| SEARCH OnWEAC |
|---|
By Terry Lawler
Contributing writer
Two Rivers math teacher Peggy Fencl remembers the days when she could readily access the resources she needed to teach her students. Those times have been erased, possibly forever, because Two Rivers is one of hundreds of school districts in the state struggling with declining enrollment, the crippling effects of state-imposed revenue caps and the impact of rising poverty.
Two Rivers Superintendent Randy Fredrikson also remembers better times. “Over the first 10 years of revenue caps, 1993-2003, the district managed quite well,” he said. “There were places in our budget where we could find money to address needs, our enrollment was steady or increasing, and there were factories providing good jobs.”
 Christine Mujkanovic |
 Randy Fredrikson |
 Peggy Fencl |
 Lisa Quistorf |
 Dana Beilke |
But times have changed. Every year for the past six years, Two Rivers public schools have seen a decline of about 100 students. “We’re at 1,900 students this year,” Fredrikson said. “Each year we graduate 200 students and have 100 coming into kindergarten.”
That creates a huge financial problem for the district because the school funding formula is tied to enrollment. As enrollment declines, so does state aid. But fixed costs such as heating buildings and maintaining buses don’t decline in proportion to enrollment drops. The district has now cut all the staff it can without harming the educational quality of its programs and has begun carving the budget across the board.
“In the past few years, we have cut things which were nice to have but that we could do without. Now, however, the cuts are seriously eroding our programs,” Fredrikson said.
Christine Mujkanovic, chair of the Two Rivers High School social studies department, has seen the cuts deplete her staff and hamper her access to essential materials. “A teacher retired; we didn’t replace him. Class sizes went up and a couple of teachers took an overload schedule, teaching extra classes. Now, another teacher in my department is due to retire and the word is he won’t be replaced, either,” she said. There are no low-enrollment classes anymore; those courses are simply cancelled.
The social studies textbooks need to be replaced. The high school economics books are 22 years old. The American government texts date back to 1994. The consumer economics textbook references the Soviet Union.
Mujkanovic fears that the next cuts will eliminate electives.
And the responsibility of providing an innovative education to 21st century learners is getting more difficult under revenue controls.
“Our department had made a commitment to improving our instruction through technology, but there’s a problem when you take 31 students into a computer lab which has only 26 computers,” Mujkanovic said. “We use smart boards but bulbs are $400 each, and my budget for the year is $3,000.”
Fencl experiences similar frustrations in the math department at Clarke Middle School. “I had to spend my entire budget on calculators for our students,” she said. “Now, we need compasses to replace our old, broken ones and we don’t have the money. I want to take several of our students to a math bowl but the entry fee is $12 per team. I don’t have any money to cover them, or to cover the cost of getting them there. The bowl is a really positive experience because the kids learn that you can earn medals and trophies for something besides sports. The social studies department has offered to help out, but that’s what we have to do here, rob Peter to pay Paul.”
That kind of robbery will take on a whole new meaning for Lisa Quistorf, the principal of Koenig Elementary School. Next year she will still be the principal of Koenig, but she will also serve as the principal of the district’s other elementary school, Magee. The administration has not been immune to budget cuts.
“When I first started here, we had a superintendent and an assistant superintendent,” Quistorf said. “Each building had its own principal, and the high school and middle school had assistant principals. Now we have a superintendent, a principal at the high and middle schools, and one principal for both elementary schools. We haven’t had a curriculum coordinator for six years.”
Fredrikson said the district is cutting 80% of its curriculum budget, which means that there will be no further curriculum writing in the foreseeable future. The facility and technology budget will be cut $150,000 next year. “We won’t be able to replace computer labs on a regular basis, and if our server goes down, it will be difficult to get it fixed,” he said.
Even in the face of these massive cuts, the Two Rivers school community is striving to provide the best education to its children. That’s why the district is launching 4-year-old kindergarten next year. Quistorf agrees with the decision to start 4K. “We have to do what’s best for kids,” she said. “We need 4K to be competitive with the other districts in our area.”
While proven to have a positive impact on students in the long-term, Fredrikson explained that 4K will create a financial hardship under the state’s existing school funding formula.
“When we implement 4K, we see no financial benefit under the revenue caps for three years. We’ll actually lose $140,000 under the state revenue caps because we’re going to educate more kids. It’s one of those strange things about the funding formula.”
As a mother with two children, ages 8 and 3, Dana Beilke has serious concerns about the fate of Two Rivers schools and what it could mean to her family. “We’re losing a lot of teachers,” she said. “That means that class sizes are going up. Teachers will have less one-on-one time with the students. We moved here because of the excellent schools; a lot of people did. The schools are still excellent, but we are losing funding for computers, paper, things that are essential. How are our kids going to keep growing?”
Part of the problem in Two Rivers is the depressed local economy. One measure of poverty – eligibility for free or reduced-price hot lunch – continues to grow. Currently 32% of Two Rivers’ students are eligible.
The poverty is more than a statistic. Mujkanovic thinks of one student who told her that both of his parents are on disability. The family is trying to survive on $1,000 a month. “He told me the best meal of his day is the one he has at school because he doesn’t eat when he’s at home.”
Poverty presents itself in the schools in many ways. Many families cannot afford a computer. That means teachers set time aside to work with students outside regular school hours, in order to give those children the same opportunity as the others in the class. “These kids pour their hearts out to us every day,” Mujkanovic said. “Education for many of them is not a priority. They’re barely surviving.”
In a self-perpetuating downward spiral, poverty increases the pool of students with special needs, but revenue caps force schools to cut back on the teachers and aides needed to help them.
Fencl bitterly recalls one former legislator telling her that the schools didn’t deserve more money because they didn’t turn out a good “product.” Fencl responded, “When factory workers are asked to raise their production, maybe they get a new machine or more workers are hired or another shift is added. The bosses don’t say, ‘Here’s another mandate; increase your productivity but we’re taking money away from you.’ ”
No one in Two Rivers knows the district’s fate. Fencl lamented, “It’s frightening when you look into the future. How much smaller are we going to get, and how many more kids will they put into a classroom? How do I serve those kids who need special help and those who are zooming and those in the middle when the support services aren’t there?”
Fredrikson speculates that the district may have to close one elementary school if things continue the way they are.
“Our community made a huge investment in facilities six years ago, building a new high school and fixing up our other buildings. We could move grades 6-8 up to the high school building and house the other grades in one school,” he said.
“The problem is when you look across the state we’re not the only district in this situation. There is not a surplus of money anywhere in the state budget. I hope that communities across the state will understand that it’s just getting harder and harder to function. Something will have to give at some point,” Fredrikson said.
Fencl hopes that the teachers and administrators in Two Rivers can continue to hold things together. However, she fears that things could become as bad as where her brother teaches in Nebraska. “They hold school four days a week because they can’t afford to pay for five. Sometimes you wonder if your lucky penny’s not going to shine anymore.”
Resource Page on School Funding
Posted April 8, 2008