McCallum's budget proposal puts great schools at risk

Now that Governor Scott McCallum has proposed his 2001-2003 state budget, we know for sure how much is at risk for children and educators in public schools. So just what is at risk? Nothing less than the core elements of WEAC's Great Schools campaign: quality, involvement, and support of Wisconsin's public schools.

Governor McCallum's budget does little to place students in classrooms that work, shows no commitment to develop quality staff through collectively bargained approaches and promotes educational schemes that will not benefit everyone. Governor McCallum's budget contains little relief from revenue caps, makes dramatic cuts in the SAGE K-3 class size reduction program, attempts to grab authority away from the DPI, expands the scope of the voucher and charter school laws and includes several direct assaults on the bargaining rights of education employees.

The summary below analyzes the governor's budget as it relates to the three core messages under the theme "Every kid deserves a Great School":

• Great Schools place students in classrooms that work
• Great Schools depend on a great staff
• Great Schools benefit everyone

SAGE Class Size Reduction Program:

There is no better example of a program that makes classrooms work than the Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program, which reduces class sizes in early grades in low-income schools and requires districts to create and implement plans for improving student performance.

Governor's Budget: Dramatically Scales Back the SAGE Program

• Cut funding to at least 370 schools in the SAGE program with less than 50% poverty rates by restricting the program only to kindergarten and first grade in those schools.
• Provide full K-3 SAGE funding only to schools with a 50% or greater poverty rate. It is estimated that somewhere between 115 and 130 schools remain at this level, a majority of which are in the City of Milwaukee.
• Strip the annual evaluation responsibility away from the UW-Milwaukee and give it to a newly created Board on Education Evaluation and Accountability.

Background: This represents a "gut shot" to the SAGE program. This highly successful program is due to expand based on commitments made by the Legislature. School districts across the state have spent time and effort preparing for the continuation of their programs. WEAC supports making SAGE permanent through the third grade (Go to the OnWEAC Resource page on class size and the SAGE program for additional information).

Relief from Revenue Caps:

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 and other technology. They have also cut or eliminated important programs and services for children.

Governor's Budget: No Relief Under Revenue Caps

• Freeze per-pupil spending cap at $220.29, eliminating the inflationary adjustment provided in previous years.
• Maintain the current 75% hold harmless declining enrollment relief, but provide no additional relief to declining enrollment districts.
• Allow a modest increase for low-spending districts from $6,700 to $6,900 in '03. This is a provision that applies to a limited number of districts across the state.
• Significantly roll back summer school programs by including only 25% of summer school pupil enrollment when calculating revenue caps by the 2003-04 school year. Current law allows for a 40% pupil count allowance. Note: this reduction in summer school aid is done at the same time the governor would allow Milwaukee charter schools to receive summer school aid.
• Make other "technical changes" to revenue cap calculations.
• Limit the scheduling of school district referendums to spring and general elections or a comparable date when no fall election is held.

Background: WEAC supports full repeal of the revenue cap law. The budget ratchets down even harder on caps and provides no additional relief for declining enrollment districts throughout Wisconsin (For more information, to the OnWEAC resource page on school district revenue controls.)

Vouchers for Private Schools:

Working classrooms can only be created with adequate resources. The problem with private school voucher programs is that they shift scarce resources from public schools to private schools. And unlike public schools, voucher schools have no accountability for student achievement or use of taxpayer dollars.

Governor's Budget: Voucher Program Expansion, Other Changes

• Expand income eligibility for families under the voucher program from 175% of poverty to 185%. Once enrolled, allow pupils to remain in the voucher program even if their family exceeds the income eligibility threshold.
• Allow voucher schools to voluntarily administer state standardized tests, but prohibit the DPI from releasing test results by school.
• Allow the new Board on Education and Accountability to conduct a privately-funded long-term evaluation of the voucher program.
• Allow a school that is partially located in the City of Milwaukee to participate in the program (Thomas More Catholic High School).

Background: Expanded eligibility was defeated as part of the last state budget. It is also an insult to public schools to expect that a voluntary testing of voucher schools will amount to accountability in the voucher program (For more information, go to the OnWEAC resource page on private school vouchers.)

State's Share of School Revenues:

As noted above, working classrooms require adequate resources. The state needs to live up to its commitment to fund two-thirds of school revenues.

Governor's Budget: Fund State's Share of Schools

• Maintain 2/3 funding of revenues ($540 million)
• The bill sets the secondary cost ceiling per pupil at $6,900 in the'01-02 school year and $7,000 in the '02-03 school year. Thereafter, the secondary cost ceiling per pupil is the prior year's cost ceiling adjusted for inflation.

Special Education:

The ability of Wisconsin schools to provide classrooms that work is being seriously challenged because of the state's failure to keep its commitment to fund special education. Schools are being forced to choose between special education and regular education.

