I sent this email to comments@madison.k12.wi.us this evening
I am writing, first to thank you for the time and effort you devote to the MMSD.Links: Gym Instructor Reductions | Admin Compensation IncreasesSecond, I'm writing to find out why some of you voted recently to increase administrative compensation ($589K), while at the same time eliminating gym instructors AND increasing student fees?
Perhaps there is an opportunity to re-think this? I would suggest telling the administrators to find 589K from their budget to fund the comp increase. In return, the student fee increases can be rolled back and perhaps a few more gym instructors retained.
Let's fund student curriculum & programs first, then deal with administrative costs.
Best wishes -
Believe me when I say that I never intended to spend my time over the past three years studying the MMSD budget, even though I have worked professionally with very large budgets. But I love public education, and I love the fine arts. My husband is principal bassist in the MSO and a music teacher in MMSD. My daughter is a young violinist in WYSO’s Concert Orchestra and middle school student at Velma Hamilton. I live in a city that invests heavily in its future as a center for the performing arts, and I love my city and the diversity of its neighborhoods.
So two years ago, when Superintendent Art Rainwater proposed to eliminate Grade 4 strings, one of the school district’s gateway programs, I was alarmed. I began to ask questions, and I’ve learned a lot. Over the next several months, I'll be commenting on this website in more detail about next steps for the budget process.
With all the focus on cuts to education, more than anything else I believe what is needed now is a vision for the Madison public schools and the specific funding (public investment in schools) that would be needed for the future of Madison’s public schools over the next 3-5 years. This budget cycle Board members were unable to get to the point to seriously discuss whether to go to a referendum or not, because they do not have a roadmap to guide them. I was at these meetings and witnessed the lack of a decisionmaking framework that comes from not having a vision and roadmap.
From my personal business experience and my recent immersion in the District’s school budget process, I’ve learned there are no shortcuts to budgeting. It’s critically important to have a vision, measurable overall and specific goals and objectives for that vision and strategies to reach your vision. Madison’s School Board has some of those pieces, but I’m hoping they take the time to develop and to refine their vision for the next 3-5 years and that they engage the community in that process.
I've watched for three budget cycles as the School Board's budget process in the spring revolves around managing the Superintendent's proposed cuts to the Madison School budget. These cuts represent less than 5% of a $300+ million school budget. Yearly, the school budget is approved without any information on what departments actually will be doing with the money next year.
Madison's schools and the School Board need to find another way to work through the yearly budget process. However, until the School Board has developed a 3-5 year vision for the schools with measurable goals and objectives by school department don't be surprised if we end up in the same place next year - panicked parents and a chagrined community distrustful of its School Board's decisions.
Madison needs more from its School Board members than simply threats of cut services if we don't pass a referendum. The Board needs to understand that the support of grass roots efforts in the community will be critical to passing a future referendum.
I think it’s critically important to have the grass roots effort and support of community in passing a school referendum. I also think the School Board needs to have more thorough, public budget deliberations before deciding there is a budget gap and focusing on the “lightening rods” in budget cuts.
With all the focus on cuts to education, rather than on what is the vision for and what specific funding (public investment in schools) is needed for the future of Madison’s public schools over the next 3-5 years, Board members were unable to get to the point to seriously discuss whether to go to a referendum or not. Board members also lacked information from the Administration on Department goals and objectives for the next year. Without this information, the community will have a hard time supporting any increased investments in public education.
I attended nearly all the board meetings and public forums on the budget. In January the Board received a one page forecast of a $10 million gap followed in mid-March with a list of proposed cuts. I think the community needs to know what the vision and roadmap to that vision are for the next several years. We need to have public discussions about what that roadmap should look like. The community needs to play a critical role in helping to develop that future vision.
From my personal business experience and my recent immersion in the District’s school budget process, I’ve learned there are no shortcuts to budgeting. It’s critically important to have a vision, measurable overall and specific goals and objectives for that vision and strategies to reach your vision. Madison’s School Board has some of those pieces, but I’m hoping they take the time to develop and to refine their vision for the next 3-5 years and that they engage the community that process.
