Public School Funding: Fact and Fiction (Part 2)
July 28, 2009
Having lived in Wisconsin for the past 30 years, taught in a public high school for three years, and taught (acutally iMentored full-time and taught part-time for the first quarter--more than that later) one year for a for-profit virtual high school, I thought that I had a good understanding of how school districts operated and were funded. Since July 16th, I have learned how much I (and according to my sources, most poeple, including many legislators and even some educators) do not know and how difficult it is to understand the maze of issues involved in the funding of public education.
These issues go back more than 30 years and range from the Municipal Employee Relations Act to the QEO and arbitration to multiple categories and differing funding percentages of state reimbursement for local districts. The issues are very complicated and filled with political potholes that affect the stakeholders, including legislators, administrators, teachers, taxpayers, and students.
With changes in federal and state educational legislation (such as No Child Left Behind), mandated services and reimbursements (or lack thereof), and state funding commitments and reimbursement formulae, the public education playing field has become more and more treacherous and uncertain. There is one constant, however, that being that an ever-increasing portion of the cost of funding public schools is resting on the shoulders of one group--the local taxpayers.
At the same time these costs are increasing for the local taxpayers, current economic conditions are making it more and more difficult for them to absorb the increases. As we will see, the situation all the stakeholders now face has been moving inexorably toward this crossroad of increasing financial need on the part of the school districts and decreasing ability to pay on the part of the the taxpayers for more than fifteen years.
Tomorrow, in part 3 of this series, a public education history lesson from the perspective of district administrators, business managers, and school board members.
Until then, be blessed.
From the Editor's Desk ArchivesPublic School Funding: Fact and Fiction (Part 1) (July 27, 2009)
Health Care Reform: Protecting the Disabled (Part 5) (July 24, 2009)
Health Care Reform: Protecting the Disabled (Part 4) (July 23, 2009)
Health Care Reform: Protecting the Disabled (Part 3) (July 22, 2009)
Health Care Reform: Protecting the Disabled (Part 2) (July 21, 2009)
Health Care Reform: Protecting the Disabled (Part 1) (July 20, 2009)
And Liberty and Justice for All (July 13, 2009)
