Over the weekend, Democrat State Senator Mark Miller took to the airwaves to explain what happened. Here is Miller's (albeit clumsy) explanation of why Madison area districts are taking a big hit in this budget, from the "Here and Now" show:
Now, the pages of this blog have not been very friendly to Miller and his cohorts during the budget process. But on this one, I think he's getting a bad rap - and explaining why helps illustrate the constant struggle the state has with the school finance formula.
(CAUTION: What follows is an attempt at explaining school aids, and may be dreadfully boring. If it gets too bad, feel free to go over and read the Dogs With Mustaches blog and come back in 15 minutes.)
Let's look at the purpose of the school aid equalization formula. As its name suggests, it exists to "equalize" the relative wealth of districts. The theory behind the formula is that kids in property poor districts should have access to the same resources as kids in property rich districts (like Madison), even if the local district doesn't have the same property values on which to draw. Thus (and this is a substantial generalization), the state grants more money to property poor districts and less money to property rich districts.
(For a full explanation of the complexities of the school aid formula, take about four caffeine pills and read this.)
For example, take a school district like Peshtigo, with per pupil property values of $275,466. Peshtigo receives about 81.6% of their budget from the state. On the other end of the scale, the Madison Metropolitan School District boasts property values of $844,000 per student, and thus receive about 41.25% of their budget in state aid. (Since you were wondering, the Geneva J4 school district, with per pupil property values of $3.3 million, receive the lowest in state aid, at 16.9%. Beloit gets 85.1% of their budget paid for by the state, since apparently nobody there has discovered indoor plumbing.)
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