating and facilities maintenance costs that are outpacing the spending increases allowed by state law.

Where will this education funding conundrum lead? An under prepared workforce? An inability for our communities to compete economically with emerging regions around the globe?

These aren’t scenarios for which our business community can watch from the sidelines and sit around to await the unfavorable results. After making changes to eliminate the qualified economic offer to teachers earlier this year, it’s about time Wisconsin also takes steps to reconsider its system of funding K-12 education to districts across the state. The penalties to avoiding such a discussion are too great to ignore.

 Alla tua back again

The leftovers of holiday feasts and treats are long digested by now. With New Year’s resolutions well kept and most of our health indicators headed in a positive direction, it’s time once again for our annual Alla tua Salute! Corporate Wellness Awards.

Our highly recognized program enters its fifth anniversary this year. As in the past, a panel of local health care and benefits experts will evaluate all entries and determine our winners. So please don’t delay to nominate your company for our 2010 awards. We’re eagerly anticipating a record number of entries for this year.

For information on nominating your employer, check out the ad on page 37 of this issue or go online at www.newnorthb2b.com for complete rules and an entry form.