Doug Erickson:

On the spending side, there also are changes since June.

The operating budget was predicted to be $376.5 million in June. It is now $380 million, in large part because School Board members have decided to spend about $2 million this school year of the $9.27 million in one-time proceeds the district is getting from a successful Downtown tax incremental financing (TIF) district.

Most of the $2 million will be spent on maintenance projects, facility improvements and technology infrastructure.

The district’s operating budget funds basic operations and includes all instructional programming. The district also has what it calls its “all funds budget,” which is $448.9 million and includes expenditures like debt service.

Much more on the Madison School District’s 2016-2017 budget, here.

Per student spending is $17,791 for 25,231 students 

Madison School District Administration (PDF)

Salary and Wage Notes:

Step Advancement (background) is funded in v3.0 of the budget. The employee handbook calls for ‘step advancement’ on existing wage/salary schedules. The cost of ‘steps’ is estimated at 1.75% of total wage/salary rates. ($4,528,492)

Lane Movement (background) for Professional Learning is funded in v3.0 of the budget. The handbook calls for ‘lane movement’ on the existing salary schedule. Lane movement is budgeted for as a lump sum estimate. ($400,000)

A Base Wage allowance is funded in v3.0 of the budget up to the limit allowed per statute, which is 0.12% base wage increase for July 1, 2016 agreements. ($240,000)

Attrition rates very significantly across job types, with food services workers (17.8%), security assistants (17.2%), and the clerical/technical unit (15.0%), having the highest rates over the past year

The attrition rate among teaching staff, the largest job type in MMSD, reached a five-year high at 9.4%, driven by an increase in retirements. This falls below national teacher attrition rates, estimated to be around 11%

Typical attrition rate for MMSD is significantly greater than the position reductions in the proposed budget

Madison spends more than $17K/student, though I’ve not seen a total budget number for some time…

Additional documents: Proposed administrative changes and a look at school staffing.

61 page 4MB PDF. Much more on the District’s budget, here (about $18K/student).

Property tax levy and budget adoption slides.

2017-2018 Madison School District Budget Planning Document. Calendar

3.7MB 2016-2017 Budget Book (PDF):

Focus on Reading in Kindergarten through Second Grade
For the first time, all kindergarten through second grade teachers at our highest needs schools will meet quarterly in grade levels for professional development and time to plan and collaborate together. They will also use new computer adaptive software designed to supplement core instruction and ensure students are building foundational skills in the early grades.

MAP and ACT in Context
MAP: In all categories but one, we are far above the national average for growth.
ACT: More students than ever are taking the ACT. With participation rates 25% above the national average, scores are in the 60th percentile nationally. Participation increased by 8% overall.

GOAL 1: Every student is on-track to graduate as measured by student growth and achievement at key milestones.

GOAL 2: Every student has access to a challenging and well-rounded education as measured by programmatic access and participation data.

Launched targeted professional development and planning on early reading for all teachers in kindergarten through second grade and computer adaptive software aimed at early literacy at our 13 highest need elementary schools

Selected elementary math curriculum and new reading resources for middle schools

I’ve always found it amazing how often the District swaps curriculum.

The emphasis on reading is welcome, but are we making progress in addressing Madison’s, long term, disastrous reading results?

It has long been a challenge to find the District’s total spending. This year, while somewhat improved (page 12) still lacks “Construction” spending.

Two budget tables are presented below and on the following page. These tables provide a high level overview of the 2016-17 budget proposal and are intended to serve as an introduction to the budget discussion which follows.

The first table, 2016-17 All Funds Summary, captures all budget activity for MMSD with the exception of the Construction Fund (reported elsewhere to maintain comparability). This table is designed to report on the ‘total budget picture’ for MMSD.

The second table, 2016-17 Operating Funds Summary, sharpens the focus to just the operating funds (defined as General Fund + Special Education Fund, less interfund transfers). This fund captures the basic operations of the district. It excludes the Debt Service, Construction, Food Service and Community Service funds. This table is designed to report on the ‘core operations’ of MMSD.

Presumably, all taxpayer dollars spent by the Madison School District support it’s mission, educating our children….

Madison plans to enroll 25,076 students for the 2016-2017 school year. The Administration plans to spend $_____ per student.

