Republican lawmakers writing the next state budget voted Monday to include a $639 million funding increase for Wisconsin schools — about $10 million less than the record amount Gov. Scott Walker proposed earlier this year.
The budget-writing committee also increased the household income limits for participation in the statewide private voucher school program.
The 2017-19 spending plan also sets up a timeline for a potential turnaround program for the Racine School District and limits the number of times a school district can ask voters to raise property taxes to pay for building projects and school operations.
The GOP plan allows school districts that spend less per student than the average to raise their property taxes, eliminates expiration dates for teacher and school administrator licenses and gives about $9 million to public and private schools to buy computers for ninth-graders.
The Journal Times: Legislative panel backs delay on opportunity school provision
The Racine Unified School District looks as if it could get a pass for one more year on the threat of a possible state takeover of several of its underperforming schools.
But to completely avoid a possible takeover, the School Board will have to make its employee handbook compliant with the state’s Act 10 law, which prohibits collective bargaining for public employees.
As part of an omnibus education provision, the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee on Monday voted to delay the creation of an Opportunity Schools and Partnership Program by one year. If approved by the full Legislature as an amendment to the state’s 2017-19 biennial budget, the delay would help Racine Unified and other school districts which received a failing grade last year from the state Department of Public Instruction.
Unified has been lobbying local legislators to include the change to the current law, which states if a school receives a failing grade from the state two years in a row, then the opportunity schools provision will go into effect. That would mean underperforming schools would be pulled from the school district and a commissioner would be put in charge of those schools. The commissioner would be appointed by the county executive from a pool of candidates chosen by a city’s mayor, the governor and county executive.
Wisconsin Gazette: 24 Wisconsin counties have passed resolutions against gerrymandering
The drive to improve the way Wisconsin redraws its district maps is rapidly gaining speed.
Using advanced mathematical modeling, Republicans have gerrymandered the state’s current political map so that 40 percent of its districts do not have competitive elections.
The winners have already been chosen by the way that boundaries were drawn.
In the first eight months of this year, a total of 17 counties in Wisconsin have endorsed the Iowa Model, and 7 counties endorsed it in previous years, so 24 counties are now on board. Three counties – Kenosha, La Crosse, and Monroe — have passed resolutions saying they are in favor of nonpartisan redistricting in just the past few weeks.
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