School Zone The Journal Sentinel education reporters offer news and notes from their beat SHARE

By of the

A Legislative Fiscal Bureau analysis of Gov. Scott Walker's proposal for education funding in the state's 2011-'13 budget came up with a surprising finding: Not everyone might lose aid.

In fact, when run as if the proposal had been in place for the current school year, a number of school districts in the state -- including some of the wealthier districts in the suburbs of Milwaukee -- would actually see their general aid increase from 2009-'10.

The Dover School District in Racine County would be the biggest winner in the state with a 17.5% increase. Other local districts that would have gained state aid and their percentages are: Fox Point (4.6%), Mequon-Thiensville (3.2%), Nicolet (2.9%), Pewaukee (7.4%) and Stone Bank (0.7%).

Meanwhile, Milwaukee Public Schools would have seen its aid decrease by 8% and a large number of other school districts would have lost 10% or more of their aid.

The reason for the puzzling result from an overall reduction of 8.7% in general aid, according to the fiscal bureau report, lies in the complex formula used to distribute funds to schools in the state. In this case, an increase in special adjustment aid, which is used to limit the amount of aid that a district can lose from one year to the next, has caused the amount of equalization aid to decrease.

Equalization aid is aimed at helping to reduce spending and wealth disparities between districts with low property values and high property values per student.

Under a separate measure proposed by Walker that would reduce per-pupil revenue caps by 5.5%, the state aid gains for individual school districts would not translate into more money but rather lower property taxes.

UPDATE:

Russ Kava, an analyst with the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, attributes the increase that some districts experienced in aid in the analysis to individual circumstances -- enrollment, spending or property valuation in the district -- that are present every year in the way that the state distributes school aid.

If the governor's budget goes into effect, he said, there could be a different set of districts that see their aid increase based on changes in those same circumstances.

"But I think for most of those districts it will be a reduction compared to current law," he said.