Appleton Area School District PC: Fox 11 Online
APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Facing a $13 million budget deficit, Appleton’s school board will decide Monday if it’s going to ask voters to support a referendum this spring.
Appleton Area School District Superintendent Greg Hartjes and State Representative Lee Snodgrass, D-Appleton, invited reporters Friday to hear about what they call a need for more public education spending.
“For the last 16 years, we have not received increases that have met inflation,” Hartjes said.
The district is mulling a $15 million referendum. That would mean a property tax increase of $37 per $100,000 of property value.
Snodgrass said that isn’t the only way to solve the budget shortage.
“Our public schools need to be funded appropriately by the state with your public tax dollars,” Snodgrass said. “And you entrust elected leaders like me to make that investment. Unfortunately, what is happening is, for the last 16 years, you can take a look at who has been in control of the legislature. For the past 16 years, we have been underfunding schools.”
State Representative Ron Tusler, R-Harrison, had another view.
“Our schools are not underfunded. Our schools do not want to decrease their spending, and that’s the issue,” he said. “The issue is that we have declining enrollment, but we’re hiring more administrators, hiring more teachers and we’re not removing any of those. We’re not changing anything on how we do business, even though we have significant declining enrollment.”
Tusler said the state already approved increases for the coming years.
“We had $325 per student per year. So $325 in one year, $325 in the next, in one budget,” he said.
Snodgrass said the state needs to allocate more money to schools to decrease property taxes. She pointed to the $4 billion surplus reported last year.
“Wisconsinites have already paid taxes to the state,” she said.
Tusler said surplus money wouldn’t address long-term needs.
“Before you go to referendum, before you see people’s property taxes jacked up like they just were, we should be thinking about, in some reasonable way, decreasing spending,” he said.
The future of public education spending in Wisconsin will be in the hands of whoever controls the legislature and governor’s office next year.
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