Wisconsin School funding getting precarious Budget removes option for districts to cap increases for teachers’ salaries, benefits

Alan Borsuk & Amy Hetzner:

The three-legged stool is now down to one leg.
Will that leave either schools or taxpayers wobbly? Will the last leg fall, too?
In any case, Wisconsin’s old order for how to fund schools is coming to an end, and what comes next remains to be decided, perhaps two years from now when the next state budget is adopted. Pressure for an overhaul is growing, even as economic realities are providing strong pressure to hold down budgets.
When Gov. Jim Doyle signed the state budget for 2009-’11 on Monday, the leg of the stool known as the qualified economic offer fell away. The QEO meant school districts had the option of capping increases in teachers’ pay and benefits to 3.8% a year.
A second leg – the state’s commitment to fund two-thirds of general operations of public schools – has been weakening over the past six years. It looks as if it now will be the state’s commitment to fund something over 60% of school costs but not the full two-thirds.
That will leave only the third leg – revenue caps – in force. There will still be limits on how much school districts can collect in state aid and property taxes combined, a rule that will keep total spending growth restricted in general, but with widely varying impacts on property tax increases.
The three-legged stool was created in the mid-1990s, when Republican Tommy Thompson was governor. The goal was to put brakes on rapidly rising property taxes by increasing state aid, while holding down increases in overall spending through revenue caps and the threat of QEOs.