{"id":8245,"date":"2024-01-13T01:30:06","date_gmt":"2024-01-13T02:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=8245"},"modified":"2024-01-13T03:02:34","modified_gmt":"2024-01-13T03:02:34","slug":"milwaukee-public-schools-want-259-million-tax-hike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=8245","title":{"rendered":"Milwaukee Public Schools Want $259 Million Tax Hike"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This post originally appeared at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/milwaukee-public-schools-ready-259-million-april-tax-hike-request\/\">https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/milwaukee-public-schools-ready-259-million-april-tax-hike-request\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"630\" src=\"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/pjimage-2022-02-15T161155.185.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Milwaukee Public Schools Breakup Bill\" title=\"Dr. Evil&#039;s Maps\" \/><\/p>\n<p>(The Center Square) \u2013 Milwaukee Public Schools are going back to taxpayers for a quarter-billion dollars.<\/p>\n<p>The city\u2019s school board voted Thursday night to put a $259 million tax hike request on the April ballot.<\/p>\n<p>MPS leaders say they need more money to maintain operations and keep up with rising costs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We can\u2019t let our public school system fail,&#8221; MPS Board vice president Jilly Gokalgandhi told the board.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;How many years are we supposed to keep getting kicked in the face?&#8221; board president Marva Herndon asked.<\/p>\n<p>The tax hike request comes after state lawmakers signed off on a school funding increase in June and after voters approved an $87 million tax increase for Milwaukee Public Schools in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Will Flanders, an education expert at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, told The Center Square it\u2019s unsurprising that MPS is once again asking taxpayers for more money.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike death and taxes, low-performing school districts demanding even more money from taxpayers is seemingly inevitable,\u201d Flanders said.<\/p>\n<p>MPS\u2019s CFO told the school board the district will be looking at a $200 million deficit next school year. He warned about layoffs, frozen salaries, closed schools and fewer school buses if the referendum doesn\u2019t pass.<\/p>\n<p>Flanders said MPS already has plenty of money and is in line to get more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs it stands, MPS has nearly <a href=\"https:\/\/sfs.dpi.wi.gov\/SFSdw\/CompRevReport.aspx\">$19,000 per student<\/a>. This doesn&#8217;t even take into account the increases Gov. [Tony] Evers has set the district up for the next 400 years with his partial veto last year. Milwaukee taxpayers should carefully evaluate whether a district achieving less than 20% proficiency in reading and math should be rewarded with even more funding,\u201d Flanders said.<\/p>\n<p>Voters will have their say on the tax increase on the April ballot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/milwaukee-public-schools-ready-259-million-april-tax-hike-request\/ (The Center Square) \u2013 Milwaukee Public Schools are going&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":3016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8247,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245\/revisions\/8247"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}