Well, since those revenue limits were put into place in 1994, a whopping 82% of school
districts have gone to school referenda, resulting in about 5% of total operating costs
around the state being funded by those referenda in all of our schools.
But there are about 100 districts that are currently paying for about 10% of their whole
operating budgets through those referenda.
And 14 districts that are paying for a full 25% of their operating costs through that
referenda aid.
And while that might not seem like a problem on its face, like, okay, those people voted,
they elected to raise taxes on themselves, that's their prerogative.
What about where they didn't?
What about those districts where the referenda didn't pass?
Those kids are doing more with less.
And that's a problem.
The other problem that we have is the way the revenue limits work is simply unfair.
It's random and arbitrary based on decisions that were made in 1994 by folks who are serving
on school boards back then, and they have nothing to do with the needs of kids now.
And so what Wisconsin really should be doing is focusing on overhauling its school finance
formula to create one that's aligned with student need and not property values or not
arbitrary spending limits that were set by the state.
And instead we're just bickering about whether the state of their local community should be
paying a larger share of the bill.
We're having the wrong conversation, and we should be talking about doing whatever we
can to meet the kids needs where they are.
So in that budget debate, one of the reasons that the Republicans justified not increasing
any per-people aids was the amount of ESSER dollars coming in from the various COVID
relief funds, which a lot of districts spread over three years because they knew that that
money was probably all they were going to get.
And even though it was supposed to go towards catching up kids or telehealth or mental health
needs, it was funding teachers and other things, back-filling operations, and now they're
all ending.
So what does that mean?
As a parent advocate and kind of an accidental expert in school finance, watching that play
out was really painful because you knew from talking to district leaders, from talking
to teachers, from talking to parents that kids' needs were really, really different
during and after the pandemic.
There were so many mental health needs.
There was so much food insecurity.
There was so much change just in the way we did school and all of that required resources
that even the federal pandemic aids were not sufficient to meet.
And so when the state of Wisconsin insisted that districts reallocate those federal COVID
funds, not to meeting the COVID-related needs of kids, but to filling the gap that the state
was refusing to fill in general aid.
It was just heartbreaking.
And so what we see today, you know, the impacts of that in our school is as staff is stretched
more than than ever, teachers are frustrated by the way their districts want to help meet
their needs and provide resources for educators and for kids and just can't.
And you know, really the folks in the state house are 100% to blame for that.
When you look at the voters that are going to be deciding on their local referenda coming
up this year, often those same voters are voting for Republicans in the assembly in the Senate
that are the ones making those decisions.
Do you think the voters understand some of those connections or are they separating those
out emotionally of like, well, this is a school thing versus that's my state politics?
Listen, we know that Republicans love their public schools as much as Democrats do.
All over the state, people come out and vote for strong public schools.
When we poll them, they say they wish to see more resources allocated to public schools.
They say they love their local public schools even when they think there are problems with
public education, you know, in a larger way.
And so pointing out the gap between what voters want, what they're voting for at the local
level and what they're getting from Republican leaders in Madison, I think is a really important
missing link here that a lot of people aren't really connecting.
And so I appreciate you pointing that out.
And my question is why and how are they getting away with it?
And how long can we sustain a system that is really deliberately making sure that some
of our kids just don't have the same resources and opportunity as others when we know we
could fix this problem tomorrow?
What position is a local superintendent in?
And I'm going to use Richland Center as an example.
The Richland School District, their state representative is on joint finance.
So they are double represented on the most powerful budget writing committee.
And yet when they go to the public to talk about why they need this money, they are very
hesitant and scared to reference.
It's because the other people that are in those power positions didn't provide the
funds in the first place.
And they don't want to be put in that spot of having to blame their own direct representatives.
No one wants to play the blame game on school funding.
Nobody wants to point one finger who is responsible for this or that.
And it is true that this is a complicated beast and there are a lot of moving parts
when we talk about the politics related to public education and school spending in general.
But what those folks need to do is organize their communities to come out when their voices
matter the most, when we're in the heat of those budget moments, when our lawmakers
are listening to us.
After the fact when the deal is done, we don't have a choice but to vote to raise taxes on
ourselves if we want to keep our schools open and do all the nice things our kids need
us to do.
But when there are those moments that democracy affords where we can engage in the conversation,
we just need more people coming out and telling their truth and sharing what the needs of
their kids are and letting our lawmakers know that we aren't okay with just seeing
by and watching yet another budget sell our kids short, well the state sits on this enormous
surplus and somehow unjustifiably continues to pour more and more dollars into non-public
schools that don't play by the same set of rules.
It's not okay and more people need to stand up and say something about it.
