Schools, Teachers, Parents Confront Budget Realities

There’s enough frustration to go around.

School boards are frustrated by the clashing demands of rising costs, spending limits, and a public that rises in anger when meaningful spending cuts are announced.

Teachers are frustrated by a system that limits the raises they see in their paychecks.

The public is frustrated by seemingly uncontrollable costs that mean rapidly rising taxes, or significant cuts in service.

They’re problems that don’t seem to have solutions. Spend any less, and you have to stop doing something – increase class sizes, combine classes, stop offering electives. As the Baraboo School Board found out recently, when you try to do any of that, you get a roomful of angry parents.

But you can’t just keep spending more and more. Yes, the services are valuable. No, we’re not willing to pay any price for them.

Perhaps part of the problem is: it seems like we’re paying more every year for the same or fewer services. The number of teachers in the Baraboo school district fell slightly between 2000 and 2003, as did the number of students. Yet the cost of providing a public school education to those students rose by nearly 16% over the same time span. In 1999-00, we spent $7,789 per student. In 2002-03, it was $9,012.

We’re not alone. Spending per student in Sauk Prairie rose by over 10%, to just over $10,000 a student; in Wisconsin Dells, 18.75% to $9,690; in Portage, 19.3% to $9,398.

Why does this have to cost so much?

And it does have to cost so much, to listen to the school districts – and not just here, but all over the state. There’s no school district anywhere that says they’ve got enough money (not that I’m aware of, anyway).

Of course, that’s true of government in general, isn’t it? Bureaucracy never has enough. Government always needs more.

The frustration has reached a point where people are beginning to organize, all on their own. Both Baraboo and Portage have newly formed groups, concerned about education in their communities. Both local papers ran stories last Friday. Both indicated that frustration levels are high.

The same day, the Wisconsin State Journal ran a story about teacher pay and benefits. You’ve heard that Wisconsin is below the national average in what we pay our teachers? True, according to the story. But once you add the benefits – health insurance, retirement, etc. – we’re well above average.

Teachers are frustrated by not getting raises – I can understand that. You want to see your paycheck grow from year to year. If you don’t, it means you’re falling behind inflation. I would be frustrated, too.

But when health insurance goes up, the school district pays it. That’s also a raise, whether it’s in your check or not.

In the early 1990s, Wisconsin was headed for a property tax revolt. Property taxes were rising rapidly – beyond people’s willingness to pay.

We dispensed with that problem by enacting revenue caps in 1993, which limited school spending, and committed the state to paying 2/3 of school costs. Property taxes dropped, and increases slowed.

But now we’re right back where we started over a decade ago. Costs have kept rising, and we’re getting to that point where people don’t want to keep paying them. We want services, yes, but not at any price.

There are plenty of ideas out there for keeping costs down. What if Baraboo and Sauk Prairie and Wisconsin Dells and Portage all combined into one school district? That would, at least, save some administrative money, but it wouldn’t be much, in the grand scheme of things.

Removing mandates is a possibility. Special education is often cited as a major factor in rising costs – the numbers of special ed kids is rising fast, and along with them, need for more and specially trained teachers.

There again, you have the problem of angry parents or other interest groups.

So what is the solution? Parents may have to accept some cuts in services. If class sizes grow, parents may have to check the homework more carefully. If Junior shows an interest in mechanics, but shop classes have been cut, parents may have to find alternate ways to scratch that itch.

Teachers may have to accept that they are getting raises they can’t see, or accept lower levels of benefits in order to see bigger paychecks. We love what you do, and respect you for doing it. But we won’t pay any price for it.

School boards, realize that no matter what you do, somebody’s not going to like it, and they’re going to let you know they don’t like it. Don’t try to be popular.

New Chairman, New Expectations for County Board

So, the Sauk County Board has a new chairman. Bill Wentzel, a 4-term Supervisor, was elected to that post by a 17-14 vote. Two years ago, he sought the chairmanship, only to lose by a single vote.

What does that mean for Sauk County? Maybe something, and maybe nothing.

As the Baraboo News Republic pointed out in their story on Wentzel’s election, “the chairman does not receive more voting power than other supervisors, he is responsible for keeping the county board meetings moving along; providing guidance, directing debate on issues and making sure all supervisors, and members of the public, have their say during meetings.”

I would add that, customarily, the chairman doesn’t take direct part in debate during County Board meetings.

So the chairman’s power over the board’s doings is very limited, but there is more to it than just that. The real power of the chair lies in the committee structure.

The county board has several standing committees, and a large number of other committees, commissions, and boards on which its members serve. As Chairman, Wentzel chooses which supervisors serve on which committees. If he wants, he can stack key committees with supervisors who are likely to support his own positions on key issues.

For example, Chairman Wentzel has always been an avid supporter of the Sheriff’s Department. Expect that the Law Enforcement Committee will be kindly disposed toward that department for the next two years.

In my experience, Wentzel has also been a big supporter of the Baraboo Bluffs Protection Program (using state money to buy development rights in the Bluffs), and was more than willing to balance last year’s budget with tax increases, instead of spending reductions.

None of this means we’ll see any wholesale changes in committee memberships this year. Wentzel may simply leave the committees largely as they are.

After appointing members to the committees, he has little authority over those committees. He doesn’t appoint chairpersons – the committees elect them themselves. He doesn’t really control what the committees take up, and once a committee has passed a resolution, it automatically comes to the full Board.

That’s all in very stark contrast to the power leaders in the State Legislature have. Both the Assembly Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader create the committees, appoint their members, and appoint the chairpersons. They have most of the control over what bills get sent to each committee, and also control which bills get voted on by the full Assembly or Senate. In Madison, just because something got through committee, doesn’t mean it’s going anywhere else.