Jason Galloway:

Still, the university’s athletic board approved an operating expense budget of nearly $122 million for 2016-17 at its meeting Friday, an increase of more than $8 million from the previous year.

Some of the jump comes from the decision to add three new departments to the athletic department’s budget — camps and clinics, the W Club and University Ridge Golf Course — that will add about $6.1 million in both revenue and expenses.

Amber Walker:

Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham said the stories about shortages were “hard to hear” after the district continued investment in staffing.

“We made some (strategic choices) that we were going to invest more in teachers and shift the balance from SEAs,” she said. “I wonder if that is the pain we may be experiencing and hearing about in the district.”

Cheatham told the board that the special education team has a process for evaluating staffing needs in classrooms beyond the beginning of the year and a reserve of money is available to hire more staff. Cheatham suggested that the board wait until its November conversation around staffing to make those decisions.

“My concern is we have one week before the levy has to get established,” she said. “We agreed as a group that we were going to take a big step back and (assess) what are our goals when it comes to staffing… inclusive of special education.

Related links:

The Madison School District’s recent spending history

A District Administration 2017-2018 budget summary (PDF).

Enrollment history.

25,239 students were enrolled in the taxpayer supported Madison School District during 2016-2017. We plan to spend roughly $19,598 per student during the 2017-2018 school year.

This is far more than most K-12 organizations, and despite our long term, disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Reading Coalition (PDF), via a kind email:

As we reported recently, districts in Wisconsin, with the cooperation of DPI, have been making extensive use of emergency licenses to hire individuals who are not fully-licensed teachers. Click here to see how many emergency licenses were issued in your district in 2016-17 for elementary teachers, special education teachers, reading teachers, and reading specialists. You may be surprised at how high the numbers are. These are fields where state statute requires the individual to pass the Wisconsin Foundations of Reading Test to obtain a full initial license, and the emergency licenses provide an end-run around that requirement.

These individuals did not need to pass the Wisconsin Foundations of Reading Test, which would be required for full initial licensure *districts include individuals that are listed only once, but worked in multiple locations or positions

Information provided by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

New Online Certificate Program
Now there is an even more misguided opportunity for districts to hire unprepared teachers. The budget bill, set for an Assembly vote this Wednesday, followed by a vote in the Senate, requires DPI to issue an initial license to anyone who has completed the American Board online training program. That program, for career switchers with bachelor’s degrees, can be completed in less than one year and includes no student teaching (substitute or para-professional experience is accepted). We have no objection to alternate teacher preparation programs IF they actually prepare individuals to Wisconsin standards. In the area of reading, the way to determine that is for the American Board graduates to take the Wisconsin Foundations of Reading Test (FORT). If they cannot pass, they should not be granted anything more than an emergency license, which is what is available to individuals who complete Wisconsin-based traditional and alternate educator preparation programs but cannot pass the FORT. Wisconsin should not accept American Board’s own internal assessments as evidence that American Board certificate holders are prepared to teach reading to beginning and struggling students.

Action Requested
Please contact your legislators and tell them you do not want to weaken Wisconsin’s control over teacher quality by issuing initial licenses to American Board certificate holders who have not, at a minimum, passed the Wisconsin Foundations of Reading Test. Ask them to remove this provision from the budget bill. Find your legislators and contact information here.
​
How Should Wisconsin Address Its Teacher Shortages?
As pointed out in a recent fact sheet from the National Council on Teacher Quality, teacher shortages are particular to certain fields and geographic areas, and solutions must focus on finding and addressing the reasons for those shortages. This requires gathering and carefully analyzing the relevant data, including the quality of teacher preparation at various institutions, the pay scale in the hiring districts, and the working conditions in the district.

Related: WISCONSIN ELEMENTARY TEACHER CONTENT KNOWLEDGE EXAM RESULTS (FIRST TIME TAKERS).

Am emphasis on adult employment.

Todd Milewski:

Adding to the difficulties: Madison’s student enrollment, a key component of the per-pupil revenue formula, is projected to decline for a second straight year in 2016-17, which further trims the money that MMSD will have available to spend.

“It’s really difficult to operate in that environment, that kind of revenue forecast,” said Mike Barry, the district’s assistant superintendent for business services. “It’s almost like an ecological metaphor: How can we adapt to this new climate change, essentially?”

