Mary Bell's Welcome to WEAC

By George Lightbourn

Last Saturday the assembled members of WEAC selected a new person to lead the organization for the next three years.  Mary Bell, a media specialist from Wisconsin Rapids, will take over for Stan Johnson.  Right out of the chute, she must be wondering what she has gotten herself into.

  Nowhere is her job more influential than in the halls of the Capitol.  Yet she was welcomed into office with a couple of real head-scratchers last week.

First, we find Sondy Pope-Roberts, the ranking Democrat on the Assembly Education Committee, calling for an overhaul in the school finance system.  Standing behind a bank of microphones with Rep. Breske and a group of students and teachers, Pope-Roberts didn’t really have anything new to add to the school finance debate.  She just wanted to let the world to know that she thinks the formula should be changed.  Nothing more than that, just change the formula, and do it in the next two years. 

Of course topping the list of formula changes Pope-Roberts and Breske would like to see is the elimination of school cost controls; revenue caps and the QEO.  Whenever legislators or editorial writers attack the school aid formula, they’re really attacking are the cost controls built into the formula.  If not, they’d probably have some idea of which school districts are getting too much in the way of school aids.  But they don’t.  Like Pope-Roberts, they decry the fact that school boards have to rely on referenda to increase spending.  It should be easier for schools to spend.

So Mary Bell should be encouraged, shouldn’t she?  After all, expunging cost controls, specifically the QEO, from Wisconsin statutes is at the top of the WEAC to-do list. 

Then along came Senator Decker and his colleagues on the Joint Finance Committee.  Mary Bell must have choked on her English muffin when she read that Senator Decker had agreed to keep the QEO on the books.  Or rather, he had simply agreed with the Republicans on the committee that the Governor’s idea to eliminate the QEO should be taken out of the budget. 

Incredibly, the QEO, the item that is number one, two and three for WEAC was quietly killed last Friday.  True, it could be considered a non-fiscal item since it does not make the state balance sheet go up or down, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a teacher who would agree that the QEO is non-fiscal.

So, welcome to Madison Mary Bell.  You’ll find life under the Capitol dome to be somewhat quaint.  You will have to dig deep to find some actual good news to take to your members.   In the meantime, you’ll have no shortage of smiles and promises to pass along to them.  Tell them to wait, 2009 is just around the corner. 

Good luck.