$3.1 million Paid to Top Franklin School Administrators Over Past Five Years

"We are returning to frugality and making the long-term decisions to balance our budget now and more importantly into the future. We will do the heavy lifting to protect our children and grandchildren from having to make the hard decisions that were once avoided."

—Gov. Scott Walker, March 1, 2011

In its 2011-12 Budget Draft Franklin Public Schools (FPS) asks: What in the World is Affecting Franklin Public Schools?  Here are the answers provided by FPS’ administration.

• The Economy
• State Budget Problems
• Possible State Law Changes
• Revenue Limits
• More Federal money means more time spent reporting

Like any government monopoly, over-spending didn’t even make the list.

"Since our primary purpose is to be advocates for the students in our community, it is imperative that we place some of the best teachers in our state in front of our students for a quality educational experience to occur.”

—Steve Patz, Superintendent, Franklin Public Schools, FPS2011-12 Budget introduction : Looking Back, and Forward

Huh?!  I thought the school district's primary purpose was to educate its students.

In his July 5 story entitled: Franklin schools tackle challenging budget by FranklinNOW’s Rick Romano we get a good sense for what some Franklin School District administrators and school board members think of the 2011-12 Franklin Public Schools (FPS) budget and budgeting process in light of Governor Scott Walker’s two-year $66 billion state budget deal designed to balance the state’s budget and close the $3.5 billion budget gap without raising taxes or fees, while reining-in local government’s taxation and spending. (e.g. public school boards and municipalities).

From Romano’s piece:

Quoting Franklin’s complaining Superintendent Steve Patz, Romano writes “Every school district is different, but we all face difficulty that has been complicated by the state budget process this year.  Just like in every year, we approve a budget and then wait until we have the final student count in October to finalize the numbers."

How did our neighbors in New Berlin react to Walker’s budget?

Click to read more ...

Franklin Public Schools' '$5.6 Million Deficit' Explained

Based upon the replies we received from Franklin Public School Board Members on June 17 and June 20, especially related to the District’s stated $5.6 million total deficit published on page four of its 2011-12 Budget Draft, we contacted the District’s Director of Business Services, Jim Milzer for an explanation of the multi-million dollar deficit question and how it appears in the budget.  In a telephone conversation Mr. Milzer said the school district does not have a $5.6 million total deficit as indicated on page four of the budget.  Here is how he explained page four and the accompanying bar graph in a subsequent email to us.

The graph on page 4 of the 2011-12 budget presentation shows the deficits that the District eliminated by reducing expenditures and increasing non-tax revenue.  For example, if the District continued all of the programs and services that were offered in the 2002-03 school year again in the 2003-04 school year, this would have resulted in a $1.1 million deficit.  This deficit would have occurred because the District’s costs were rising faster than the allowable increase in revenue.  The District’s tax and general aid revenue is limited by State statutes.  In creating the 2003-04 budget, the District cut $1.1 million in expenditures to balance the budget.  On pages 5, 6, and 7, there is a list of the expenditures that were cut and the sources of extra revenue that were used to balance the budgets in those years.  The District has had a balanced budget each year.

NOTE: In some years the District had expenditures carried over from the previous year when the revenue was collected in one year and the expenditure did not occur until the following year.  These adjustments were made to the balanced budget in that year which may make it appear incorrectly that the budget was slightly out of balance.

When asked how the average citizen would know this, Mr. Milzer said that this was explained to those who attended the budget presentation.  When asked why there wasn’t a note on page four explaining this for those looking at the budget without the benefit of attending the presentation meeting, he indicated changes would be made in the future budgets to avoid this sort of confusion.

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Franklin School District facing $2.5 million decrease in state funding

Franklin Public Schools Director, Business Services and Asst. Superintendent, Jim Milzer gave this quick budget update to the Franklin School Board during its April 20 meeting.

On April 13 THE FRANKLIN INDEPENDENT JOURNAL emailed Mr. Milzer and asked him to respond to an article on the Hamilton School District's website which indicated that due to the implications of the state budget, that district will see its overall revenue drop by $2.6 million, funding from the state reduced by $1.8 million, and no property tax increase next year.  We also asked Mr. Milzer for his assessment of the effects of state budget cuts on the Franklin School District?

We received a prompt reply in which Mr. Milzer wrote:

Based on the Governors proposed biennium budget the District estimates that the revenue limit for the Franklin Public Schools would decrease by $2.5 million. The Department of Public Instruction has indicated that they will not release State aid estimates until July. Once the Department releases those estimates, we will have a better idea of the effect on State aid and the local property tax levy.

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