The state Senate Education Committee is meeting today to again discuss Senate Joint Resolution 27, a bill that would require the state of Wisconsin to change its school funding formula by July 1, 2009. The bill does not indicate how the school funding formula should be changed, or which communities should benefit from the change.
The bill is the brainchild of state Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts. When Pope-Roberts last spoke in Waukesha, she told the audience she had a secret plan, like Nixons plan to end the Vietnam War, to “fix” the states school funding formula, hidden in her desk. The plan has yet to be revealed.
We may get a clue from Democratic activist Ruth Page Jones who is planning on testifying at the hearing. Jones is known to most people in Waukesha as the head of the increasingly irrelevant Project ABC. Project ABC spent much of last spring campaigning to change the states funding formula with the promise it would help Waukeshas schools. Even Pope-Roberts disagreed that any change in the funding formula was likely to be to Waukeshas benefit.
Jones is now president of Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools, newly independent from the liberal Institute for Wisconsins Future. The WAES is committed to the “Wisconsin Adequacy Plan.” Adequacy, as in they define adequacy by their wish list, and then the taxpayers get the bill.