MADISON, Wis. — The Madison Metropolitan School District board of directors voted Monday night to ask the voters in November for permission to spend $26 million over the state’s cap on local education revenue.
The vote was unanimous despite concerns raised about the lack of specifics on how the money will be spent.
Those concerns were not shared by school officials.
“We have a forum where these decisions can and should be made,” Mike Barry, assistant superintendent for business services, told the school board, alluding to the “annual budget process.”
“That’s where all the strategic work of the district comes into play,” Barry said. “And we would not want to treat these funds separately. We want to make sure that they were integrated in a line with the overall direction of the school district, as opposed to establishing a sort of mini-budget just for these funds.”
The recommendation from the Madison school district staff is to raise the revenue limit by $5 million in the 2016-17 school year, $5 million more in the 2017-18 school year, and then $8 million more in each of the next two years. The $5 million extra raised in the 2016-17 school year would not be spent
State law imposes limits on school district tax levying authority as a way to hold down property taxes. School districts can exceed the limits by asking voters to approve an increase in a referendum.
In order to hold the referendum during the November election, the district’s board of directors had to make a decision Monday night; otherwise it would be too late to include the referendum in the printing of the ballot.
During the public comment portion of the meeting only one member of the public, Chris Carusi, rose in support of the proposed referendum, while four spoke against it.
“I am in favor of going to referendum, but I have major concerns about pushing this through without community input and without more specificity about how the funds will be used,” Carusi said to the board. She said a 2015 referendum request for building improvements passed because of public involvement.
“The referendum you are considering tonight was crafted with almost no public input,” Carusi said. “The listening sessions took place in August when most families are either on vacation or frantically juggling child care and work.”
Walter Williams, president of the local chapter of the African-American fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha, spoke against the referendum.
“Truthfully, we just can’t continue to fund failure. Not a lot of progression has been made over the past years and the achievement gap is constantly widening,” Williams said. “So you want to be able to fund something that’s productive, that’s obtainable, that we can see as community leaders and citizens.”
Board member TJ Mertz said during discussion that he wasn’t sure how he was going to vote, although he ended up supporting the proposal.
“One of the reasons I’m not sure how I am going to vote on this is because I don’t have the confidence in the inclusive aspect of our regular budget process others seem to have,” Mertz said. “And I think that the opportunities for members of the public and actually other members of the board to have significant impacts in meaningful ways on important parts of the way we budget, especially our school-based budgeting, have been minimal.”
Board member Mary Burke had no such qualms.
“I think this vote for me is one of the easiest that I am going to make regarding school finances,” said Burke, who was the Democratic candidate for governor in 2014. “Because a vote against this is saying that you agree with our governor and our legislature about the strangling they’re doing for public education and the funding.”
The state first imposed revenue limits on Wisconsin school districts under Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson in 1993 to restrain local property tax hikes. A recent memo from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau showed showed total education spending in the state, excluding federal revenue, on education is up since Republicans took control of the legislature in the 2010 elections.
The Madison school district made a small effort to control costs earlier this year by using — for the first time — its authority under Act 10 to control health care spending by requiring teachers to contribute 3 percent toward their health insurance premium costs in the 2016-17 school year. It diluted the effect of that move, though, by shifting $300,000 from the maintenance account to cover the cost of the increase for staff not receiving raises.
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