On October 17, the Legislative Committee of the Madison School Board voted unanimously to recommend that the district join the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools (WAES) The organization is a diverse, statewide coalition working for comprehensive school-funding reform.
Partners in the coalition believe in the following core principles that serve as “membership criteria” and the rationale for a school-finance reform proposal based on the Adequacy model, the Wisconsin Adequacy
Plan.

The four core principles are
1.
Sufficient resources
Wisconsin’s public schools need a system of funding that provides all children with the resources needed to provide them with the equal opportunity for a quality education guaranteed by the Wisconsin Constitution, the Supreme Court and federal and state statutes.
2.
Resources should be linked to high standards
A new system of funding should guarantee a base amount of
resources to educate regular students to high standards and also
provide enough resources to give the same opportunity to meet high
standards to children with special education needs, those who live in
poverty, students with limited English skills, and those with special
needs determined by the size, location, and/or demographics of their
school districts.
3.
State tax reform
New resources as part of school-funding reform should come from
statewide — rather than local — taxes in a way that lowers property
taxes while increasing fairness to all taxpayers.
4.
Local control
A new system should build on Wisconsin’s successful tradition of local control by trusting individual communities to decide how
additional funding will be utilized and by assuring accountability and improved student performance.
More information about the organization is available at http://www.excellentschools.org.
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