On Wednesday, May 5th, six of seven Madison School Board members turned in their budget amendments to the Superintendent’s proposed 04-05 MMSD School Budget. Along with their budget amendments, school board members handed in recommendation on how they would “fund” their recommended changes to the Superintendent’s proposed budget.

For example, Bill Keys proposed adding back into the Superintendent’s proposed budget 4 FTEs (2 custodians, 1 trade and 1 maintenance worker) and $200,000 back to the building maintenance budget. How does he propose to pay for his amendments? Keys is proposing a $460/participant fee for 4th and 5th grade elementary strings. This means that approximately 1,200 children would pay for something that benefits 24,888. Thankfully, no other School Board members has proposed such a burdensome fee.
The elementary strings fee Bill Keys proposes would be the highest fee ever paid for a MMSD activity and would be more than 5 times higher than any extracurricular sports fee paid this year even though the elementary strings budget is 1/4 the extracurricular sports budget ($2 million).
A file containing the full record of Board of Education Budget amendments can be found on www.mmsd.org or downloaded below:
Download file