AWSA WASBO WCASS WREA WASPA

« | Home | »

Legislative Alert: New Budget Developments

By Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance staff | May 15, 2015

The SAA has learned key Republican members of the Joint Finance Committee plan to roll major voucher expansion and independent charter school expansion proposals into the budget bill on Tuesday, May 19th.

For your information, here is the voucher proposal the SAA obtained.

In addition to voucher and charter expansion proposals, it appears the JFC Republicans will also adopt the Kooyenga/Darling plan to transfer control of certain low-performing MPS schools to the Milwaukee County executive.

At the same time, it appears that majority Republicans plan to stick with a per pupil revenue freeze for public schools.

While I’m sure that this news will generate disappointment, frustration, and anger among SAA members, I think it’s important at this time to focus on the issue we may still be able to have influence on in this budget – per pupil funding for our students.

A freeze in per pupil revenues will clearly drive Wisconsin’s per pupil school spending below the national average.  That is an embarrassment for the state of Wisconsin and a monumental disservice for the children we serve.

I urge all SAA members to pull out all the stops and contact the Joint Finance Committee members and your legislators today, through the weekend and on Monday.  Focus on these two primary talking points:

  1. Restoring the $127 million cut to the per pupil categorical aid.
  2. Emphasize that restoring that cut still only gets public schools back to a freeze in allowable revenues. We need an inflationary increase in per pupil revenues to meet the needs of students.

For your convenience we have provided the contact information for the JFC members. Here are the links to the Senate Directory, Assembly Directory as well as Who Are My Legislators.

Let’s get it done!  Thank you for all your efforts on behalf of the children you serve.

Topics: Legislative Action, SAA Capitol Reports, SAA Capitol Reports with Email Notifications, SAA Latest Update | No Comments »

Comments are closed.