Reaction to Waukesha School Budget Cutbacks & State Financial Aid

Amy Hetzner:

About 500 parents, students and spectators packed a school auditorium Monday night, pleading for help from local legislators in dealing with a financial situation that some predicted would devastate the School District.

"If we can pay for a stadium for a bunch of overpaid baseball players, we can certainly pay for an education for all of our children," Heyer Elementary School parent Cheryl Gimignani told the six legislators participating in the forum in North High School's auditorium.

The event came just two days before the School Board is set to approve $3.4 million worth of program and service cuts to balance its 2007-'08 budget.

Administrators have recommended eliminating the equivalent of 62 full-time staff positions, which would raise class sizes, delay band and orchestra instruction and nearly eliminate elementary guidance, elementary library and gifted programs in the district.

They blame the school system's financial woes on perennial discrepancies between what the state allows the district to raise under revenue caps and its actual expenses. A separate law, the qualified economic offer, virtually guarantees teachers annual compensation increases of 3.8% while revenue grows by about 2%.

But the legislators offered little hope that much will change, at least in the near future, and said the school system would be better off looking for cost savings than expecting more money from Madison. Any change to the state funding system for schools likely would not benefit residents in Waukesha County, who already pay more in taxes than they receive back in aid from the state, they said.

"I do not want to change the formula," said state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin), "because if we tamper and change the formula, the school districts that I represent will lose, not gain."

Lazich's comments illustrate the unlikely nature of significant state K-12 finance changes that would benefit property rich school districts like Madison and Waukesha.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 13, 2007 5:12 AM
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