State
budget highlights
The
Legislature passed the 2001-03 State Budget on July 26.
The Assembly voted 73-22 in favor of the $47 billion budget. The Senate
voted 25-8 on the bill. The budget will go to Gov. McCallum who must
act on the bill before August 30.
WEAC members are encouraged to contact the governor and urge him to
make great schools a priority as he makes veto decisions on the budget.
Let him know by e-mail how you feel
about revenue cap flexibility, collective bargaining rights or support
for WTCS.
Revenue Cap Flexibility:
- $45M -- Allow districts to raise their limit by 0.78% annually.
This effort will be aided as part of the school funding formula.
- $14.1M -- Restore the current law annual inflationary adjustment
under revenue caps.
- $8.4M -- Restore the current law 40% funding of summer school programs
under revenue caps.
- $22M -- Provide a revenue cap exemption to school district expenditures
related to "community service" programs.
- $60M -- Maintain the state's commitment to fund two-thirds of referenda-approved
school district construction costs as well as maintain current law
on scheduling of local government referenda
- $700,000 -- Provide a revenue limit adjustment for large area, low
enrollment districts and modify special adjustment aids for qualifying
districts
- $193,300 -- Provide a revenue limit adjustment for the Wausau School
District Integration Transfer Program
The state-imposed revenue caps, which limit the amount of money school
districts are entitled to receive in state aids and property taxes,
are keeping many school districts from providing classrooms that work.
Districts are being forced to delay spending on necessities such as
building maintenance and the purchase of computers. They have also cut
or eliminated important programs and services for children.
SAGE:
- $171M -- Fully funds the SAGE program through third grade in all
eligible schools. The governor's original budget cut SAGE funding
by approximately $37 million by only allowing schools with a poverty
rate above 50% to continue SAGE through the third grade.
There is no better example of a program that makes classrooms work
than the SAGE class-size reduction program, which limits class sizes
in early grades in low-income schools and requires districts to create
and implement plans for improving student performance.
Special Education:
- Provide no general aid increase for reimbursement to school districts
for special education costs.
The ability of Wisconsin schools to provide classrooms that work ischallenged
by the state's failure to commit to funding special education. Schools
are being forced to choose between special education and regular education.
It will be critical for WEAC and its members to urge the governor not
to veto the revenue cap flexibility provision in the budget. That is
the only way districts can generate revenue to offset the lack of special
education funding in the budget.
Four-Year-Old Kindergarten:
- Cut $14M -- Provide that for revenue cap purposes, pupils enrolled
in a 4K program would be counted as 0.3 pupil, rather than 0.5 as
under current law. Also provide that all children in a 4K program
that provides 87.5 additional hours of outreach activities would be
counted as 0.4 pupil, rather than 0.6 pupil as under current law.
- Allow school districts to increase their revenue limit in an amount
equal to the 0.2 pupil reduction
The success of Wisconsin's public schools is linked to the general
readiness of students to learn. Appropriate funding for 4K programs
will provide the youngest learners with every opportunity to reach their
full potential. The budget stops short of restoring current law funding
for 4K programs.
Collective Bargaining:
- Reject the Assembly proposal to make bargaining the selection of
group health insurers a permissive subject of bargaining.
- Reject the Assembly proposal to revise the QEO law so that a school
district would only have to provide "substantially similar"
benefits to teachers from one contract to the next.
- Reject the Assembly proposal leaving it up to the State Commissioner
of Insurance, a Republican appointee, to determine what constitutes
"substantially similar" benefits. Under current QEO law,
an employer must maintain both the existing fringe benefits package
and the district's percentage contribution effort in that package.
- Reject the Assembly proposal to require school districts to not
only solicit sealed bids for provision of group health insurance but
also encourage them to put their employees in the state insurance
pool rather than continuing coverage under one of the WEA Insurance
Trust group health plans.
- Maintain the establishment of the school calendar as a mandatory
subject of bargaining.
The quality of a school staff is enhanced when the staff is part of
decision-making over issues like fringe benefit options and salary structure.
The Assembly Republicans wanted to roll back health insurance benefits
by making health insurance a permissive subject of bargaining and by
changing the QEO law. Another Republican provision would have made the
establishment of the school calendar a permissive subject of bargaining.
Nearly a thousand WEAC members contacted Assembly Republican leaders
to demand that the assault on Wisconsin public school employees stop.
In the end, the Assembly retreated on every point.
QEO:
- New QEO Component: Maintenance of All Conditions of Employment.
In order for a school district employer's offer to be deemed "qualified,"
newly require the employer to maintain all conditions of employment
as those conditions existed 90 days prior to the expiration of any
previous collective bargaining agreement between the employer and
its represented teaching employees or 90 days prior to the commencement
of negotiations, if there was no previous collective bargaining agreement.
- New QEO Component: Maintenance of Any Provisions Relating to Permissive
Subjects of Bargaining. In order for a school district employer's
offer to be deemed "qualified," newly require the employer
to maintain any provisions relating to permissive subjects of bargaining
that existed in the previous collective bargaining agreement between
the employer and its represented teaching employees or that existed
90 days prior to the expiration of any previous collective bargaining
agreement between the parties in any written agreement by the parties.
- Binding Arbitration Authorized if Employer's Offer is not "Qualified."
Specify that if an investigator from the Employment Relations Commission
determines, as part of an investigation whether a bargaining impasse
exists between the parties, that the employer has not submitted a
timely QEO, either the labor organization representing the school
district professional employees or the school district employer would
be authorized to petition for compulsory, final and binding arbitration,
and the current law QEO provisions whereby an employer could avoid
such arbitration procedures would not apply. Require the Commission
to prescribe by rule the methodology to be used to determine whether
or not a proposal submitted by a school district employer constitutes
a timely QEO.
