Good for them.

In a statement sent to some media members Tuesday, Blacks for Political and Social Action of Dane County said it’s concerned with the progress on closing wide racial achievement gaps; the cost of the referendums could be burdensome on fixed-income residents; and educational priorities in the COVID-19 pandemic have shifted since the referendums were first proposed more than a year ago.

“We have not been presented with evidence that links additional public expenditures with increasing the academic performance of African American students,” the organization said in the statement. “More of the same for African American students is unacceptable.”

Heh.

Only in Madison…

During an Operations Work Group meeting, board members agreed not to pursue a proposed change to board policy that would have given the board president the ability to deny or alter requests for district information made by other board members.

District spokeswoman Rachel Strauch-Nelson said the policy change is part of a routine update of policies and is meant to “codify the board’s current ways of working.”

“We work very hard to fulfill all requests in a timely way,” she said. “In the very rare instance that a request is very difficult to fulfill, we run that request past the board president so they can decide the best way to move forward.”

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.

Apparently they are looking their previous mismanagement in the face.

Many Wisconsin school districts have taken that step to avoid cuts, but there’s been little appetite among Madison School Board members to seriously consider the idea.