How are schools doing as we start the new year?
For answers to that, we check in with Dan Ross Miller, Executive Director of the Wisconsin
Association of School Boards, and thanks for joining us today.
Thanks for inviting me.
So in recent years coming out of the pandemic, we've seen a number of school districts struggle
with staffing, both in terms of classroom teachers and support staff like bus drivers.
How are things looking this fall?
Well, I think things are looking a little better than they have in the past.
It's very challenging.
I would say that the two things that really impact staffing are the inflation that we've
experienced in the marketplace.
I drive around the state visiting with my members and going to regional meetings in
the fall, and I remember last fall seeing all the signs in front of a quick trip in
Culver, you know, starting at $17, $18, $19 an hour.
And that made it difficult for schools to compete for many of those positions.
But I seem, I'm not hearing as much concern about those positions this year as I have
in the past, not saying that we're out of the woods, but things seem to be a little
better.
You've seen a record number of districts go to referenda asking voters to raise their
own property taxes, and especially for funding operational referenda, not just building
new buildings.
How dire is the situation in these districts where the voters say no?
Well, it can be very dire.
Over the years, we've had revenue limits in place now for 31, 32 years, and that's two
generations of kids that have gone through school.
And over time, many districts have become increasingly dependent, probably 100 districts
or more in the state rely on referendum funding for 10% or more of their budget.
And if those referendums don't pass, imagine cutting 10% out of your household budget or
the budget of a business that you work with.
It's significant.
It creates a whole set of problems for those districts and the students that are educated
in them.
In a new environment, we're also seeing more EMS and cities themselves go to referendum
because they feel they need additional funds.
So how does that work when a school district is competing with ambulance services to get
voters to say yes?
Well, we'll see.
Last fall, Fort Atkinson competed their school district with their municipality, and the municipality
succeeded.
The school district did not.
So it's a challenge.
We're going to see that here in Madison.
We're going to see that in a number of communities.
It's part of an interplay.
The legislature is trying to hold down property taxes while providing sufficient funding.
And I think it's an indication that the attempt to clamp down a property tax is creating some
problems.
This is a longstanding pathway that got us here in terms of eight years of Scott Walker
and Republican legislature holding down school funding, local funding, and favor of property
tax relief, plus the fiscal cliff created by the ESSER funds and the COVID pandemic
money.
Do you think that the public understands how we got here?
Are they just wondering, well, how did this local school district mismange their budget
to be this far in the hole?
Well, I think that is a question, and it's a complicated one.
So bear with me for a moment.
Since the Great Recession in 2008-09 and the changes that Governor Walker made and the
legislature made since then, for the first number of years that revenue limits were
in place for schools, the legislature made annual adjustments that tried to keep pace
with inflation.
They were pretty successful.
For the most part, districts were able to keep pace with inflation.
Maybe even do a little better.
Since 2012, the allowable increases, the increases in resources for schools that the legislature
has allowed, have been roughly half of the rate of inflation.
So if a district, particularly a district that's in declining enrollment, where the revenue
limits actually cause their budget to go down because there's a revenue limit for each
district expressed on a per pupil basis, so you have a certain number of dollars per
pupil, and the district's total budget is a combination of all of the student enrollment
multiplied by that per pupil figure.
If your enrollment is going down, that really challenges you because over time your budget
goes down, and in order to maintain your programs and services for students, you have to go
to the voters.
Now there are two ways that you can do that.
You can go in a recurring referendum, which is essentially a permanent increase in your
revenue limit, or you can ask for a temporary or nonrecurring exemption to the revenue limit.
And if you do that, chances are in a few years, if inflation continues, you are going to be
back asking the voters.
If inflation continues and your declining enrollment continues, almost certainly we'll
be back asking the voters.
We've had some districts go to the voters 10 times or more, and part of the reason for
that is that it's easier for districts to pass a temporary exception to the revenue limit
than it is for them to pass a permanent one.
So those temporary exceptions last for two, three, four years.
At the end of that time, those districts find themselves having to come back to the voters
or having to make significant cuts in programs and services.
So that, in a nutshell, that explains why districts are having to go back to the voters.
It's because the resources provided to them, allowed to them by state law, are not keeping
pace with inflation.
So moving to a slightly different topic, we're in the middle of a very contentious election
season.
What is your advice to how teachers and administrators should handle politics in the classroom, whether
they're brought up by students or the teachers or parents or anyone else?
Well, that's a matter of some delicacy, and I think it's going to vary from district
to district.
I think those are important discussions that can happen, particularly in our social studies
and other classrooms, about how our democracy functions.
I think it's a balancing act for teachers not to be telling students how they ought
to vote, but educating them about the process, educating them about the issues, what the
candidates' differing views are.
I think there's a place for that in our democracy.
But if you get too much on an advocacy side one way or the other, I think that is likely
to cause problems in the community.
And we've seen more districts crack down on the types of speech they're allowing, whether
it be a pro-gay pride flag in the classroom or any other types of political stuff that
has been ruled banned in some of these districts.
So are they creeping down on some of the ability for speech to occur?
Well, we've just started the school year.
I'm not hearing a lot about that at the moment.
I think a lot of districts that, for example, banned the gay pride flag or the stickers
or whatever on the doors did so because they didn't want students to feel that a teacher
who didn't display that emblem was not sympathetic to their issues.
And it was really to avoid creating a divide between certain staff and other staff.
With political issues, I think it's somewhat similar.
You don't want students of one particular viewpoint to feel that they're not welcome
in the classroom because the teacher has an opposing viewpoint.
So the legislature has signed off in an audit of the Department of Public Instruction and
how it monitors public school finances, especially in light of the Milwaukee Public School's
budget issues recently.
What do you hope to learn from that audit?
Well, I hope that we'll be able to learn how we can better help school boards and school
districts that have audits that show some red flags.
Every school district's required to have a financial audit report filed with the DPI.
They also get a management letter from the auditors as well as a fiscal audit.
And we are, as an association, taking steps to better educate our members.
We're developing programs and training to help augment their understanding of what
it means when the management letter says that something is not conforming with generally
accepted accounting standards, for example, or there's some kind of deficiency.
So I think that's important.
It's a little concerning that situations have been allowed to go on for so long without
getting more attention, but it's understandable when you have 421 districts and 421 audits
being filed.
And I think the school finance is very complicated.
You mentioned the influx of the federal dollars.
There were differing standards and uses for those monies, according to which of the three
tranches of money that school was dealing with.
So the accounting for that was complicated, and it's not surprising that some districts
perhaps struggled with that a little bit.
All right.
We'll leave it there.
Dan Rossbiller from the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you for having me.
I wanted to go along just so we got all of our questions in.
I appreciate you sticking around.
I rambled a little bit there, but I hope that was coherent enough.
We will make that work.
I appreciate you coming in.
Thank you.
And we'll be careful with the thing, don't we?