Dive in: Madison’s 2016-2017 budget notes and links.

Doug Ericsson:

She described it as “repurposing” existing money and said the approach likely will be the norm going forward.

“It’s a good, positive way of working,” she said. “So rather than continually looking for more funding — kind of piling on each year, adding cost — we’re very strategically looking for the highest and best use of our dollars for the coming year.”

Madison’s government school spending grows annually, yet our community has long tolerated disastrous reading results. This, despite spending more than $17,000 per student during the 2016-2017 school year.

Perhaps, one day, there might be a more structural change in our Frederick Taylor [duck duck go and SIS] era non diverse K-12 school system.

Molly Beck:

A majority of the state’s public school districts will receive more state general aid in the coming school year than they did the prior year, the latest state estimates show.

Of the state’s 424 school districts, 61 percent — or 260 — are projected to receive more aid in the 2016-17 school year, the state Department of Public Instruction said Friday.

The DPI estimates show Madison schools receiving about $53.7 million in state general aid next school year, a 2.3 percent increase.

On Monday, the Madison School Board passed a $376.5 million preliminary operating budget that was predicated, in part, on the conservative assumption that the district would get about $47.8 million in general state aid for the upcoming school year, said Rachel Strauch-Nelson, district spokeswoman.

While Friday’s estimate is good news, it does not mean the district suddenly has more money to spend, district officials said.

Much more on the Madison School District’s 2016-2017 budget, here.

Kelly Meyerhofer:

“Somebody needs to come together and lead a conversation about the positive impact UW-Madison has across the state — not just in Madison, but across the state,” Amber Schroeder, executive director of Badgers United, said about the group’s origins.

The organization’s board of directors includes a long list of heavyweights: Allan “Bud” Selig, commissioner emeritus of Major League Baseball; John and Tashia Morgridge, longtime university donors and billionaire Badger alums; and Curt Culver, former CEO of MGIC Investment Corp.

Badgers United will work with its sister organization, the Badger Advocates lobbying group, with Badgers United operating as a nonpartisan nonprofit that will educate Wisconsinites about the economic return UW-Madison brings to the state, Schroeder said.

Schroeder is a former membership director for the conservative Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which advocates for business interests.

UW-Madison has increased its state relations and outreach in recent years to myth-bust misconceptions about the university in the hopes of generating more trust among some who may see the institution as elitist.

The writer failed to include ANY UW-Madison budget data.

Some information is easily found (!)

2016-2017 spending was $3,063,800,000, 61% more than 2004-2005: 1,897,900,000

Spending grew at roughly double the rate of inflation.

Tom Kamenick and Libby Sobic :

The ugly: Of the 20 largest school districts, eight (Eau Claire, Elmbrook, Janesville, Kenosha, Madison, Sheboygan, Wausau and Wauwatosa) would not fulfill our requests without payment. The fees ranged from $15 to, in Madison’s case, more than $1,000.

According to the Madison School District’s attorney, the district does not have a system for tracking open records requests, hence its extremely high fee in this case. While records custodians are allowed to charge for locating records, school districts that need so much time to locate records are apparently not doing a good job of tracking requests. It should not be so hard to find out how well any government entity complies with the law.

The takeaway: Walker’s executive order led to measurable improvements in the response time of state agencies. School districts and other local governments can use the same processes, including better training and tracking systems, to achieve similar improvements.

Appleton’s budget is $201,399,239 for 15,169 students, about $13,277 per student.

Green Bay plans to spend roughly $272,000,000 during the 2017-2018 school year for 21,000 students, about $12,952 per student.

Madison spends far more, nearly $20,000 per student.

Madison School District Administration (PDF):

Project Description: MMSD has provided funding to support coursework in the content and teaching knowledge of middle school teachers of math. Toward that goal, a partnership was formed back in 2010 between the District, the UW-Madison School of Education, the UW- Madison Department of Mathematics, and the University of Wisconsin Extension – Office of Education Outreach and Partnerships. MMSD will continue this for the 2016-17 school year and continue to offer math coursework for teachers to participate. The courses consists of a five course sequence (Number, Ratio, Geometry, Algebra, and Experimentation, Conjecture & Reasoning) with two courses being offered each semester. MMSD will continue to provide some financial support for teachers in each class with priority determined by; 1) middle school teacher working with an existing condition of employment, 2) middle school math teachers, and 3) teachers who began the program in previous years.