A great article including links to build a coalition in support of school finance reform. From the FightingBob website which is a great resource in and of itself for progressive news: http://www.fightingbob.com/article.cfm?articleID=219
Pro-public education forces are joining together to reform Wisconsin’s outdated and unworkable school finance system.
Organizing for adequacy
By Tom Beebe
Wisconsin’s public school system is arguably the most important component of our high quality of life. It has historically been part of the “village” that raises intelligent, motivated, and successful participants in both public and economic life.
The quality we have known for decades, however, is under siege. Unless we act soon to change the way we fund public education, more schools will close, school districts will begin to disappear, communities will wither, and our children will lose sight of the future we promised them.
How do you know if your kids and their schools are under attack and at the mercy of a funding system that no longer works? First of all, answer these seven questions:
1. Is there more crabgrass on the playground than last year or is that leak in the roof getting larger?
2. Do you have enough librarians, nurses, and school psychologists to meet the needs of all of the children in your district?
3. Are you paying more in fees or, perhaps, paying fees where you never paid them before?
4. Does your child still have access to music, art, and physical education?
5. Have teachers in your district been laid off, or have retiring teachers not been replaced?
6. Can your children take the classes that will get them into the college of their choice?
7. Is your school district facing consolidation, not because it is educationally sound but because it will have to shut the doors if it does not consolidate?
If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, chances are pretty good you live in a school district that is suffering thanks to Wisconsin’s school-funding system. In most cases, children are at risk and, in many cases, communities face uncertain futures at best.
You are not alone. Virtually every district in the state is suffering, through no fault of its own, because the system is too complex, unequal, and inadequate to give all children, no matter where they live or what their special condition, an opportunity to meet Wisconsin’s rigorous academic standards.
It is worth repeating: Yes, bad things are happening to you, but the problem is not in your school district. Classes are not too large because of your administrators. Teachers’ salaries are not capped because of your school board. And your students’ textbooks do not still refer to the Soviet Union because of bad parents.
The problem is the statewide system used to fund public education. It is a system that pays no attention to the real needs of young people, has no relationship to the goals and standards of our communities, and uses a 19th century measure of wealth to deliver state aid.
And because the problem is statewide, the only way to solve it is at the state level: Throw out the entire school funding system and replace it with one that links resources to the needs of children and the standards of our towns, cities, and villages.
That system exists and it is called “adequacy.” It is a nationwide school-finance reform movement that is growing at the grassroots level in this state through the work of the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools (WAES), a diverse, broad-based coalition of more than 60 teachers’ unions, school boards, parent groups, and faith-based and civic organizations.
Under the adequacy model, funding levels are based on the actual amount required for the infrastructure and resources schools need to educate children to reach state and federal educational goals. It means determining the actual cost of providing a sound, basic education, including staff, materials, and facilities, and creating a structure to deliver it.
Partners in WAES worked together to put this theory into practice in the Wisconsin Adequacy Plan embodying these six principles:
1. Property tax relief for virtually every district in the state;
2. Long-term growth toward full adequacy goals;
3. A foundation level of general funding for every student in the state;
4. An increase in all categorical aid¾special education, English Language Learners, transportation, and poverty;
5. A revenue adjustment to offset the economic and educational dis-economies of scale in small, rural school districts; and
6. Maintenance of local control with the option for school districts to spend above adequacy levels with a school board supermajority vote.
If you appreciate this kind of common sense approach to funding our public schools, you need to work for school-finance reform. And you need to do that work with other people who appreciate quality public schools that offer a future full of opportunities to all our children, not just the few whose families can afford it. You need to become a partner in the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools.
(Editor’s note: You can join the alliance through the WAES website or by contacting Beebe at (414)384-9094 or iwf@wisconsinsfuture.org.)
May 25, 2004
Tom Beebe is education outreach specialist with the Institute for Wisconsin's Future in Milwaukee.