To the point about superintendents though, superintendents and business managers and
school boards all over the state have been doing an absolutely remarkable job navigating
this incredibly complicated, you know, political minefield but also the fiscal crisis that
it has led to.
And so when I see folks disparaging that good work or suggesting that they somehow, you
know, didn't tighten the belt enough or had wasted spending, I would say, you know, show
me the books of any district in the state and we can trace this tightening and it's
really depressing.
So I wouldn't blame my local leaders but I would certainly be paying attention to the
decisions they're making.
I would be paying attention to who's serving on my school board, I would be listening very
carefully to what folks who are running for school board right now are saying about all
of these things and I'd be looking for people who are champions for public kids, people
who see that state level advocacy as an important part of local governance and who are ready
to go to bat for local kids and build those relationships with lawmakers to try to influence
them for the better.
In the last budget, the most recent budget debate, part of the rhetoric that we heard
from Robin Voss and other Republicans that wrote the budget was kids are falling behind
because of COVID and they're blaming public schools for not doing a good enough job of
catching kids up fast enough saying you got all this federal dollars, how the critical
or how, what goes into an argument like that when they, you don't have to have too far
of a memory to go in the last budget you said use those dollars for operation and now they're
saying you didn't use them correct and the kids are behind.
Yeah, there's a pretty grotesque irony there in kind of, you know, taking those resources
away and then blaming public schools for not having had the resources to meet the needs
of kids, again, it's hard to watch that political rhetoric play out because it's impacting real
kids in real time, right, 16 years without an inflationary increase, that's a whole generation
of kids, pre-K through graduation who just never had enough and when we think of all
the ways that we want to improve our public education system, the things that we know
work for kids, you know, investing in the community schools model, doing project-based
learning, expanding our access to, you know, well-rounded curricula and meeting the needs
of English language learners, addressing the full needs of kids with disabilities, all
of the things that we know work best for thriving, joyful public schools environments and then
seeing the ways that the state has like just intentionally disinvested from all of those
things over time is really challenging but the good thing is if we had leaders who were
driven by a can-do spirit of let's fix this, we could fix this and it wouldn't even be
that hard.
There's a bipartisan plan on the table that's been getting dusty for the past seven years
that came out of the Blue Ribbon Commission on School Funding and all of those ideas
are still great, right?
It's really basic stuff and none of it requires innovation or anything really other than a
commitment to restoring our obligation to our kids.
In the most recent budget there ended up being a per-people increase and then Governor Evers
used his line out of veto power to make that indefinite, pending any other court review.
Is there, obviously it's good for schools to have an increase but is there a danger
that some voters may hear, oh you just got more money in the last budget?
You don't need, why do you need more operating funds?
So first of all let's talk about that increase.
Public schools got $325 per student in new spending authority, that's how much more they
can spend per kid in one year.
In order to keep pace with inflation we would have needed a $3,380 per student increase.
So what we got is roughly 10 times less than what kids needed just to maintain the status
quo.
So let's not do too exciting a victory dance on that, yes any additional spending is welcome
by districts.
They were grateful for this increase especially having gotten none coming out of the pandemic
but it isn't exactly cause for celebration and it's like just shockingly, disgustingly
embarrassingly less than what kids actually need.
The promise of being able to increase by that tiny amount for the next 400 years is also
not really cause for joyful celebration in my book because I'd like to see those revenue
limits undone entirely.
It's an antiquated and unfair way of doing school finance and rather than kind of cementing
it into our permanent thinking about how we're going to fund our public schools we should
be talking about how to shake the whole system up and again align it to meeting the actual
needs of our kids not corresponding to somebody's fantasy of how many dollars should be spent
on public education.
And you see the campaign efforts that districts are going through now I mean they've got glossy
flyers they're mailing out they're doing promotional videos they're doing meet this super intended
for coffee they're doing come to the gym and tour the school will show you the cracks
on the foundation and the broken bathrooms.
Should they have to go to those lenses that what's necessary now to convince voters that
this is what they need?
Well unfortunately that's become the new reality.
Districts are wasting so much time on these sort of you know going out and you know selling
the referendum question making sure that their communities understand what's at stake making
sure that they have you know all of the resources and information folks need to be able to trust
them on that and that is you know just kind of an embarrassing necessity of the time.
We would love to see the people that we are you know entrusting with our kids freed
up to meet their actual needs to be focusing on teaching and instruction and in you know
expanding the horizons of all of our kiddos and creating ways for them to you know have
a wonderful experience in our school buildings and said they're worried about keeping the
lights on and folks aren't okay for that.
