By Dakota Vernezze, staff writer
All around Indian Trail, staff and students are trying to do more with less. The change is due to budget cuts for the new school year in Wisconsin. According to the Wisconsin Budget Project, (WBP) between the years of 2008-2015, Wisconsin state lawmakers cut state support for investment in schools by 15 percent per student, which means spending $1,014 less on each student. The small increase in resources for public schools included in the 2015-17 budget does not do much to restore state support lost in past years.
“We’re not completely sure yet of everything that is going to be cut. Generally what we’ve done is kind of across the board. We’re all figuring about a 20 percent cut, so for my individual department’s budgets for example, everybody kind of went down 20 percent,” said Principal Maria Kotz.
One of the major areas hit in the district is the technology department. According to Page Kessler, instructional technology teacher, the technology department was hit with an 80 percent cut. With that loss, many computers could not be fixed or replaced. This especially affected the Communications academy, which no longer can issue laptops for freshmen and sophomores as part of the one-to-one program.
“We didn’t have enough funding to replace some of our aging technology and some of our money has been put back,” said Kessler. “Our principal is excellent at making sure that our technology is taken care of so she found some other funding for us, but it’s only about 40 percent of what we lost.”
With the technology cuts, Computers on Wheels (COWs) have become an important part of the school. These are classroom sets of laptop computers that are mobile and can move from class to class. While the Communications Academy has taken one set of COWs, another set was dedicated to the art department. The school is down to one set of COWs to share with everyone else. The technology department hopes to get another set by December.
“In our tech department total, they took away one ITT job out of the district, and then they took away two technician jobs, so we lost three positions but then we lost 80 percent of our budget,” said Kessler.
Budget cuts have been particularly hard on staff as well. According to Kotz, teachers haven’t had raises in a few years, and they now have larger class sizes, which can be harder to control. Fortunately no staff members from IT were laid off this year.
“The district is moving cautiously to make sure we stay in a good spot financially and so everyone’s kind of trying to trim off an excess cost in terms of facilities, materials, supplies. Those kind of things,” said Kotz.
Rather than waiting for state funding to kick in, the district has a system of borrowing money and paying it back as soon as possible. This gives them a better bond rating that allows them to borrow money at a lower interest rate.
The future is uncertain as far as funding goes. Everything isn’t set in stone at this point. According to the WBP, as more students switch to private schools, state funding will be reduced by $48 million in two years, while private school funding increases. If private schools become a more popular option, funding may possibly go down even further for public schools. With the Kenosha Unified School District budget still up for final decision, other changes may yet occur.