Leaders of a statewide school board advocacy group said that school districts around the state will face another financially challenging school year and predicted that many districts will ask voters for more money in referendums.
The Wisconsin Association of School Boards is a nonprofit that represents more than 400 school districts across the state. Dan Rossmiller, the association’s executive director, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that the latest state budget failed to fund schools at the same rate as inflation.
State law limits school districts on how much they can raise local revenues without holding a referendum. Last year, school districts issued a record number of referendums to keep the doors open. Rossmiller said that although state lawmakers allowed the per-pupil revenue limit to increase by $325 a student, they didn’t provide any extra money.
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“That means that if boards of education utilize that $325 per pupil increase, all of that money is going to come from property taxes,” Rossmiller said. “The state will not be sharing in that effort.”
The latest Consumer Price Index reports that inflation rose by 2.7 percent compared to this time last year. Bob Green has been on the Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District Board of Education for more than 20 years and is also second vice president for the association. He told “Wisconsin Today” that school districts this year will be essentially forced to use referendums to raise property taxes to keep up with costs.
“Obviously, parents want to have good schools, so if you want to continue to have good schools — pay teachers, keep the doors open and just stay up with inflation — the only other way we have for getting funding is through referendum,” Green said. “Nobody likes paying more taxes … But yes, school districts have to do that, because we have to have a balanced budget.”
Student cellphone usage another challenge facing districts
Both Rossmiller and Green agreed that another of big challenge facing classrooms is what to do about student cellphones. A recent Wisconsin Policy Forum report found that 72 percent of Wisconsin teachers report that students being distracted by cellphones is a major problem in their classrooms.
There is no uniform policy across the state for phones in schools. Some districts have no policy at all, while others are opting to ban the use of cellphones entirely from “bell to bell.”
Last year, the Middleton-Cross Plains district banned cellphone usage in its middle schools and limited phones in high school to outside classrooms. Green said cell phones have been an “ongoing problem” for the district but that the new policy is largely successful.
Rossmiller said the biggest barrier for districts adopting strict policies like Middleton-Cross Plains’ is the parents.
“Many parents want to have essentially immediate access to their children, particularly if there is an emergency, or, god forbid, an incident where there’s some reported or actual school shooting situation,” Rossmiller said. “That fear is very present among a number of parents. Negotiating (cellphone policy) in a way that parents feel comfortable has been a challenge.”
