Gayle Worland:

Tom Beebe has an idea for raising $850 million a year for Wisconsin schools, easing property taxes for homeowners and buying some time to devise a long-term solution to the state’s Byzantine school funding system — raise the state’s 5 percent sales tax by 1 percentage point.
It might not be politically viable. But supporters say at least it’s an idea.
“The conversation has to start somewhere,” said Dan Nerad, Madison School District superintendent. “There needs to be a public policy discussion about important questions around the school funding formula.”
The executive director of the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools, Beebe is the driving force — literally — behind the “A Penny for Kids” campaign. Since summer, he has logged nearly a thousand miles a month, he said, in a low-key, grass-roots campaign focused mainly in rural areas of the state. An online petition has garnered about 1,760 signatures.

Wisconsin k-12 redistributed tax dollars grew substantially over the past two decades as the chart below indicates: . More here.