Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

 

Published - Wednesday, April 18, 2007

GUEST VIEW: Good budget for great public schools

By KRAIG BROWNELL / La Crosse

Schools throughout Wisconsin are struggling under revenue caps imposed on local school budgets since 1993 by the state

government. Revenue caps are tied to enrollment figures.

In districts like La Crosse, where enrollment is declining, the reduced funding from the state resulting from a loss of just 1 percent of our students negatively impacts the remaining students because of resulting program and staffing cuts. When you’re losing students, you can’t cut costs at the same level. The funding loss penalties for declining enrollment are greater than the funding increase benefits from increasing enrollment.

Problems from district revenue caps are magnified in small, rural districts where cuts are even harder to make due to less area over which to spread the pain. Almost every district in the state is cutting programs, laying off staff and increasing class sizes at the expense of the children we are educating and the future workforce we are creating.

As teachers, many of us confront the difficult realities of the state budget and other state policies related

to public education in the work we do every day.

Each year, more responsibilities are piled on us while needed resources are being taken away due to budget cuts. There is, however, still hope on the horizon. We are fortunate to have a governor who is willing to address these concerns in his new budget proposal by giving some relief to public schools in this part of the state.

Gov. Jim Doyle’s proposal recognizes that support for education needs to rise above partisan politics and recognizes that great schools benefit everyone. In La Crosse and rural areas, the proposal will help by:

  • Addressing the concerns of declining enrollment districts such as La Crosse by further modifying the revenue limit calculation, increasing the statewide revenue limit authority by an estimated $15 million to $18 million each year.

  • Increasing the per student low revenue ceiling below which school districts are exempt from revenue limits. The increased limit is expected to benefit about 100 districts throughout the state, most of them small and rural.

  • Covering the $56 million costs for K-12 student buses out of the transportation fund.

  • Increasing the state reimbursement rate for school transportation costs for students who travel more than 12 miles to get to school and exempting the cost from the caps.

    While this proposal won’t take away the vital need to pass future referendums when they are brought to voters, it

    will “slow the bleeding” as we work toward further modifying or eliminating the state caps and deal with our current district budget crisis.

    The students in our classrooms today will drive the La Crosse area’s economic engines in the decades to come. Thankfully, the governor’s budget priorities for education reflect our community’s and Wisconsin’s values, and help us build for the future.

    Kraig Brownell is a teacher in the La Crosse School District and president of the La Crosse Education Association.

     

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