But at Wisconsin Public Education Network we kind of see the other side of it right the
district is out there doing their thing they have they're presenting their you know
fact-based resources to the people we work with the referendum teams the people who are
like I will now give up every Saturday for the next eight weeks to like make sure this
thing gets passed and and those are the people who I think are often doing the lion's share
of the work and just getting out there and talking to folks at the grocery store or the
football game or wherever they're meeting people and seeing people come together like
that and think about you know what role do I play and standing up for local kids what
role do I play in making sure our kids have what they need to thrive what role do I play
in combating this disinformation and kind of helping folks get past the politics which
makes this all seem you know kind of confusing I think that I think that's where that's where
we're seeing the most movement in the in the state and you know there are just hundreds
of these little referendum teams that have gotten together you know worked hard to get
folks out to the ballot box and and make an informed decision that then say let's keep
the gang together I think I think they're going to need us for the budget fight I think the
district needs us to be a positive voice of sharing out the good things that are happening
here and the things that we like about our our school district and again that's you know
kind of new we didn't need that kind of thing 10 20 years ago but we're certainly in a position
now where it's been it's becoming incumbent upon all of us to lift our collective voice
to make sure that our state leaders know that we're not going to sit by and just watch them
undermine and underfund our public schools we're here to stand up for them and fight for our kids.
So give me a quick primer on your on your on your group and what they do because I'm sure
a lot of the public may not be too familiar with who you are and how you're in Iraq.
So Wisconsin Public Education Network is a loose coalition of people all over the state who are
just worried about what's happening to our public schools who see you know decades of cuts
and of revenue limits and challenges facing facing kids whether it's things like standardized testing
and a teacher shortage to lack of funds at the state level to you know having the worst
reimbursement rate in the nation for kids with special needs and who are saying well what can
we do about it right I might be an educator a retired educator a parent I'm in a group
I'm hearing one thing but how can we all come together and stand up for more and our network
provides tools resources trainings even some mini grants for teams like these these folks who
are doing referenda work to to get access to expert vetted information they can trust to kind of
get past the politics and the confusing you know school finance language that can sometimes
make you scratch your head and just say this is what this means to kids and we try to amplify
the stories that are happening at the local level by connecting with all of these groups and
individuals around the state so that we can call on our lawmakers to do better and just be a bigger
better collective voice for meeting the needs of Wisconsin kids and we invite anyone who shares
these concerns or who you know might have been thinking you know I know there's something wrong
but I don't know what I can do to come join us right come to our free events follow us on on
social media sign up for our our email newsletter we try to keep people informed so that you know
what bills are coming up at the Capitol you know what's at stake in budget fights you know what's
on your ballot in the spring and then give you tools and resources to do something about it how
long's the grouping around well in various forms it's been around since those revenue limits were
put into place in in the 1990s people have have been very actively speaking up and getting organized
about that but for the past 10 years we've been coordinating at the grassroots level as Wisconsin
public or as for the past 10 years we've been coordinating at the grass roots level as Wisconsin
public education network okay and is that as the focus strictly been on referenda type things and
budgetary issues surrounding school funding or are there other kind of branches well there are
lots of branches I mean our our goal is we want to see a Wisconsin where every single kid in every
single public school has equal opportunity to thrive equal access to all of the amazing things
that we know kids need to have a great education there's absolutely no reason why a state with as
many resources as Wisconsin can't provide that to every kid and we know we don't have that right
now we have huge racial disparities in this state the worst in the nation we have huge funding gaps
in this state we have huge opportunity gaps for kids across and between communities and none of
that is okay we want to close all of those gaps and and our ultimate goal is to close that joy
gap so that every little kid and every teacher who walks through our doors every family who comes
through the door of a school feels like they belong feel like they're welcome feels like this is where
this is where I find my place in my community and I can connect with people so that we can live the
lives we know all of our kids deserve and that we deserve as community members that's the beauty
of public schools in general and that's what coming together can do anything else along these
lines you want to add no I think I hit I think I hit all of okay can it get you to say and spell
your name and give your title just so I have a correct on tip my name is Heather DuBois Bernan
and I am executive director of Wisconsin public education network and what is the worst butchering
of your name you've heard I don't know that's a good that's a good one I my my personal favorite
is when they keep the S and DuBois silent but but put an accent on the E at the end of Bernan so it
would be DuBois Bernan a that's that's probably my favorite mispronunciation is it did you find
it's worse from people who think they know a little French they took French sophomore year of high
school oh no that's those are the best I just say it as French as you can and you'll be you'll be
pretty close to why Bernan all right thank you oh and it's DuBois B-O-U-R-E-N-A-N-E
thank you very much I know I I was saying like I'm