The "education governor" now wants 2/3 funding for K-12. But unlike Evers, it won't go to classrooms

For the second straight day, we’ve got a candidate for governor revealing new policy plans that go “against (stereo)type.”

Gov. Scott Walker is proposing to restore the state's commitment to fund two-thirds of public school costs and to increase state funding for local town roads.

The school-funding proposal matches one from his Democratic opponent, State Superintendent Tony Evers. It would increase the state's share of funding for local schools to a level not seen in more than a decade.

I guffawed like the rest of you did when I first saw it this morning, and it shows that Walker is losing badly on the education issue (and likely the overall election) if he feels a need to promise more education spending to keep pace with Tony Evers.

But oddly, Walker may not be too far off when he says that getting to 2/3 funding at this point isn’t a stretch. This Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo from last December says that state support is projected to rise from 63.6% to 65.8% between 2016-17 and this school year. Another 1% wouldn’t be as much of a reach as it seems on first reaction.

And we may be even closer now to 2/3 funding than we were in December, as Walker signed a bill earlier this year raising sparsity aids for small, rural districts by $6.45 million. Some of that may be offset by another part of the same bill, which raised the revenue limits for districts that were handcuffed by the lowest limits in the state, but you get the idea – we’re relatively close to 2/3 as we stand today.

Before we go further, let’s back up a bit and start with where this “two-thirds” statistic comes from. Using . the LFB’s Informational Paper on school funding for this recent state budget, the two-thirds figure was defined over 20 years ago as follows.

The statutes defined both the numerator and denominator of the two-thirds state funding calculation. The numerator was the sum of state general and categorical school aid appropriations and the school levy tax credit. The denominator, or partial school revenues, was the sum of state school aids and, with certain exceptions, property taxes levied for school districts. Under 2001 Act 16, the general program operations appropriation in the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) for the Educational Services Program for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and the Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired was added to both the numerator and the denominator of the two-thirds funding calculation.

The school levy tax credit appropriation was statutorily included in the definition of state support when the state moved to two-thirds funding. The first dollar credit, created in 2007 Act 20, is funded through the same appropriation. The school levy tax credit is extended to all taxable property. The credit is distributed based on each municipality's share of statewide levies for school purposes during the preceding three years multiplied by the annual amount appropriated for the credit and allocated proportionately to reduce individual owners' property tax bills. The first dollar credit is extended to each taxable parcel of real estate on which improvements are located.

And given the large amount that we've seen get put into the School Levy and First Dollar credit, along with other property tax-related credits in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan, this helps to raise "state support" of schools, even if those dollars aren't going into the classroom. You may remember this chart that I produced when discussing the shell game that's been played with property taxes in recent years.

Also, when I checked back on the LFB “school coverage” memo from last December, something didn’t seem right about those figures to me. In particular, the non-state aid/property tax part of the “partial school revenues” slightly declined in each of the last 2 years. So I went to the Wisconsin Association of School Boards’ website and looked at the part that talked about property taxes that went to school districts in 2017-18.

Those numbers told a different story.

Of the various school district fund designations that are generally controlled by revenue limits, General Fund (Fund 10) levies increased statewide by the biggest amount—$54.8 million—due mainly to exceptions to revenue limits allowed under state law (see below). Fund 38 levies for non-referendum debt service increased by a statewide total of $18.0 million. Fund 41 levies for capital expansion increased by roughly $100,000 over last year.

The biggest portion of the increase in Fund 10 levies ($25 million) was attributable to the passage by local school district voters of operating referenda, followed by levy increases to offset the aid reductions used to fund the voucher payments under the Statewide and Racine voucher programs ($17.4 million). Increases due to energy efficiency projects totaled $13 million. Levies to offset the aid reductions used to fund the payments to private schools for Special Needs vouchers increased to roughly $3.0 million from essentially zero the previous year. All four of these increases occurred for purposes that are exceptions to revenue limits.

Statewide, General Fund (Fund 10) levies totaled just under $4.158 billion, while levies for Non-Referendum Debt (Fund 38) totaled $132.4 million.

The LFB report lists the non-state part of funding as $3.659 billion, basically $500 million less. WASB lists Referendum debt (usually for buildings) in a separate area, so perhaps the “two-thirds” figure is leaving out new taxes due to operating referenda and the property tax increases due to vouchers (if I’m off here, feel free to comment/explain).

Revenue limits have not been changed for this school year, which helps explain why there are so many school referenda on the ballot in 3 weeks. But it also makes it possible that non-state revenues won’t change and/or slightly decline when this is calculated in the next state budget. It won’t mean that YOUR school property taxes are lower (due to referenda), but the stats will sound good and it won’t take that much extra money to reach 2/3.

However, even if both Evers and Walker are promising 2/3 funding, how they get there would likely be very different. Remember that almost all of the “added funding” that Walker talks about for this budget was in the form of per-pupil aids and increased property tax credits, even if the money never went into the classroom.

That is in major contrast to where Evers’ budget request for the Department of Public Instruction would place the money.

1. $1.7 billion more for General Aids, which distributes more money to poorer districts and less to property-rich districts.

2. Remove the $1.1 billion in School Levy and First Dollar Credits and raise revenue limits (the thought is that the increased General Aids will make up the difference).

3. $650 million more for Special Education and Mental Health aids (extra bonus, districts are less likely to have to have Special Ed and counseling costs eat into their regular budgets).

So interestingly, Scott Walker may not be completely lying when he says there could be enough money in the next budget to reach 2/3 funding. But what he’s not mentioning is that this stat likely doesn’t account for all the operating referenda that has raised Wisconsinites’ taxes, and that many classrooms and schools will still likely be underfunded because of Walker’s refusal to deal with resource disparities that are crippling much of the state.

Give me real funding with a guy who actually has a degree past high school and a guy who’s actually been in a classroom for reasons other than a taxpayer-funded photo op. And that guy’s Tony Evers.