Wisconsin K-12 Spending Commentary

Sunny Schubert:

You may have read some news stories lately about how some school districts are doing quite well under Gov. Scott Walker's budget, despite a drastic decline in school aid.
Monona Grove is not one of them.

"We're not great," said MGHS Superintendent Craig Gerlach of the district's financial situation.

Districts that have prospered under the Walker budget constraints "may have been in a better situation than we were beforehand," he said.

The Walker budget is slightly more rewarding to school districts that have growing student populations, he said, "but we're more in the 'slightly declining' enrollment situation."

The district spends about $13,000 per student, Gerlach said, but will receive about $600 less per pupil this year than last.

MGSD will also lose about $1.2 million in other state money.

The budget is "relatively balanced" this year, partly because the district received $850,000 in federal job stimulus funds, but that is one-time money that won't be around next year.

MGSD did save some money because teachers are now being forced to contribute to their own health insurance and retirement funds.

Total Wi school funding in 1998 was $7,527, not the $4,956 reported by Sunny in her recent column. Corrected for inflation that's $9899. In 2008 average spending was (correctly reported) $10,791. In real dollars that's an 8% increase, less than 1% per year, not the whopping 64% increase reported by Sunny.

So were did that 1%/year go? Not into the pockets of teachers, who have been losing ground to inflation in the last decade, and not into smaller class sizes (average class size has been creeping up in Wisconsin.) No, any employer will tell you that health care costs have been increased by more than 50% over this period - and school districts feel the same effects. The fact that cost increases are slowly squeezing the life out of our schools is another reason we need to fix the broken health care system in this country.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 29, 2011 1:09 AM
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