The legislature reached a deal friday on the 2009-2011 bienniel budget. Governor Doyle is expected to sign it into law on the 30th. Considering the difficulty of the state's current finances and the recent history of contentious and much delayed budgets it is a bit surprising to me that we have a budget on-time. The deal reached doesn't have any additional school finance surprises, but it does repeal the state's QEO (Qualified Economic Offer).
The QEO law dates to school finance reform legislation passed in 1993, it provides that school districts can avoid arbitration in negotiations with the teacher's unions by providing a contract with at least a 3.8% "total package" increase in salaries and benefits. The QEO was considered part of a 3 part formula for reforming public school finance, the other parts being the revenue cap and 2/3rds funding from state sources. It tend to think that repealing one of these 3 parts will necessitate reform of the rest of the system in the coming years.
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(photo ©2008 Bruce Fritz)
About Me
- Peter Sobol
- My family moved to Monona in 2003 and have been happily ensconsed in the Frost Woods Neighborhood ever since. I have 2 kids who graduated from Mg. I have been serving on the school board since April of 2007. We moved back to the Midwest in 2002 after spending 10 years in California, where I was a Department Director for Maxtor, a Fortune 500 company. In truth we left California largely because of the school situation - chronically underfunded schools did not offer the kind of programs or opportunities we wanted for our children. We picked Monona because our thorough research showed that this was a place we would really like to educate our kids. Our experience has taught us to value the quality schools we have here in Monona, and the importance of careful stewardship to maintain community support for those schools.
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