Governor's Budget: Limited Funds for Special Education and Changes to IEPs

• Establish a "low incidence/high cost" funding for special education programs.
• Provide $25M over two years to reimburse districts for 50 percent of the cost of serving high cost special-needs students. High cost is defined as $50,000 or more. Use a "census based" approach for distribution of special education funds. Under the census-based formula, special education aid will be distributed as a fixed rate per pupil payment to each district based on a combination of the district's total and low-income pupils.
• Provide no additional funds for special education categorical aids.
• Prohibit IEP teams from recommening placement of special education children. Under the bill, the LEA is responsible for determining the child's placement.
• Ensure that districts have the "maximum flexibility allowed under federal law" to serve special-needs students.

Background: The DPI's initial budget request asked for a 90 percent funding for low-incidence/high cost special-needs pupils. It will take additional analysis, but the 50 percent offered here is not likely to help many districts. No additional funding for the special education categorical aid will condemn districts to approximately a 31% level of reimbursement from the state for special education costs (For more information, go to the OnWEAC resource page on special education funding.)

Technical Colleges:

The classrooms of the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) are doing an excellent job of preparing people for the new economy of the 21st Century. But WTCS needs new investment in order to maintain its competitive advantage as one of the nation's best.

Governor's Budget: Little Support for the WI Technical College System

• Deny the request from the WTCS for a $4.8M aid increase in '02 and a $9.9M aid increase in '03. This freezes the aid for WTCS at the 2000-2001 base level. WTCS had requested that general aids be increased by 4.1% annually.
• Reduce the Capacity Building Grant program level from $5.0 million GPR in 2000-01 to $3.0 million GPR in 2001-02 and to $2.0 million GPR in 2002-03.
• Provide no additional funding for the incentive grant program for statewide marketing and promotion of the WTCS. In addition, require that approval of incentive grant awards be contingent upon State WTCS Board approval of the local district board's entire budget first.

Virtual Campus (E-Tech College) Initiative

• Add $1.0 million PR-S annually and 3.0 positions to the State WTCS Board to improve access to technical college courses offered over the Internet. The funds would come from the dissolution of the Wisconsin Advanced Telecommunications Foundation's endowment fund.
• Require the State Board to promulgate rules allowing a student enrolled in one district to take a course offered by another district over the Internet without paying additional fees to the district board offering the course.
• The funds provided by the State Board would be used to establish an Internet site that provides information on all courses offered over the Internet by all district boards and to assist district boards in developing Internet courses.
• Offer $1,000,000 PR-S in 2001-02 be provided from the WATF endowment fund to support the Wisconsin Advanced Distribution Learning Co-Laboratory, which is a collaborative effort among the UW System, WTCS and Department of Defense to standardize systems for delivering on-line instruction.

Various Other Changes to WTCS Board Powers and Duties

• Give the state board authority to direct technical college districts to adopt or eliminate programs of study. The governor proposes statutory language that would require a WTCS district board to offer or eliminate any program or course of study that the WTCS Board directs the district to offer or eliminate. In addition, the budget bill repeals the current law provision that prohibits the State Board from considering any program or course of study for approval that has not been first approved by the district board.
• Allow district boards the authority to employ an instructor who is not certified by the WTCS board if the instructor holds a valid industry certification.
• Allow WTCS district boards to employ an instructor who is not certified by the WTCS Board if the instructor holds a "valid industry certification" that is recognized by the WTCS board.
• Allow any WTCS district to operate charter schools directly or contract for their operation.

Background: A virtual freeze in state aid for the WTCS is unacceptable. The governor proposes no increase or a decrease in funding for categorical aid programs currently administered by the State Board. The freeze in general aid and lack of increase in categorical aids for the WTCS is combined with the standard 5% reduction in the WTCS Board's base budget for state operations, which amounts to a cut of $172,800 annually. WEAC is part of the WTCS coalition that will fight for fair treatment of our technical college system in this budget (For more information, see the WEAC policy paper on WTCS funding.)

TEACH Board, BadgerLink and Educational Communications Board:

The state's Technology for Educational Achievement (TEACH) initiative is designed to provide Wisconsin classrooms with the technology they need to work in the 21st Century. TEACH provides block grants, wiring loans, and technical training and assistance grants to schools and other educational organizations.

Wisconsin has been a national leader in the development of public broadcasting, which provides many educational benefits for state.

Governor's Budget: Modifications to the TEACH Board and Charge Schools for BadgerLink

• Use $1M in federal E-rate funds for a pilot program to train K-12 students as technology support staff for their schools.
• Clarify that Milwaukee charter schools and juvenile detention centers have access to TEACH funding.
• Require school districts to report how they spend annual TEACH grants.
• Require the DPI to charge school districts a fee for use of BadgerLink, which provides statewide access, through the Internet, to periodical and reference information databases.

