How Evers wants to bulk up the state's schools

I saw that our Governor is trying to take advantage of the extra money the state has coming in by calling a special session to try to bump up investment in public spending.

So let's look at Tony Evers’ package of K-12 plans. And when you do, you see that the initiatives are basically split into 3 parts.

Tax cuts/General School Funding

• Provides an additional $130 million in equalization aid.

This is basically a property tax cut that adds state funding to the K-12 General Aid formula. It doesn’t necessarily add any extra funding to the schools themselves, because I see no change in revenue limits, so you’d think this is right in line with what GOP Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald said he wanted a few weeks ago, except that Fitz wanted it to go to Tech Colleges vs K-12.

Naturally, now that Evers the one asking for a property tax cut, Fitzgerald is grumbling against it.

It’s clear that the governor is just trying to come up with an excuse to veto any tax cut the Republican Legislature sends him. https://t.co/CGLWCGKl0T

— Scott Fitzgerald (@SenFitzgerald) February 6, 2020

That’s either pathetic pettiness, or outright hostility to funding public K-12 education. And either answer should be disqualifying.

Moving on, here is the second large emphasis in Evers’ K-12 proposal.

Special Education/Mental Health

• Provides $79.1 million GPR in fiscal year 2021 to increase the estimated reimbursement rate for school district special education costs from 30 percent to 34 percent;

• Increases the funding for high cost special education aid by an amount necessary to reimburse school districts for 100 percent of certain costs over $30,000 incurred to support a student with disabilities;

• Converts the relevant high cost special education aid appropriation from a sum certain to a sum sufficient appropriation;

• Increases funding for special education transition readiness grants by 100 percent, or $1.5 million GPR;

• Increases the allowable per pupil award from $1,000 to $1,500 for Special Education Transition Incentive grants;

• Provides $19 million GPR in additional school-based mental health services;

• Expands the types of costs that are eligible for aid under the program to include school counselors, psychologists, or nurses;

• Provides an additional $3.75 million for the School-Based Mental Health Collaborations grant program;

Republicans have said they wanted to fund school mental health initiatives, and said "fund mental health programs" as an excuse for not having red flag laws and other gun control measures. Well, now the governor also says he wants to put more money toward these measures, and Assembly Dem Leader Gordon Hintz says it gives GOPs an opportunity to literally put the money where their mouths are.

We’ll see whether this mental health funding is truly a priority for Republicans, or just a talking point. With additional state revenue, we have the ability to get this done before the end of the legislative session.

— Gordon Hintz (@GordonHintz) February 6, 2020

If GOPs had any kind of strategic brain, they’d go along with this. But I’m not getting my hopes up.

The WisGOPs should also go along with the last main theme of Evers’ package, which will give more aid and stability to small and mid-size rural schools through the state’s sparsity aid program.

Sparsity aid to rural schools

• Provides $10.1 million to invest more in sparsity aid payments, including establishing a second tier of sparsity aid for school districts that would otherwise be eligible but have an enrollment of more than 745 pupils;

• Modifies "stopgap" payments to include a district that no longer has fewer than ten members per square mile to also receive a payment of 50 percent of its prior year sparsity aid payment for one year;

Evers also wants to add funding for summer school programming in the state’s 5 largest districts, and allow school districts to re-hire newly retired employees in a speedier amount of time. The latter is a cousin to a GOP bill that would allow retired teachers to return to the classroom and keep their pension benefits, although Evers doesn’t want to raise the retirement age of teachers by 4 ½ years like GOPs do.

Using the small one-time bump to restore the state to two-thirds funding in public K-12 education, try to alleviate teaching shortages, and give Wisconsin homeowners a property tax break sure seems like a better list of options than the GOP’s plans, which likely involve even more giveaways to corporate donors and Betsy DeVos’s “Jesus rode a dinosaur” schools. But I reserve the right to be surprised, and I do remember that WisGOP legislators conceded more than $600 million in additional public K-12 spending in this last state budget because they knew Evers had the upper hand with the public.

And Evers should continue to press the issue with this special session and continue to put it out there in the press, putting GOPs on the spot as to whether they will choose to take action....or not. Let's see if GOPs realize that if they want to hang on to keep their large, gerrymandered majorities, they shouldn't ignore a chance to invest in community schools. And if Evers doesn't push for it, GOPs will let it drop like they have with gun laws and last week's special session to help farmers.

So keep talking, Tony. Our schools and our communities need it.