Borsuk: Wisconsin law doesn't seek equal funding for every school child. Here's why.

Alan J. Borsuk

State Rep. John Nygren, the Marinette Republican who co-chairs the Legislature’s budget committee, told a news conference Tuesday that details of Wisconsin’s school funding system “would probably glaze most people’s eyes over.”

How true. Maybe that’s one of the reasons the funding system is what it is. Who can bear to think about changing it?

But, in line with my motto (“Dare to be boring!”), let us turn our attention to questions such as these:

Why does the education of a kid who lives in, say, the 3400 block of N. Cramer St. get almost $1,200 less in public support than the education of a kid who lives in the 3500 block of N. Cramer St.? Is there something magical in the concrete in E. Edgewood Ave. that makes reality prettier on one side of the street?

Or is it just a historical thing because one block is in the city of Milwaukee and the other in Shorewood?

There are literally thousands of ways across the state of Wisconsin that you could pose such questions, some more dramatic than this example. The state’s 424 school districts each have their own “revenue limits,” which is to say, how much money, under state law, they can receive each year from state aid and local property taxes (and a few other smaller sources, but we’re really talking about state aid and property taxes).

There is a lot more to a school district’s financial picture, but the revenue cap is the most important factor in paying the basic costs of public education.

You might think the law calls for school funding of every kid to be equal. You would be wrong.

Or you might think the system is set up so the rich get better deals than the poor. You’d be more on track, but that’s not really true, either. Some rich communities don’t have such high revenue limits; some poor ones aren’t so low. And Milwaukee, with all of its poverty, has a revenue limit almost exactly at the state average.

The disparity in revenue limits usually doesn’t get much attention. It’s boring. It’s been around a long time. Changing the system is hard work and can quickly become politically painful.

But on Tuesday, Republicans in the state Assembly proposed a list of changes in the education provisions Gov. Scott Walker wanted in the budget for the next two years. One important one: They called for sending less state aid to local schools than Walker favored. And another: allowing school districts with revenue limits well below the state average to increase local property taxes to close much of the gap.

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How much of the gap? A few numbers: The statewide average for revenue limits for the school year that just ended was $10,439. According to the Legislature’s fiscal bureau, 22% of all districts had limits of $9,750 or less. The Assembly Republicans proposed allowing any district below $9,800 to increase property taxes up to that $9,800 level, which would still leave them more than $500 below the state average.

As for the Milwaukee-Shorewood example, here are the numbers: The Milwaukee cap is $10,431, the Shorewood cap is $11,622. The difference is $1,191, which is a lot when multiplied by the number of kids in a classroom or a school. By the way, more than 12% of school districts have revenue limits over $12,000 per kid.

Why do the variations in revenue caps exist?

How we got here

Journey back to 1993. There was a lot of concern, particularly among Republicans, that property taxes statewide were rising too much, largely due to education spending.

To put the brakes on spending and ease property taxes, three things were done: Rules were passed that had the general effect of limiting pay and benefit increases for teachers. State aid to schools was increased substantially to cover two-thirds of general costs and property taxes went down. And a lid was put on how much school districts could collect each year in state aid and property taxes.

The lid — that is, the revenue limit — was imposed on every district and was based on how much each spent at that time. Going back decades, some districts spent more than others. Changing that to equalize things was considered too much. It was either too expensive to bring everyone up to the same level or politically unbearable to require districts about the state average to reduce their spending.

It’s 24 years later. The rules on teacher raises are gone. The two-thirds state commitment to funding schools slipped away, beginning in the last budget passed under Gov. Jim Doyle in 2009.

And the revenue limits live on, as do the disparities in what districts can spend.

The disparities have, if anything, become a bigger deal. One reason: Since 2011 and the changes in state law called Act 10, school districts have more latitude in deciding how to spend money. Districts with more money (that largely means higher revenue limits) have lured teachers they want from lower-limit districts by offering them substantial raises.

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That goes especially for teachers in subjects where there are shortages (math, for example) and teachers who have become known as stars. This free agent market has sometimes pitted suburb against suburb.

I’m not taking sides in the surprisingly heated battling among Republicans in the governor’s office, the Senate and the Assembly over the budget, including other education issues.

But it seems like a good time to offer some historic perspective on the revenue limit issue, and to think about a question: Kids on one side of a street are entitled by law to more public support for their education than kids who live a few feet away on the other side. Does that sound right to you?

Alan J. Borsuk issenior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk@marquette.edu.