Another school year is beginning, with all the excitement, jitters and dread the fall always brings. But this year, as Madison public schools face an uncertain future, that nervous feeling is magnified into a kind of existential dread.
Will Madison continue to boast some of the best public schools in the nation? Or will massive staff and program cuts make our schools a shadow of their former selves? We’ll know the answer by the end of the year.
The district is proposing a referendum on the November ballot that would authorize Madison schools to exceed state-imposed revenue caps by $26 million over the next four years. The referendum would allow the district to maintain current funding levels for our schools. Without it, according to data the district presented to the school board in August, school funding will fall off a cliff.
Among the projections: Madison would have to cut 90 teachers in 2017-2018, and 50 teachers the year after that. Our schools could be unrecognizable by the time my fourth-grader is ready to start sixth grade.
Fortunately, we have time to act, and our community has shown that it is willing to support public schools.
So far, Madison has fared better than other districts around the state under Gov. Scott Walker’s budget cuts and revenue limits that have pitched many communities into crisis. Our city started 4-year-old kindergarten just in time to boost enrollment and add needed revenue. The district struck a bond deal with the city that also added some funds. And in a 2008 referendum, taxpayers voted to pay more over the last few years, staving off deep cuts in programs and staff.
But now those measures are played out, says school board member Ed Hughes.
Hughes supports a November referendum to lift revenue caps in increments of $5 million a year for the next two years and $8 million a year for two years after that.
The impact on the average homeowner, according to district data, would be negligible, as projected growth continues to increase the property tax base.
On the other hand, if the next state budget maintains the strict revenue caps recently favored by the Republican leadership, and if Madison doesn’t go to referendum, property tax rates will take a nosedive, and so will funding for schools.
“This would provide us with spending authority that allows us to spend at the same level as the recent past,” Hughes says. “It’s not a blank check,” he adds, pointing out that school spending under the referendum would essentially remain flat. “We could spend to the max and still have to make cuts.”
That’s exactly why Hughes’ colleague, school board member TJ Mertz, has been reluctant to support putting the proposed referendum on the ballot in November.
Mertz does not dispute that the school funding outlook for 2018 is “scary as hell.”
But, he says, he’d rather take more time and craft a better referendum, with more community input, and put it on the ballot in April.
“I definitely recognize that there’s a need that only can be met through referendum under state law,” Mertz says. “But I don’t think the short timeline allows us to craft the best referendum we can.”
Why go along with a plan based on relatively low cost-of-living and seniority raises and rule out an across-the-board raise for teachers, Mertz asks.
“We should have a community-wide conversation on whether to raise base pay,” he says.
The school board Aug. 15 declined to vote on the proposed referendum. Its meeting on Aug. 29 will be the board’s last opportunity to get a referendum on the Nov. 8 ballot.
Mertz is optimistic that Madison will support a referendum, whether it’s on the ballot in November or in April, and he would like to see a community conversation about funding priorities.
“I think our community supports schools,” Mertz says. “And our community gets that our state system doesn’t provide adequately for schools and that a referendum is how you address that.”
Turnout will be much higher, however, in the presidential election in November.
And Hughes, board member Mary Burke, and school district administrators warn that waiting until spring would give the state Legislature a chance to pass more laws that take away local control.
In the last session, Republican legislators floated proposals to limit local school-funding measures. One proposal barred a second referendum for two years if a school-funding measure failed to pass. Another limited the dates for elections when a referendum could be placed on the ballot.
“Who knows what the Legislature is capable of,” Hughes says. “All of this is premised on the fact that we don’t know what they will do in the next budget.”
