No room for raises in MPS' $1.18 billion preliminary budget

Milwaukee

The Milwaukee School Board on Thursday approved a preliminary $1.18 billion budget for 2018 that was kept lean largely by not including raises or cost-of-living increases for teachers or staff.

"We passed a balanced budget, but it's nowhere that we want to be as a district," Board President Mark Sain said Friday. "We want to be in a position where district employees can grow with us, and where we're able to provide family-sustaining wages."

Samuel Coffey, 13, a seventh-grade student at Carver Academy in Milwaukee Public Schools, reviews math problems Friday. Carver students come to school in uniforms, a policy the school district plans to extend to all schools in the fall.

Raises for the district's lowest-paid workers, such as classroom aides, are important, Sain said. But they're also necessary to attract and retain teachers, he added, especially now that Act 10 lets educators more freely switch jobs between districts without losing retirement benefits.

The Milwaukee teachers union pushed hard for raises, and Sain and board members Larry Miller and Annie Woodward tried to offer amendments to try to do so.

A big reason for the "hole" in the budget goes back a couple of years. MPS had an unexpected surplus from health-care savings (achieved by way of negotiations with the union and the state Act 10 legislation that pared back collective bargaining), which it used to pay down debt for retirement benefits in 2016. That meant that in 2017, the district didn't have to pay as much into the trust for post-retirement benefits, so the savings could be used to create new positions and offer staff raises.

This cycle, the surplus was gone and cuts had to be made. The nonprofit Public Policy Forum analyzed the MPS budget and summed it up like this: "Whereas in 2016 and 2017, MPS' leaders were able to secure resources for new positions and programs despite stagnant state revenues, this year's proposal could be characterized as a 'retrenchment' budget that is more consistent with the district's longstanding revenue challenges."

The board will discuss the budget again before adopting a final version in October, after state aid figures based on fall 2017 enrollment counts are finalized.

Some highlights from the document as it stands now:

The budget is about $21 million less than what the district is currently spending.
The district faced a structural deficit of $54.8 million — that's how much it would have cost to keep everything the way it is now.
The 2017-'18 budget eliminates 194 positions, including 81 teachers and 97 educational assistants. Most of those positions are vacant, which keeps layoffs to a minimum.
School budgets were cut by $33 million, according to a Public Policy Forum analysis.
If Gov. Scott Walker's school aid proposals are adopted by the Legislature, MPS will receive $15.9 million next year in per-pupil aid. But that would be mostly offset by the district losing $12.9 million in combined state aid and property taxes.

Erin Richards can be reached at (414) 224-2705 or erin.richards@jrn.com or @emrichards on Twitter.