- A "First look" tonight at Governor Scott Walker's state
budget proposal, which increases funding for public K-12 schools
by nearly $649 million over the 2017-'19 budget period.
The increases come in the way of per-pupil hikes, taking it from
$250 this year to $450 in 2017-18 and $654 in 2018-19.
The governor's budget also increased funding for rural
schools by nearly $31 million, addressing needs arising from
declining enrollment and high transportation costs.
And we go now to a rural district: Hurley.
Hurley is the county seat of Iron County and is located right
across the Montreal River from Ironwood, Michigan.
Hurley's school district encompasses more than 600 square
miles.
That's a lot of miles on school buses.
The district is administered by Chris Patritto, who joins us
now.
Thanks very much for being here.
- Thanks for having me.
- What's your reaction to the bump in school funding under the
governor's proposed budget?
- Well, I guess from past history I guess we're pleasantly
surprised right now, I guess.
I'd put it that way.
- How specifically would this per-pupil increase and increases
for rural schools benefit Hurley?
- Well, I think it would benefit us immensely at this
point in time.
With where we fit in the formulas, the revenue limit
formula, the equalization aid formula, we don't fit well in
those categories and lose a lot of funding.
Next year I think in the revenue limit formula, we're projecting
a loss of $195,000.
So right off the bat I've got a $195,000 deficit to deal with.
That's before any type of fixed increases in our budget.
With the governor's proposals, I think a lot of his proposals
would fill our hole, the $195,000 hole.
I would still probably need to deal with how I'm going to deal
with any future increases.
So what we're getting on one hand is very much appreciated.
It's filling a hole.
But it's still not going to solve my long-term problem.
- Because what has the financial situation been for
your district in recent years going back?
- Well, I've been superintendent in Hurley for 13
years now, and we've had to cut every year.
I believe my first year as superintendent we had to cut
$700,000, the second year we had to cut $500,000.
But then in some years there's been a little; some years has
been a lot.
We've changed transportation contractors.
Some things come up where you get lucky to balance it.
But we've had to make a lot of tough calls over the years.
We went from a three section school to a two section school.
Classroom sizes get bigger.
You can't pay people, give them the raises you really want to
cause they work hard every day.
It's been a struggle.
Hurley is no different than most schools right now.
- Well, what factors play into these budget woes
that you've had?
- Well, declining enrollment really hurts us.
As you decline in enrollment, your funding is going to get
nixed a little bit.
You know, insurance increases every year, transportation,
heating, cooling.
All those things, when you don't have a solid formula every year
to give an increase to your expenses, it gets kind of tough.
- So you were talking about having to make cuts of like
$700,000.
How do you even do that?
- Well, that's where I said there were a lot of tough calls
to make and unfortunately it meant people.
And I think the first year I was superintendent I think we had to
let about six people go, which is really tough to do in a
small, small school.
- And then how does that affect the students that you're trying
to educate?
- Well, like a lot of schools, that's the trend that's been
happening.
Classroom sizes get bigger.
You know, the supply budgets get a little smaller.
You can't do what you really want to do for the kids.
And you just struggle with it every year.
- Didn't the so-called "tools" of Act 10 kind of help smooth
some of that out with employees paying additional contributions
to their health care and retirement?
- Well, I think to a certain extent it helped in the fact
that the money that was taken away from us, you know, by Act
10, when the revenue limit formula was drastically cut, you
know, we were able to balance the budget that year pretty much
on the backs of all the employees.
But once again, that was a Band-Aid fix.
Now you look forward, you know, five, six years later, the
environment has changed a lot.
You know, we're struggling to find teachers.
We're struggling to pay them well.
You know, the market for teachers, especially in northern
Wisconsin, it's tough right now.
Replacing teachers in the future is going to be another challenge
for us.
You know, I think probably within five years I'm going to
probably have to replace probably 20%, 25% of my staff.
- Wow.
- In ten years, probably about 60%.
So it's a matter of--the pool of candidates and teachers out
there isn't what it used to be.
Can we afford to pay people to come to northern Wisconsin?
You got to be a special soul to live up here, number one.
And can we afford to keep them?
That's the other hard part, is retaining these people.
- So with all of these concerns, even in the midst of
some additional funding proposed at the state level, what do you
think needs to happen going forward?
- Well, I think all school district administrators would
agree that somewhere down the line we have to come up with
some type of sustainable funding system for schools.
You know, I don't have a silver bullet answer for you on that.
It's just we need something every year.
You know, like us.
Next year we got $195,000 deficit plus increases to deal
with.
Okay.
The governor's budget hopefully will help us a lot to fill that
gap.
But once that gap is filled, that gap's going to be there the
following year again because the formulas are going to do the
same thing to us.
So the second year, yeah, the extra $200 would help immensely
to fill some of that hole.
But we need to come up with something that's just
sustainable, where the school districts can plan from year to
year to know what they're going to have rather than the carousel
we have every two years and waiting for the governor's
budget and what's going to go and what's not going go.
- Yeah.
We need to leave it there.
Chris Patritto, thanks very much.
- Thank you.