July 14, 2014 at 4:44 p.m.
SDR to lose $500,000 in state aid for 2014-'15 school year
SDR to lose $500,000 in state aid for 2014-'15 school year
DPI reported that the district will lose $500,000 in state aid for the 2014-'15 school year, continuing the trend of rapidly declining state aid for the district.
"This is not a surprise for the school district," Director of Business Services Marta Kwiatkowski said.
"Since 2000-'01, we have been losing state aid. If you go back to 2000-'01, the state aid and the property taxes were both 50 percent. (For 2013-'14), our state aid was about 13 percent and now it's going to be even less. ... We knew we were going to be losing about 15 percent every year and we have been losing that amount."
State aid continues to decline because of high property values but district officials say the funding formula hurts Rhinelander because income levels are not taken into consideration.
"Because of the high property values, the state is shifting support to the local taxpayers. Their whole theory is if you're a property rich school district, you can afford to pay more in taxes," Kwiatkowski said.
"The only problem here, that I see, is that we are also a high poverty school district. Our free and reduced lunch numbers are really high and that's not taken into consideration, which I don't think is fair."
During the 2014-'15 school year, the district will be entering the second year of a three-year, $12 million referendum. Because the district anticipated the reduction in state aid, Kwiatkowski said the referendum money will be enough to cover the decrease.
"We anticipated that we were going to go down 15 percent and that's why when we built our budget a couple of years ago, before we went for referendum, we took that into consideration. So we are exactly where we should be. There are no surprises. This is already built (into) our budget," she said.
The picture may change in a few years, however. When the current referendum expires after the 2015-'16 school year, another referendum question may well be on the ballot.
"In order for us to maintain our current programming, either the school funding formula has to change or we'll have to go to referendum," Kwiatkowski said.
Thus far, all efforts to change the funding formula have been futile.
"We have gone down to talk to (legislators) and we talked to them about how unfair the school funding formula is and what they told us is it works for some and it might not work for others, but because it works for some, they are unwilling to make changes at this time," Kwiatkowski said.
"I feel that we are being penalized for being property rich. With that said, we might have high property values, ... but we also have some schools where our free and reduced numbers are around 60 percent. I think (the free and reduced numbers) really tell the true situation of our community. We are a high poverty community. We might have the high property values, but those are second homes."
"Honestly, I don't know what to do to change the funding formula. When we came back from Madison, I felt that there was really no support for us. There was sympathy, but no support. They said in order to make it work for us, they'd have to take from other schools and they're not willing to do that," she added.
What can the public do? Kwiatkowski said communication with politicians in Madison is helpful.
"I would say contacting legislators or contacting the Department of Public Instruction, or really contacting anybody in Madison would help," she said.
Marcus Nesemann may be reached at [email protected].
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