It’s pretty difficult to feel sorry for them, but I feel sorry for the kids.

District officials are calling this year’s budget cycle especially challenging because of a one-two punch. There’s limited funding growth allowed by formulas that mix state aid with the amount the district is allowed to collect from local property taxes. And there’s no unused money carried over from previous years.

“When it comes down to it, if there’s something that I think is a priority that is inadequately funded, essentially, in order to fund that, something else has to be cut,” School Board treasurer TJ Mertz said. “That’s what makes this year different.”

The district is taking $1.6 million out of its reserves and cutting staff to balance the 2016-17 school year budget that’s projected at $496 million. Some fear that’s the new norm in an environment where money and increases in tax levy authority from the state are in short supply.

Public school funding in Wisconsin is dictated by revenue limits, the enrollment-driven amount of money that a district is allowed to collect. The state budget provided no increase in that level for 2016-17, five years after Gov. Scott Walker cut the base per-pupil revenue limit by 5.5 percent, an average of $529 per pupil statewide, as part of changes to public school funding.

In 2011, Walker’s Act 10 gave school districts “tools” by which they could balance the funding decrease by reducing expenditures on staffing. Madison has shown a hesitancy to pass on those costs to its employees.

Here’s the crux of it:

“When it comes down to it, if there’s something that I think is a priority that is inadequately funded, essentially, in order to fund that, something else has to be cut,” School Board treasurer TJ Mertz said. “That’s what makes this year different.”

Yes. Exactly. In the real world, there are scarce resources and we have to prioritize what is important and what is not. To date, the Madison School Board has made it clear what they consider most important with their refusal to have employees do things like pay a reasonable share for their insurance and retirement.

They have the tools to fund what they consider important. Now it’s just a matter of them deciding what is actually important and what is not.