School District: Cuts Will Be Necessary Under Walker's Budget Proposal

Whitefish Bay School District officials say budget cuts will be needed this year if the state budget is adopted in its current form.

Whitefish Bay, like many other districts in the state, is facing financial challenges as a result of Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal, which included a zero-dollar increase in per-pupil spending. In addition to a freeze in state aid, the budget prevents school districts from raising taxes without going to referendum.

Although Whitefish Bay was able to present a balanced budget to taxpayers last year, Shawn Yde, the district's business director, said it is unrealistic to expect the district to hold the line on costs for a second year – especially given the costs that are beyond the district's control.

"Even assuming that you froze every salary in the district, we don't have control of health insurance costs, casualty insurance costs, utilities and all of the other costs," he said. "It would be naive of me to say that a zero percent increase would be a sustainable budget. It would flat-out mean cuts to programs and services for kids or additional cuts beyond what we've already made to our teachers."

Lobbying legislators

Whitefish Bay Superintendent Mary Gavigan said she believes legislative advocacy will solve Whitefish Bay's potential budget woes. North Shore school officials and board members plan to meet with state Sen. Alberta Darling on March 28 in Madison to discuss their concerns. 

"I believe Wisconsin schools deserve sufficient, sustainable and predictable funding moving forward," Gavigan said. "We need that to be able to thrive, to be able to successfully recruit and retain (staff), to support our students and to achieve yet higher levels."

District officials are joining the Southeastern Wisconsin Schools Alliance in advocating for the following changes to the budget:

• Revenue limit increases must be tied to the consumer price index.
• State aid increases must align with increases in the revenue limit to prevent property tax increases. 
• Flexibility must be provided from mandates to enable districts to control costs and pursue innovative instructional practices.

Resident Michael Braun suggested the board increase employee health insurance contributions, stop funding Recreation Department programs and replace the steps and lane compensation schedule with their own salary guidelines that vary based on merit and employee groups.

Last year, the district cut $2 million from its budgeted expenditures by freezing and significantly limiting salary increases, restructuring time off and making significant changes to health insurance plans and post-retirement benefits.

Teacher compensation

The district’s concerns about recruiting and retaining teachers came to the fore at last month’s school board meeting, when Christine Kiefer, a high school math teacher of 10 years, tearfully announced her resignation.

Kiefer said she was four classes into her masters program when Act 10 hit, which led the school district to stop granting salary increases based on educational progress.

“When I started I had all these incentives to improve, and now I’m completely stuck," Kiefer said at the time. "I have no master's degree, I have no way to increase my salary, and I have no incentives in place to improve my practice."

In addition to reduced benefits and limited salary increases, Kiefer said teachers have also been asked to meet more stringent testing and evaluation standards with larger class sizes.

Board member Cheryl Maranto said the resignations will continue if teachers are not given hope of future salary increases.

"The more we push on compensation, the more we're going to lose our best," she said.

Attending the meeting as a requirement for student government class, high school senior Andrew Gegios was one of several students who asked the board to be careful with any possible compensation cuts.

"Going through 14 years of schooling in this district, I can tell you that many teachers are stressed with their own personal budgets and they also want to live up to the expectations of 'an exceptional place to learn,'" he said, pointing to a banner with the school district's slogan. "Everytime you make a small compensation cut...you're going to be impeding upon a teacher's will and a teacher's want and the teacher's drive to actually teach well."