Governor's Budget: Elimination of the Educational Communications Board

• Fold the ECB public broadcasting duties into a nonprofit corporation.
• Establish a 20-member transitional board to govern the transfer of services from the ECB and the UW Extension to a nonprofit Educational Broadcasting Corporation.
• If the FEC approves all transfers of licenses, the ECB and the UW-Extension public broadcasting division would transfer to the board and the DOA.
• Existing staff could remain state employees or become employees of the corporation.

Background: Both TEACH and ECB are supported by WEAC. These proposals will need additional research to ascertain the overall impact on the quality of educational telecommunications and technology instruction in schools (For more information, see the WEAC policy paper on modern classrooms.)

"Alternative Certification" of Teachers:

All teachers should receive the training they need to prepare students for the 21st Century. "Alternative certification" means that people who are not properly trained are allowed to teach.

Governor's Budget: Expand Alternative Certification of Teachers

• Require DPI to issue licenses to (1) anyone either with a bachelor's degree, five years work experience in the field to be taught or five years service in the United States Armed Forces; and (2) anyone licensed in another state that wants to teach in WI. In addition, allow the State Superintendent to waive licensure requirements for an individual who is requested to teach by a school board.

Background: The WEAC Legislative Agenda calls for the repeal of the alternative licensure statute. This proposal is a dramatic expansion of the law in the wrong direction (For more information see the WEAC position on alternative licensing.)

"Reforms" That Undermine School Staff:

Allowing school boards to unilaterally make important decisions undermines the quality of the school staff and is a way to circumvent collective bargaining.

Governor's Budget: Give School Boards Power to Close Schools, Reassign Staff Without Regard to Bargaining Rights and Publish List of Low Performing Schools

• Allow school boards to unilaterally close schools they identify as low-performing and reassign staff without regard to seniority.
• Require DPI to publish an annual list of low-performing schools. Governor's Budget: Subcontracting of Educational Programs
• Authorize school boards to contract with private, nonprofit organizations to offer educational programs to students in the district

Background: These provisions are commonly referred to as the "Fuller reforms" from Milwaukee. It dates back to the 1995 budget when then-MPS superintendent Howard Fuller attempted to privatize MPS operations. These initiatives are expressly anti-union (For more information, see the WEAC issue paper on subcontracting for K-12 services.)

"Pay-for-Performance" plans based on student test scores:

As a result of collective bargaining, Wisconsin has teachers who are among the best in the world. Our system of bargaining should not be thrown out the window in favor of some risky scheme that takes power away from the people who know most about education: teachers.

Governor's Budget: Create a Pay-for-Performance Awards Program

• Establish an advisory council to establish criteria for distributing a "school-based improvement awards program." Criteria for program must include student performance on test scores and teacher's knowledge and skills. Initial payments would not begin until 2004.

Background: This initiative is contrary to everything that WEAC's bargaining goals stand for. Innovative programs that enhance compensation must be based in sound collectively bargained approaches that recognize knowledge and skills development (For more information, read about the Manitowoc contract that rewards professional development.)

Bargaining for Health Care Provider and Changes to QEO:

The quality of a school staff is enhanced when the staff is part of decision-making over things such as health care options. And one reason Wisconsin has such high-quality school staff is the fact that it has been involved, through collective bargaining, in decisions over health care.

Governor's Budget: No longer bargain choice of health care provider and change the definition of a QEO regarding provision of health care benefits

• Eliminate bargaining over choice of health care providers by allowing school districts to choose between providers that offer similar benefit packages.
• Modify a QEO so that it only provides substantially similar health care benefits, not all of the health care benefits.

Background: This initiative has also been introduced in the past. It is also being fueled by a recent Wisconsin Policy Research Institute study on the WEAIT. This right wing-think tank has regularly distributed materials that attack the union (For more information, read WEAC's explanation of the important and beneficial role of the WEA Trust.)

Establishment of School Calendar in Collective Bargaining:

Another example of collective bargaining leading to high-quality staff is decision-making over school establishment of the school calendar. Having staff involved in discussions relating to the academic calendar has served our schools well.

Governor's Budget: School Start Date Law Changes Including Establishing School Calendar as Prohibited Subject of Bargaining

• Prohibit schools from holding class on the Friday preceding Labor Day.
• Maintain current opt out provision for start date, but allow school boards to hold an opt out public hearing on or after May 1 rather than July 1 to decide to commence the school term prior to September 1.
• Specify that a school board not be required to bargain over the establishment of the school calendar by making it a prohibited subject of bargaining.
• Create a nine-member governor-appointed committee to study start date issues.

