Rafael Gomez held a “Parent and Taxpayer Perspective on School Budgets” last evening. Participants included: Carol Carstensen, Peter Gascoyne, Don Severson, Jeff Henriques, Shari Entenmann, Jerry Eykholt and Larry Winkler. This 70 minute event is well worth watching (or listening via the audio file).
- Carol discussed the “three legs” of school finance and passed around an article she wrote recently “State Finance of Public Education and the MMSD Budget” [112K pdf version];
- Peter Gascoyne suggested that we embrace long term financial forecasts as a means to guide our planning. Peter also expressed doubts about any material change to state school financing of public education over the next five years (I agree with this assessment).
- Don Severson mentioned Madison’s historic strong financial support for public education and the need to be as efficient as possible with the District’s $321M+ budget.