NOTE: There is a significant reduction in the estimate of this program from the 2015-2016 school year to the 2016-2017 school year. As a reminder, the change for this program and financial support moving forward was shared with the Board April 2016. The model continues the five course MSMS Program using non-credit courses for teachers currently enrolled in the program. This reduces the annual operating budget to $27,000. In addition, the full-time Math teacher leader’s responsibilities have been repositioned to provide support and professional development for middle school math teachers and for algebra teachers.

Talent management has been working with principals to select best candidates for current and future hiring. Middle school math teachers are now provided with standards aligned curricular resources and job embedded coaching.

Related: Singapore Math, Math Forum, Connected Math, Discovery Math.

Madison School District Administration (PDF):

The University of Wisconsin System is exempt from complying with the requirements of the District’s Contract Compliance Plan.

SIS:

In 2013, Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham said “What will be different, this time“? The Superintendent further cited Long Beach and Boston as beacons in her Rotary speech. However, based on recently released 2015-2016 budget slides (PDF) and Molly Beck’s summary, it appears that the same service, status quo governance model continues, unabated.

2013, SIS

“The thing about Madison that’s kind of exciting is there’s plenty of work to do and plenty of resources with which to do it,” Mitchell said. “It’s kind of a sweet spot for Jen. Whether she stays will depend on how committed the district is to continuing the work she does.”

The District seeks increased tax & spending authority soon, perhaps in November. Ideally, a complete budget picture – with related outcome changes over time – would be easy to find and understand. Unfortunately, that is not currently the case. Boston publishes a handy 2 page summary (pdf).

Madison School District Slides

2017-19 Budget Premise

Next biennial state budget will continue a six-year pattern of underfunding K-12

Next two years of MMSD budget development will require deeper and more disruptive budget cuts

We need a more balanced approach to budget development, combining targeted cost cutting with additional revenues based on an affordable tax levy

We recommend an operational levy referendum this November to stabilize the budget, maintain MMSD’s positive momentum, and keep our focus on teaching and learning

Madison plans to spend at least $421,473,742 (this number apparently excludes “construction spending”) during the 2016-2017 school year.

Christ Rickert

As a Madison School District taxpayer, I appreciate the School Board’s careful consideration of whether the Nov. 8 election would be too soon to ask voters to approve a referendum.

When you’re an elected official overseeing a $376 million operating budget and the educational lives of some 27,000 students, you can’t take the public — or its money — for granted.

Luckily, I’m no elected official, and I can say what the elected school officials probably shouldn’t: Any halfway reasonable request from the Madison schools is almost certain to get approved, and by a large margin.

So far, a November referendum is just a gleam in certain School Board members’ eyes. District administrators haven’t come up with options for how much they might want, or when.

But as long as district officials don’t ask the average taxpayer for, say, more than a hundred bucks more per year, or to outfit every board member with a Lincoln Navigator and a Caribbean timeshare, voters will comply.

The District’s 2016-2017 “budget book” mentions spending $421,473,742 “excluding construction”….

I sent a note to Michael Barry on 10 July 2016 requesting the District’s construction budget, which I could not find.

Joanne Barker

UPDATED: Last week at San Francisco State University (SFSU), the only College of Ethnic Studies (COES) in the United States, was informed that next year’s budget would be cut somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000: based on this year’s budget of $3.6 million, that would mean a 13.8 percent budget cut (see table below).

To be clear, the COES has already experienced severe cuts: for instance, in 2009, the COES had 60 full-time faculty and now has only 37 full-time faculty.

The proposed cuts for 2016-2017 could mean no faculty sabbaticals or course release, no lecturers, no research institutes, no student resource center, and the suspension of all hiring initiatives on new and replacement faculty lines most immediately impacting a current search in Africana Studies. Tenure and tenure track faculty would be expected to make up the difference by significantly increasing their course loads and advising responsibilities. Further, with 40-50 percent less course offerings (considering the total percentage of those courses currenty offered by lecturers), students’ time-to-degree could also be adversely impacted.

