To avoid arbitration, the QEO mandates that districts maintain the same increasingly costly benefits for teachers, Leistikow said.
“Districts are put in a terrible box,” Leistikow said. “Repealing the QEO will give school districts more flexibility in managing their benefits cost.”
The WEAC union, a staunch and powerful Doyle supporter, would like to see both the QEO and revenue caps eliminated, President Stan Johnson said. “It’s got to be part of a total package,” he said.
Doyle, however, favors keeping the revenue limits to hold down property taxes, Leistikow said.
Odden said repealing the QEO but leaving the revenue caps in place would leave school districts in a difficult position.
“Unless there’s a major change in the school funding formula, I wouldn’t predict that the QEO would be eliminated,” Odden said.
If it happened, the effect would probably be higher salary and wage costs at the expense of other programming and items in school budgets, including possibly job cuts, Odden said.
There will be no shortage of challenges dealing with revenue cap limits to growth in the Madison School District’s $332M+ budget during the upcoming 2007/2008 process, including the recently disclosed 7 year structural deficit.