The Governors “tools” and the President’s “stimulus”.

Governor Walker has been in office for just a few months and they have been an eventful few months. Before he even took over, Governor walker cost the state $851 Million dollars in High speed rail funds. Then our Governor bragged about not taking any stimulus funds.

The stimulus is also a bait-and-switch on employment. While the stimulus package might create a few construction jobs, the federal money will run out and those workers will lose their jobs. Even worse, most of the money is actually spent on new government programs and on bailing out failed state and local governments.

For the vast majority of residents of my state, the stimulus funds will not help them pay the mortgage or replenish their depleted retirement savings as they worry about being laid off.

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Never mind the fact that he wants stimulus funds – thats a different post)!

Then in February Scott Walker \"dropped the bomb\" that was the Budget Repair Bill. In it he wants to take the rights of public employees to collectively bargain away. The Governor says this will give local municipalities and school districts the \"tools\" to balance the budget. Forgetting the fact that he is trying to take local control away, he insists it is all being done to “balance the budget” (unless he is under oath).

Here in the Monona Grove School District we have some real numbers now to work with to see the “tools” and “stimulus” in action.

We head into the 2011-2012 budget with a projected deficit of $3,118,031. This represents a 5.5% per pupil reduction per the Governor’s budget bill(thanks gov). To help cover this deficit, there are two big ticket items(not that say consolidating schools and saving $243,000 is small but its a one time expense that the district has to absorb and not about either tools or stimulus)

The first is we recently signed a contract with the wonderful teachers of the Monona Grove School District (MGSD) and even extended it for a year. This is what Governor Walker calls his main “tool” while those in the real world call a pay cut. Regardless it resulted in $1,134,000 in “savings” to the taxpayer(although local businesses would call this a business dropoff, that is also another post). So back to the “tools” we maxed out the Governors tools on the backs of the teachers and still end up $1,984,031 in the hole. How can that be, The Governor gave us the tools to balance the budget!

Luckily, we had some “stimulus” money($850,000) to be exact to apply to our budget shortfall! While this still left us over a million dollars to cut BUT it saved the job of approximately 17 teachers! That means smaller class size, greater learning opportunities, higher home values, etc… At least for this year.

So in conclusion anyone who thinks that the Governors “tools” are meant to balance the budget is incorrect and anyone who says the stimulus did not work would be flat out wrong!

PS. Keep in mind that MGSD, like almost all districts, have been continuously cutting budget for years, on top of this.

PSS: Interesting article and discussion here on Teacher Pay.

budgetdeficit Overview of the MGSD Budget right here.