The bureaucratic ‘skim’ of federal school funding

Dan Benson & Dave Daley:

It takes more than $50 million a year for hundreds of Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction staff to manage the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds that flow to local school districts around the state, budget figures indicate.

The figures — which don’t include spending or staff devoted to grant administration in either Washington, D.C., or in local school districts — bolster arguments by those who say the state educational system is too burdened by paperwork and diverts resources that could be better used to help students and to assist their teachers.

For the 2015-’16 school year, $877.63 million in federal money flowed from Washington to the DPI, according to a September 2015 Legislative Fiscal Bureau memorandum to state Rep. Joe Sanfelippo (R-West Allis). Of that, more than $823.8 million was passed through DPI to “subrecipients,” mostly the state’s school districts, in the form of federal grants such as Title I for disadvantaged students, school lunches, teacher training and other programs.

The rest of the money — nearly $53.7 million — went to “administration,” or, as DPI spokesman Tom McCarthy said in an email, “the operations budget of administering federal programs.”

Ted Neitzke, the former superintendent of the West Bend School District with more than 22 years in the education field and now head of a regional education agency, said the paperwork to administer federal grants in Wisconsin is overwhelming.

“DPI — they got a jillion people working there that are just checking boxes,” Neitzke said. “The paperwork — it needs to be checked 52 ways to Sunday.

“I can’t even imagine how many personnel they (DPI) have whose sole job is just checking boxes,” Neitzke continued. “The unfortunate fact is that cash does not move to the classroom as fast as it should. We should be results-driven, not compliance-driven.”