PDF slides from a recent Madison School District Quarterly Board retreat. Readers may wish to understand “MAP” or “Measure of Academic Progress” [duck duck go SIS 2012 Madison and Waunakee results]

Using MAP for Strategic Framework Milestones and SIP Metrics

Feedback from various stakeholders has led us to examine the use of MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) to measure Strategic Framework Goal #1: Every student is on track to graduate as measured by student growth and achievement at key milestones. In particular, we have received three specific questions regarding our use of MAP data for Strategic Framework Milestones and SIP Metrics for 2016-17:

1. What is the best way to measure growth on MAP?

2. How should the district and schools set MAP goals for growth?

3. How should the district and schools set MAP goals for proficiency?

4. Should we track progress based on Proficient-Advanced or Basic-Proficient-Advanced?

In this document, we summarize the key issues for each of these questions and provide our recommendations.
1. What is the best way to measure growth on MAP?

Currently, MMSD uses the percent of students meeting or exceeding fall to spring growth targets on the MAP assessment as both a Strategic Framework Milestone and School Improvement Plan (SIP) metric. In addition, this metric receives significant attention in our public reporting on MAP in other venues and teachers have been trained over the past several years to use it to measure progress at the classroom and student level. We have included growth as a complement to MAP proficiency; it allows us to look not just at how students are performing, but also improvement during the year.

For MAP growth, our initial growth trajectory involved a 10 percentage point improvement each year for the district. This goal has extended to SIPs for the past three years, as schools near district averages have received the goal recommendation of 10% improvement; that recommendation changed to 5% starting in 2015-16. The graph to the right illustrates our original trajectory of 10 percentage points a year, our recommended goals for each year (the previous year’s actual result plus an improvement of 10%), and our actual results from each year.

This graph shows us that the original plan of 10% improvement in growth per year would have placed us around 80% in the current school year. Although we believe in setting ambitious goals, the idea that we would continue to improve 10 percentage points every year likely was not realistic, and now that we are around 60% of students meeting growth targets, we may want to consider a lower target than 10 percentage points each year, as even 5 percentage points is relatively large.

Almost all schools set goals for MAP growth that aligned with a district recommendation: 5%, 10%, or 15%. In addition, we see that very few schools actually achieved growth improvements of 5% or more, with changes in growth generally clustering around 0%.

Recommendation: Schools/groups within 10 percentage points of the MAP growth threshold would receive a recommendation for 2% improvement and schools/groups more than 10 percentage points from the threshold would receive a recommendation for 5% improvement.

## On the other hand, one might view this discussion positively, compared to the use of “facts and figures” ten years ago, in the Math Forum.

2015-16 Analysis: Equitable Distribution of Staffing.

Overview:

Call to Action: Together as a community, we can commit to ensuring all of our students are successful. We must work in partnership, creating an organized effort to lift up our students of color, especially our African American students.

Technology plan One Pager:

The MMSD Information and Technology plan undergirds all three of the goals and five priority areas in the Strategic Framework. The plan includes deliberate preparation, implementation, and monitoring phases to ensure each project’s success. We are learning from emerging best practices, building on successes, spreading out costs and addressing key challenges that arise. Technology is a powerful tool for enhancing teaching and learning and meeting students’ needs in creative, innovative and flexible ways. We are committed to providing more equitable access to technology for all students.

The first cohort (G1) began device implementation this school year after a full year of planning and targeted professional learning. Staff and students from other schools are in need of devices to access core digital resources, intervention programs, linguistic resources, and just-in-time learning. To continue progress towards equitable access and device implementation as stated in the original Tech Plan, we would like to phase in the next cohort of schools (G2) in January 2017 by instating the following actions:

Technology plan budget.

Behavior Education Plan – Draft:

The Behavior Education Plan (BEP), MMSD’s policy for addressing behavior and discipline, was approved by the Board of Education in the spring of 2014 with initial implementation in the fall of 2014. The BEP moves us toward the use proactive approaches that focus on building student and staff skills and competencies, which, in turn, lead to greater productivity and success. Moreover, the BEP is also designed to reflect a commitment to student equity as we hold all students to high expectations while providing different supports to meet those expectations. Ultimately, the BEP seeks to decrease the use of exclusionary practices through the use of progressive, restorative discipline while also impacting the significant disproportionality experienced, in particular, by our African American students, male students, and / or students with disabilities.

