Dwindling Resources Leaving Children Behind

By Terry Lawler
Contributing writer

Thanks to state-imposed revenue caps, a flawed state school funding system and a weakening economy, Rhinelander’s resources for educating its children are continually eroding.

Just listen to Nancy Kuczmarski, who has taught high school English in Rhinelander for nearly 25 years. She remembers the district she came to in 1984 as a very different place.

“When I came here, I could order any textbooks I needed; I could have older ones re-bound. Now I’m using the oldest texts I’ve ever had. I used to have a $300 per year supply budget for my classroom. Now, the entire department gets $200. Today we ran out of ink in our computer lab. We have no money to buy more. Our students can’t print out their work.”

Roger Erhahl

Robin Sweo

Nancy Kuczmarski

Or listen to Superintendent Roger Erdahl as he recites the litany of cuts the districts has endured.

“We have lost 80-90 full-time employees. We have tried to limit those cuts to administration and support staff, trying not to reduce teaching positions. We had 27 retirements last year and most of those positions were not replaced. We have fewer paraprofessionals and larger classes. All of this translates into more work for the teachers. That means they have less preparation time and less time for collaboration. Every time we cut a position, those duties and responsibilities don’t disappear; they get distributed among the remaining staff.”

Property values are soaring in Rhinelander and its neighboring communities. Unfortunately, wages for most of the population of those communities have not kept pace. That’s bad news not only for these communities in general, but also for their struggling schools.

“Our biggest problem is the equalization formula which says that if you have high property values, you can afford to run your own schools,” Erdahl said. “Many of the Boomers are retiring and many of them are affluent. Perhaps they vacationed in this area with their families or went to camp here as a child. They always wanted to own property here. So, they come to us with a pocketful of money and they buy a ‘hunting 40’or a lake cabin, and now their new neighbors’ properties are worth more. Our property values have been increasing $200 million a year. The state looks at us and says, ‘You’re wealthy.’ ”

Robin Sweo, knows all too well that this “wealth” is imaginary. A desk manager at Rhinelander’s Holiday Inn, Robin and her husband have a daughter at Rhinelander High School.

“Everything has gone up but the wages haven’t gone up correspondingly. It’s getting to the point where we’re a two-income family but we’re living paycheck by paycheck by paycheck and just barely making it. Some months we don’t make it.”

Sweo hates to see staff at the school being cut because in larger classes “not as much learning goes on.” She is aware of the district’s maintenance needs. “I know that there are some repairs that need to be done in the district that should have been done a long time ago.”

The district hopes to address those repairs with an upcoming referendum. “We have allocated $17.4 million of a $35 million referendum for deferred maintenance, things that should have been done years ago,” Erdahl said. (Update: On April 1, 2008, Rhinelander voters defeated four referendums totaling $35 million. More)

Meanwhile, Rhinelander has closed three neighborhood schools, closings that Kuczmarski said have caused a lot of “hurting in the community.”

“Several generations of families had gone through those schools. People identified with these schools.”

Rhinelander is still a small town, Kuczmarski said, where the Friday night basketball game is the major entertainment event of the weekend.

The added work and strain is taking a particularly hard toll on the younger teachers. “It’s very hard for them,” Kuczmarski said. “Many are talking of leaving after this year.”

Erdahl said “a fair number of people are starting to realize that if you’re from this part of Wisconsin, you’re not treated the same as your brother-in-law who lives close to Wausau.”

He has given up much hope for a change in the funding formula. “It seems like the Legislature just can’t bring itself to solve this, that they are incapable of taking on big issues.”

Other districts; similar plights

In “this part of Wisconsin,” there are several districts under the umbrella of Northern Tier UniServ, all of which share the same basic problems, inflated property values and low incomes. Each of them is coping in its own way.

Phillips:
Fighting revenue controls for years

Teri Hanson

Teri Hanson wears two hats in Phillips. She teaches German to middle and high school students, but she’s also the secretary for special education part of the day.
“There are no replacements for retirees. We have only a small remnant of our gifted and talented program. We lost our guidance counselors.” More teachers, like Hanson, have to travel between the middle and high school as the district goes to more “shared staffing.”

“We have instituted sports fees, eliminated freshman sports, and next year there will be one librarian for the entire district,” she said.

Hanson said Phillips teachers started addressing revenue control problems in 1998. “We started a grassroots group. We sponsored four walks to Madison to make the public more aware of what’s happening in the schools. People saw there was something wrong with their schools, but they didn’t know why.”

Morale is very low, according to Hanson. “We keep saying we can do it, we can run the schools with a shoestring and a pencil, but it can’t go on forever.”

Wabeno:
In a state of complacency

Earl Blankenheim

Earl Blankenheim remembers when negotiations “got loud and even nasty, but each side maintained respect for the other.” Now, the teachers and the board “get together for a friendly meeting and the board says, ‘This is what you’re going to get. You can throw a tantrum and take it or you can just take it.’ ” Wabeno has been “taking it” for a long time. For several years there has been no business education department. There is no social worker in a town that desperately needs one, said Blankenheim, a grades 7-12 special education teacher.

Blankenheim said the teachers got a 1.1% raise in the first year of their contract and 0.3% in the second year, “but insurance ate that all.” Blankenheim believes that the teachers and board need to get back to real negotiation. “In negotiations, usually somebody has to come out feeling bad, and I’m tired of it being teachers.”

Crandon:
Less professional development

Laurie Borofka

Laurie Borofka, a 5th-grade teacher, said that among other cuts, Crandon cut back on its professional development program. “The district will pay for a substitute, but all costs for a convention or conference must be paid by the teacher. This is detrimental to teachers and students.”

Negotiations have been difficult, she said. “The board has not yet imposed a QEO on its teachers, but it uses the QEO as a tool during negotiations. For years the teachers on the top of the pay scale were seeing no salary increase, so we changed our insurance carrier and the board applied the savings to the salary schedule.” Still, Borofka admits the change was “scary” and the teachers are concerned as to whether the savings will continue.

Posted March 27, 2008