Background: WEAC has a firmly established position in support of bargaining the establishment of the school calendar. Educators are the practitioners in the schools and know best how to establish the calendar. Governor McCallum has chosen to include not only changes in the start date, but to also make the establishment of the entire calendar a prohibited subject of bargaining. (For more information, see the WEAC position paper on collective bargaining rights related to school calendars.)

NBPTS Certification Incentive Grant Program:

WEAC has been a leader in the effort to maintain high standards among Wisconsin educators by encouraging them to achieve National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) certification.

Governor's Budget: Provide NBPTS Incentives, but no additional funding

• Require DPI to grant a master level license to anyone who achieves certification from NBPTS. Finally, allow non-resident teachers who teach in Wisconsin and who are NBPTS certified to receive grants under the NBPTS incentive program (For more information, see the OnWEAC resource page on national board certification.)

Education Advocates at State Level:

In order to have high-quality staff in the schools, you need people fighting for educators at the state level. And the officials at the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) serve as advocates for education. Plus, many of the DPI employees are WEAC members.

Governor's Budget: Diminish DPI's Ability to Distribute Federal Funds

• Require DPI to release the maximum amount of federal aid to school districts, thereby reducing the ability of DPI to target the funding where it is needed.

Background: Many staff positions inside the DPI are partially funded through federal dollars to the extent allowed by federal law. This provision could result in severe position cuts in the department.

Charter Schools:

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.

Governor's Budget: Dramatically Expand Charter School Law

• Create a new "expanded flexibility status" for high-performing schools (defined as performing above average on student performance on test scores, attendance rates). Require these schools to implement site-based management programs. Provide $1.5M under new program for schools and nonprofit organizations to train administrators in decentralized management strategies and provide another $600,000 for competitive grants to schools for site- based planning. Finally, provide "regulatory flexibility" to schools in program.
• Allow school boards that receive "extended flexibility status" to reassign staff without regard to seniority or bargaining rights.
• Create a new Charter School Loan Fund -- $1M state dollars and $1M federal dollars in '03 for developing charters by school boards.
• Expand chartering authority to UW campuses, technical colleges and CESA's statewide.
• Require DPI to distribute the maximum amount of federal aids directly to school districts.

Background: The expanded flexibility status for schools is for "above average" performing schools. That, of course, could mean several hundred schools across the state would be exempt from massive rules and regulations including. WEAC supports a law that keeps charter schools public and part of the school district. This holds charters accountable to the students, parents and taxpayers in communities who elect local boards to run the schools (For more information, read WEAC's testimony on charter schools.)

Constitutionally Elected Superintendent to Administer Public Schools:

The power of the Department of Public Instruction and its leader, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, are rooted in the Wisconsin Constitution. And this system of running our public schools has served all Wisconsinites well as we have top-quality schools that produce a well-educated and well-trained populace.

Governor's Budget: Board of Education Evaluation and Accountability

• Provide $11.8 Million and transfer15.6 positions out of the DPI to a new governor's appointed board of Education Evaluation and Accountability. The new board will be totally independent of the DPI housed in the Department of Administration. It will administer the WI Student Assessment System, the state's new high school graduation test, the SAGE evaluation and it will conduct any other analyses of the performance of Wisconsin's public schools.

Background: This represents the most serious power grab from DPI since the proposed takeover of the agency in 1995 by Governor Thompson. The DPI immediately expressed legal concerns over this move by McCallum. The 7-0 WI State Supreme Court decision in Craney vs. Thompson clearly established DPI as a constitutionally established agency with powers and duties to govern the public schools in Wisconsin.

Governor's Budget: Create a New Rule Review Commission and a New Bureau of School Improvement

• Create a new 11-member commission to review all DPI rules and identify those that are outmoded and impede innovation. The commission would be made up entirely of governor appointees.
• Require the DPI to reallocate existing staff to create a new Bureau of School Improvement which would include on-site assistance teams of DPI staff and educators to provide assistance to low-performing schools. $700,000 is provided for release time for educators in the new program.

Background: This is another example of the new governor's power grab. It is not clear under what authority an 11-member board could review DPI rule making decisions.

Governor's Budget: Create a new grant program to promote consolidation of school services and districts:

• Provide $1 Million in '03 most of which goes to CESA's to consolidate school administrative services. $50,000 is provided to study district consolidations.
• Authorize the district administrator of a newly consolidated school district, for 60 days after the effective date of the consolidation, to lay off or reassign school district employees without regard to seniority in service.

This memo is meant to be a first glance look at provisions contained in the budget. Continue checking in with the OnWEAC Members Only site for a more thorough analysis of the budget bill statutory language. Please feel free to contact Bob Burke at burkeb@weac.org or at 800-362-8034 ext. 254 for additional information on the 2001-2003 biennial state budget.

You also may want to look over these budget summaries:

The Department of Public Instruction's summary of the governor's budget plan

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau's summary of the governor's budget plan

Posted March 22, 2001