Given the complexity of implementing the many layers of the BEP, ongoing implementation of the BEP continues to require differentiated and stable supports for our schools including allocation of resources targeted to the needs of students. BEP focus areas for 2016-2017 include implementation of Positive Behavior Support (PBS) universal school-wide systems, PBS classroom systems and practices, behavior response, and tier 2 and 3 interventions.

Priority Actions for Board Consideration (Draft – February 2016):

Pathways Professional Development – In order to support the planning and implementation of personalized pathways in year one, the District will provide professional development to support the first health services pathway.

$400,000 Grant Total (Grant Funding for Professional Development – pending)

$200,000 -(Direct Grant to support local Professional Development)

$200,000 – (In-Kind Grant for Professional Development)

Major Capital Maintenance- The capital maintenance budget is currently funded at $4.5 million, well below the $8.0 million target level recommended in the latest (2012) facility study.

$500,000 – Provides incremental progress towards annual funding goal of $8,000,000 to maintain our schools. (Funding from Local) – Questions have been raised about past maintenance and referendum spending (editor)

Priority spreadsheet that requires new funding.

Measuring Strategic Framework Goal #3:

Goal 3 of MMSD’s Strategic Framework is that “Every student, family and employee experiences a customer service oriented school system as measured by school climate survey data.” The district’s Climate Survey, first administered in the spring of 2015, provides the data we need to measure progress on this goal. In this document, we introduce our recommendations for using climate survey data to set goals and track progress at the district (Strategic Framework via the Annual Report) and school (SIP) level.

Our recommendations are designed to answer five questions:

1. How should we account for different surveyed groups?
2. What metric(s) should we use?
3. Which dimensions should we include?
4. How should schools set goals?
5. Should schools goal set on focus groups?

Personalized Pathways- Draft

Introduction
Personalized Pathways- Draft 2016-2017
The development of Personalized Pathways is a major strategic priority action for 2016-17. The goal next year is to prepare for and establish the right conditions for a successful launch of Personalized Pathways in the fall of 2017 that will improve the level of engagement for our students, the number of students on track for graduation and our graduation rates. In alignment with state legislation, the continued development and expansion of Academic and Career Plans (ACP) undergirds the development of Personalized Pathways by ensuring that every student graduates with a clear post-secondary plan that has been developed throughout their secondary school experience. The key actions for 2016-17 are outlined below and are essential to improving the readiness levels of our schools and central office staff.

Personnel
Next year, the expansion of ACP to 7th and 10th grade will require a small increase of 1.9 FTE at middle school and 1.5 FTE at high school (total 3.4 FTE) to support these new work streams.

With the continued expansion of ACP to grades 6 through 12 over three years, staffing will need to increase across our middle schools to 3.8 FTE where it will level off for full implementation. ACP expansion at high schools will also need to expand over the next three years to support the number of students needing experiential learning related to college and career exploration, as well as Pathways coordination, leveling off at 6.8 FTE. The funding strategy may include repurposing existing roles or grant opportunities.

Indeed, spending more than $500,000,000 annually for 27K students provides “plenty of resources”.

“The thing about Madison that’s kind of exciting is there’s plenty of work to do and plenty of resources with which to do it,” Mitchell said. “It’s kind of a sweet spot for Jen. Whether she stays will depend on how committed the district is to continuing the work she does. plenty of resources”, Derek Mitchell, 2013.

Vanessa Romo:

LA Unified’s ability to pay for a new teacher contract that gives the union’s 35,000 members a 10.4 percent raise — their first in eight years — relies on two factors: One, a stronger than expected boost in tax revenues from the state. And two, a solution to the systemic problem of declining enrollment.

That, or the district faces program cuts and budget deficits.

If approved, the new deal will cost a total of $633 million over three years, plus an additional $31.6 million for three labor groups with “me too” clauses, also over three years, according to LA Unified officials.

The district had initially allocated $353 million for UTLA, which means the additional money from the state and from enrollment increases could be crucial to forestalling deficits in the years to come. Superintendent Ramon Cortines told board members that the district faces potential deficits as much as $559 million over two years through 2016-2017 if the additional state money is only a one-time occurrence.