- QEO Initial Applicability. Provide that these provisions would first
apply to petitions for arbitration filed by school district employers
or their represented teaching employees after the general effective
date of the biennial budget act.
WEAC supports the full repeal of the QEO law. The law unfairly singles
out educators to cap salary increases, destroys local collective bargaining
and is harmful to employee morale impacting the overall quality of instruction
in schools. These proposed changes to the QEO law seek to restore fairness
to the local bargaining relationship by maintaining conditions of employment,
protecting permissive subjects of bargaining and requiring the WERC
to define a timely QEO.
"Paycheck Protection":
- Reject the Assembly Republican provisions to establish a "paycheck
protection" law making it illegal for all employers and unions
to collect member dues for use in political action.
The "paycheck protection" law would undermine the First Amendment
rights of teachers and other education employees. It prevents them from
forming associations to advance their interests by speech and petitions
to the government for redress of grievances. No other types of voluntary
membership associations are subject to such restrictions on constitutionally
protected activities.
GPR Appropriation for the Milwaukee Voucher Program:
- Delete the general school aid reduction for the voucher program
for non-MPS districts.
- Require MPS school aids to be reduced by an amount equal to 45%
of the cost of the voucher program.
- Allow the amount of property taxes levied by MPS to offset the voucher
reduction to be counted outside of the calculation of two-thirds partial
school revenues.
- Fund Voucher summer school programs at the same 40% level as public
summer school programs.
This provision essentially establishes a separate GPR appropriation
for the voucher program. State aid to schools outside Milwaukee will
no longer be reduced to pay for the voucher program. This provision
will require the voucher program to "stand alone" as an appropriation
in the state budget. WEAC believes the voucher program must eventually
be held accountable to the taxpayers for this appropriation and that
voucher schools should be required to meet the same standards and assessments
as public schools.
Charter School Law:
- Allow, on a pilot basis, the UW-Parkside to establish or contract
to establish one charter school in Racine. The Charter school could
not operate as a high school or enroll more than 400 pupils. Apply
various other conditions relating to the creation of this new charter
entity.
- Reject the Assembly provisions that would have allowed counties,
CESAs and WTCS districts to charter schools statewide.
In order for public schools to benefit everyone, they need to be accountable
to the voters through their elected representatives on school boards.
That is why WEAC feels so strongly that new charter schools must be
instrumentalities of the local school districts and that employees of
charter schools must be employees of the district with full bargaining
rights.
WTCS Related Funding Items:
- $1.3M - Provide a 3.25% annual increase in funding for the WHEG
grant program
- Cut $4.3M -- Limit TOP Grant to just first year students effective
July 1, 2001.
- $1.5M - Provide $750,000 annually for incentive grants to districts
with limited fiscal capacity.
- $1.5M - Provide $750,000 annually for additional course selection
grants for the purpose of adding sections in courses where student
demand exceeds capacity.
- $300,000 - Provide funding for assistive technology grants
- Require each WTCS board to accept credits transferred from another
district or from an institution or college campus within the UW system
for general education courses and for courses included under a current
plan for coordinating the transfer of credits.
- Expand the sunset date for expenditures on applied technology centers
without referendum approval from January 1, 2002, to July 1, 2003.
WEAC supported these increases in grant funding for the WTCS, but also
supported a general aid increase to the WTCS. The conference committee
did not provide any general aid increases to the WTCS.
Summary of Other Various Public Instruction Related Items:
- Delay $115M in school aid payments to the next biennium.
- Fund state residential schools in 2/3 calculation.
- Create a Legislative Council Study Committee of School Funding.
- Create a Legislative Council Study Committee of Special Education
Funding.
- Rename the morning milk program the school day milk program.
- $220,000 - aid increase for County Children with Disabilities Education
Boards
- $217,800 - aid increase for school breakfast programs
- Retain base level funding for the High School Graduation Test development,
but delay test implementation by two-years. Restore the parent opt-out
provision to the test.
- $2.5M - Eliminate the 5% base budget cuts to DPI.
- Delete all provisions that would require DPI to report on distribution
of federal aids.
- $900,000 - Provide $450,000 annually to the minority precollege
scholarship program.
- $223,700 - Aid increase for the Badgerlink program.
- $300,000 - Aid increase for after school care programs.
- Beginning in 2002-2003, prohibit districts from starting school
before September 1. Specify that DPI could only grant a waiver of
this requirement if it determines there are extraordinary reasons
for granting it. Require DPI to promulgate rules to implement and
administer this provision.
- Allow school districts to hold their annual meetings before May
15 or after October 31. Under current law, meetings may not be held
before May 15 or after September 30.
- Beginning in 2005-2006, require all public and private schools to
offer the Pledge of Allegiance or the national Anthem in grades one
to twelve each school day; allow schools to adopt a policy requiring
school uniforms; require schools that offer human growth and development
classes to offer instruction in marriage and parental responsibility;
encourage armed forces veterans to visit schools to discuss their
experiences as veterans and establish certain special observance days
in statute.
- Establish a children's vision initiative.
- Establish a Wisconsin Educational Services Program for the Deaf
and Hard of Hearing.
- Reject Assembly provision allowing TEACH grants to be given to private
schools.
- Require public utilities to provide DOA with energy billing and
use data for public schools.
- Create a new Department of Electronic Government
For More Information:
Please contact Bob Burke, WEAC Legislative Program Coordinator, with
any questions relating to the information contained in this initial
summary of the budget conference committee report. Bob can be reached
by e-mail at burkeb@weac.org or
by phone at 800-362-8034.
Posted July 26, 2001;
Updated July 27, 2001
