David Michael Miller
On April 5, Monona Grove School District will ask voters to accept a tax hike so the schools can have an extra $13 million over the next five years to pay for building maintenance, facility improvements, equipment purchases and even payroll.
If the measure passes, property taxes will increase by $137 per year for every $100,000 worth of property.
Jeremy Wallace, a social studies teacher at Monona Grove High School who is co-president of the teachers union, is certain that if the referendum fails, some people will be out of work. And he fears the quality of education will decline. The district has already lost specialized teachers and staff - including speech and language, consumer health, tech and vocational teachers, and a school psychologist - to other districts that can pay more.
“If it doesn’t pass we are in big trouble,” he says. “We really need this referendum to pass; otherwise we are looking at class sizes over 30 at the high school, and outdated technology.”
Jeff Simpson, spokesman and school board clerk for Monona Grove, says the school board was forced to hold the referendum because the state has cut aid and decreased the amount of money it can raise from property taxes.
“We’re going to be down about $850,000 to $900,000 next year, and then that would increase exponentially, which is why we need to do this referendum — so we can pay our bills,” Simpson says. “It is an operational referendum, but there are also things that really need to be fixed. We are not building a new building by any means, but we are making sure the ones we do have don’t fall down.”
Monona Grove isn’t alone in asking voters for extra money.
Out of the 426 school districts in the state, 72 will have referendums on the ballot asking for approval to raise taxes beyond state-imposed levy limits. School districts have long relied on referendums for one-time expenses like building new facilities, remodeling or purchasing new equipment. But now many schools need them just to maintain operations, programs and classes, says Dan Rossmiller, director of government relations for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.
Says Rossmiller, “School districts these days more or less live and die by these referendums in terms of their ability to sustain programs and staff.”
The state Legislature first imposed levy limits on school districts during the 1993-94 session, Rossmiller says, creating a formula that restricts how much a district can get in a combination of local property taxes and state aid. To raise more from property taxes, districts need voters’ approval.
When Gov. Scott Walker was elected, he made good on a pledge to lower property taxes by further tightening levy limits, Rossmiller says. The 2011-13 state budget reduced the revenue limits for school districts by 5.5% while also cutting $792 million in aid to K-12 education. In Monona Grove, this amounted to a $605 drop in funding per student.
In the 2015-17 budget, state aid remains flat the first year and goes up by about $69 million in the second year. But because revenue limits remain the same, any increase a district gets in state aid will have to be used to offset property taxes.
The governor and his party’s stated intention is to reduce property taxes. To see property taxes lower in 2018 than they were in 2014 was his campaign pledge,” Rossmiller says. “But schools, more than any other level of government in our state, are funded through property taxes.”
School districts receive state aid based on per-pupil enrollment, so funding fluctuates on these spikes and dips. The trouble for school districts is that expenses rarely decline, Rossmiller says.
If your enrollment is steady then your budget remains steady, Rossmiller, explains. But if enrollment drops, a district budget shrinks. However, expenses don’t necessarily shrink as well. “What districts need from the state is predictable and sustainable funding,” Rossmiller says. “This year there was no increase in state aid, and there was no increase in the revenue limits, which really is an absolute freeze for most districts and for many a reduction.”
Smaller suburban and rural districts tend to struggle more with these limits, Rossmiller adds, because they may only have one teacher for each subject, making staff cuts difficult. Simpson says the fact that 72 districts are holding referendums demonstrates that state aid is inadequate. The cost-saving measures Act 10 provided districts have been insufficient to balance their budgets.
“We’ve used every one of the so-called tools in Act 10, and, despite the fact that we have cut $6 million, we continue to have a bigger and bigger deficit every year because we get less and less money from the state,” Simpson explains. “We used the 12% mandatory pay cut on all staff to pay for their health care, and they haven’t really recovered from that in terms of salary.”
Simpson is confident Monona voters will approve the referendum, but adds that the board is unprepared if it fails.
“We really haven’t talked about what would happen if it doesn’t pass,” Simpson says. “I mean, obviously if we have to cut $900,000 from next year’s budget, I think anyone can figure out that is not going to be real positive.”
The Madison school district won’t be holding a referendum next week, but board treasurer TJ Mertz says it’s likely just a matter of time before it is forced to. For now, Madison schools are cutting staff and supplies, and holding off on investments.
“Our budget right now is looking very tight. We cut about 80 classroom positions last year, we are cutting about 50 this year; some of that is due to declining enrollment, some of that is due to the fact that we are broke,” says Mertz, adding that 70 non-classroom jobs will also likely be cut. “There are some things we would like to expand that we are not expanding as well.”
“I’m not looking forward to some of the decisions we are going to have to make,” Mertz adds.
Mertz says enrollment increases and decreases are hard to project, but declining support from the state seems a sure bet. “Your local conditions may change, but the state is not going to make things appreciably better in the near future,” Mertz says. “I think in one sense there is a faith in local voters and in another sense a pessimism about the potential for state changes.”
Rossmiller says that while lowering property taxes at the cost of public education may be popular at the Capitol, it’s less so among residents. He points to a Marquette University Law School Poll from last April that showed 54% of residents said it was more important to increase funding for schools, compared to 40% who favored lowering property taxes.
“It’s not just people with kids; I think it’s people with grandchildren, I thinks it’s people who realize if their neighbors’ children aren’t well educated they are not going to be able to have the family-sustaining jobs that will make our communities stronger and reduce their tax burdens or care for them as they get into retirement age,” Rossmiller says. “Wisconsin is by many accounts lagging behind many other states in job creation, and there are a lot of people who believe that investing in education is a way of investing in higher-quality workers and better jobs for the future.”
Wallace doesn’t enjoy having to rally support for a referendum. “I think if Act 10 would not have passed we probably would not have to be asking for as much money as we are,” Wallace says. “Having to ask for more money to educate kids and keep achievement up is not what people want to spend their time doing, but it’s a necessary reality for us at this point.”
And he says voters should get used to frequent pleas from schools, “not just in our district but everywhere. If they want to continue to support the schools, they are going to have to pay more in local taxes to do so.”
Editor's Note: This article was changed to note that specialized teachers from Monona Grove were not laid off. They left for better-paying jobs in other districts.
