Assembly Candidates on School Funding

Garey Bies

Garey Bies

http://www.legis.state.wi.us

608.266.5350

The school aid formula has been a topic of great discussion for many years with no one being able to make any significant changes. This session I introduced a comprehensive plan to address the number one inequity in the current school aid formula: that being how the current formula bases school aid on property value and not on the ability of residents to pay taxes.

My legislation, Assembly Bill 593, would change how schools are funded by guaranteeing that each school would receive $1,000 per student and then the balance of the school aids would be distributed by the formula. This proposal would not change how much funding is available, just how it is distributed. This is important for the zero- and low-aid school districts around the state that must place an undue burden on their residents. For the zero aid districts in the First Assembly District, it is not the residents who are driving property prices so high, but wealthy vacationers buying second homes.

This legislation would have a huge impact for the zero-aid districts, but the impact for the hundreds of other school districts would be negligible. My legislation would redistribute only $30 million, the same amount the State Audit Bureau found that Milwaukee Public School WASTES each year.

Unfortunately my proposal did not even receive a public hearing from the Democrats this session, they are too intent on keeping the status quo when it comes to school funding. Next session, I will be introducing my legislation again.

Dick Skare

http://www.dickskare.com

920.493.2912

Wisconsin’s public schools are key to Wisconsin’s future, which is why the broken system of school funding in our state must be fixed. Education funding is distributed based on the relative property wealth of a community, which leads to inefficient spending, higher property taxes, and outcomes that fail far too many of our children. This must change.

Dick Skare

We can’t continue to pit children against seniors who are already struggling to pay property taxes. If elected, I’ll make the hard choices that have been ignored for the past decades as research has piled up proving how desperately a change in education funding methods is needed. These choices include departing from the use of local property values in determining the wealth of local communities and replacing it with a system that protects middle class, working families and seniors. It also means enhancing a fair and accountable public school system that directs our scarce taxpayer resources toward our most precious resource, our children. This will mean cutting the education programs that don’t work or have costly administration, while expanding those that result in a skilled workforce and a stronger community.

This much is clear: While our methods of funding public schools must change, our funding formula cannot be fixed by pitting schools against each other or kids against seniors. Fairness in school funding is only possible if we have a fair tax system that protects working families by making sure that big, out-of-state corporations should not dodge paying their fair share of taxes by using accounting gimmicks and out-of-state PO Boxes.

It’s important to keep unjust tax loopholes closed so that Wisconsin will have more resources to dedicate to our children’s future.