As the kids start school today there will be lots of “Scott Walker has saved our schools” misinformation running around the right wing airwaves. I wanted to share a couple of links that will be relevant to many stories that you will be hearing.
The first has to do with the Walker administrations favorite school district Kaukauna. The Kauakana miracle is that they used the Governors “tools” and balanced their budget. Jake @Jakehasablog, (which FYI is a recommended blog)looked deeper into this miracle and found out that the Kaukauna Miracle was not quite so heavenly as the Walker administration has said it is.
First off, let’s look at Kaukauna’s original budget cuts for 2011-2012. The district was looking at a deficit near $3.0 million dollars after the Governor’s budget was originally proposed. But page 14 of this slideshow buries the real lead and the reason why Kaukauna was in trouble in the first place.
Prior to February 11, 2011, the district was anticipating a balanced operating budget but changes at the state have forced the district to make major revisions to its original forecast.
So this wasn’t a “union costs exploded for 2011-2012” problem. This was a “budget cuts from Scott Walker and WisGOP in Madison are screwing us on the local level” problem. In fact, the original budget proposal from the guv resulted in a drop of Kaukauna’s available revenues of $2.16 million (a bit under 5% of their total), and $2.75 million from the state (check out your favorite district’s cut here, Kaukauna’s on Page 5). The unions responded by proposing $1.8 million in concessions, which combined with the district $345,000 in surplus funds from 2010-11, would have taken care off all of the state cuts put into Kaukauna’s budget. The Kaukauna School Board turned them down and asked for layoffs of 14.5 full-time positions instead, and decided to wait on the Legislature and State Supreme Court to do the dirty work of putting the screws on the teachers, and hope for large numbers of teacher retirements.
Second is a whole heap of misinformation((big surprise I know) about the New Berlin fiasco. My friend Capper broke it down very well:
You see, Lisa wrote a post condemning the New Berlin School Board for what was nothing but the exercise of despotic behavior by a group of small-minded people. Apparently, Blaska was offended by Lisa pointing out that there were parts to the new handbook passed by the school board that only served as an effort to demean the teachers and break their spirit. How demotivated teachers are supposed to perform better is beyond me.
Blaska starts out by referring to Lisa as a dinosaur and a Waukesha teacher. Neither of those statements are anywhere near the truth, but Blaska is obviously unconcerned what the reality of the situation is, since he avoids that at all costs
