Wz- First of the TRUE defecit is more like 1.7 bil, not around 4. Nice estimation, jumping almost a half a billion on an already inflated figure. The 3.6 figure is provided based on funding EVERY single dept of state govt to maximum funding requests. Its just an overblown figure that allows politicians to get elected. I remember hearing the same drivel from Doyle to beat McCallum and we all bought that crap too.
I am glad that we can agree on the income tax rate.We also agree on the GE issue.Allowing corporations not to pay taxes should be a crime. The oil arguement is a WHOLE different issue. $4B in subsidies to the MOST profitable business on Earth? Are you nuts? They can re-invest their own profits in exploration and "job-creation". Why should the taxpayers be on the hook for their own practices? And you folks think teachers are overpaid? If we are so "broke" we certainly shouldnt be giving away ANY subsidies to ANY businesses, period. I thought that right wingers were all about the free-market ruling? I guess that only applies to certain businesses and not others. This is why I am glad to be free from partisan politics.

I am sure the taxes will not go down anytime soon if ever. The budget bill is to address a state deficit of around 4 Billion dollars, not for anyone to get an income tax break.Entitlements have been growing everywhere at a pace that cannot be sustained any longer.We need to live within our means, personal and gov't. Look at the mess the local schools and city face in their budget process. Lets all agree we need to solve the problem sooner rather than later.

It sure would be nice if the people making the laws put their money where their mouth is. Why are they exempt from the budget bill? Sure, there are people who take advantage of the system, but that doesn't mean we all do. I'm a city boy, whzbng, and also self-sufficient. But it sure is nice to put my recyclables into the hands of people that know what to do with it. I would like my kid to learn different things at different age levels. I could do it, but then I'd have to quit my job; so I'll pay (through my taxes) to provide that service to my son. I think it is a fair rate. Not to mention that I benefited from the same system while I went to school. Worked for me, and works for my kid. I'm not sooooo taxed that I can't by clothes, or groceries. If you told me I'd be richer if all these people get layed off because my taxes go down, and at the cost of my son's and other kids' education, I'd still be against it. Money, like people, has the potential to do good and bad. I don't mind putting it towards education because I believe it is good, and a fair rate. Tell me to keep it because it is mine and I worked for it so why shouldn't I have it...well, I would kind of feel like Gollum and his Precious.

donnaw, Did you only work 40 hours a week? You mentioned you took students home for dinner. That I am sure was not part of your job description. Alot of teachers go above and beyond. Get calls at all hours of the night from students or the parents. Get out of bed to take them somewhere they need to go. On weekends they do things for them as well. And I know for a fact some teachers spend much of the summer getting ready for the next years curriculum. It is 3 months of summer. Not a vacation they even get paid for. Everyone thinks they get a 3 month vacation, no nights or weekends, but that is simply not true. At least in the case of the teachers in the schools I am at. As a staff member (not teacher) I do far more than my job description. I do it because I care.

vigilady,50% of Wisconsin tax revenues go for wages and staff in the public sector. You start cutting where you have the biggest expense. There are Madison bus drivers earning $170K,prison guards making $211K by manipulating their union contracted sick days and overtime pay. Seniority rules. While the poor newbee on the same job is lucky to earn $40K.Teachers have taken this personally, but they are not all the public employees affected. I can do without a lot of services if needed. You become self sufficient growing up on a farm.

"I don't believe we are overtaxed." This coming from a Wisconsin resident. Please get a grip on reality, and realize that it is Wisonsin's taxes and overall mentality that coporations and high earners are meant to be milked that leads to us not attracting any meaningful businesses here. Wisconsin's growth in its standard of living is among the lowest in the midwest, and the mentality that says corporations and profits are evil, earning a lot is a crime, and anyone working for the government is not soiled by profit and thus entitled to ridiculous benefits that nobody else gets is what leads to the environment that has one of the lowest small business startup rates in the nation.

Starting a business is hard and risky enough without all the pious freeloaders in Madison just waiting to get their grubby hands on your profits (presuming you make any in the first place.)

whzbng: So why do we only focus on teachers and other public workers as to the cause of the state's financial woes? I am sure there are dozens of other places we could find wasteful spending. I benefit from the same services that you benefit from. Why are you FOR cutting things that YOU benefit from? I don't believe we are overtaxed, and I am currently happy with the level of services that are provided in Janesville and WI. I would not be happy if they were reduced or eliminated. Especially if they are reduced because a certain political party tells me I would be happier with a crappier standard of living...

west, some people refuse to belive the truth no matter how it is presented. Liberals only care about feeling good. If it is a hard choice you take the easy way out. Spending other peoples money only works until the money runs out. I for one believe I can do a better job than the gov't in taking care of myself and my family. Liberals want others to take care of their short comings. However there are some truly needy that need our help,I have no problem with that. Excessive taxation is nothing more than leagal theft.

whzbng, the free market is not the gold standard model for everything that exists on the planet. The problem is that if folks shout the lies and distorted truths long enough, people believe them, as it seems you do. There is no true path to prosperity, history has shown that already. Teachers are not the problem with America, Americans are the problem with America. Short sighted and only seeming to care about who gets voted off American Idol, DWTS, or the score for the game.

I'm using this space to reflect on the stepping down of Milton School Board member, Al Roehl. Why not the story? I wish him good luck.
Sadly, he didn't represent this blue collar worker on the Board. He voted more white collar.

rkkraa: I taught first grade in a trailer park in a depressed area in Illinois. These children didn't have kindergarten and came from some of the worst home environments you can imagine. I often took a different student home for supper after school several times to give them some special attention (probably couldn't do that today). I also have a sister who currently teaches and several nieces and nephews who teach. I went into social work after teaching and then stayed home to raise children and foster children. Went back to work after that but not in education.

schultz. You're serious. She told you she's considering busting the union and it's not the Walker way? I shouldn't question where her politics stand? Wouldn't you? Shouldn't you? Logical questions based on current information is now considered "accusation"? isn't that what this site is all about? Do you ever make statements like this when Parr is "accused"?

west. " You cannot spend your way to prosperity.you cannot tax people and business into oblivian and expect them to keep producing. You cannot live beyond your means indefinately.business does not hire people for the fun of it, they hire to make a profit."
The fed has tripled the money supply and reduced int rates to 0. Hello inflation. Hey it is time to drill baby drill and stop printing fiat money and start to pay down the debt.

Interesting how the apologists come out in support of oil subsidies when most are posting record profits. Profits unmatched by any industry that has ever existed in the history of the US, but they need tax payer money? The sad fact is that there is no free market, all energy sources are subsidized, however the Republi-baggers like to distract you from that issue. They would rather blame the teachers. Same old song and dance.

donnaw, Are you a teacher?

sorry, I should have said, and collects another ,50 cents a gallon from the customer.Corp taxes and gas taxes are seperate.

fear, agian you have it wrong. The $4B in subsidies that the oil companies get are incentives for exploration and job creation. Some goes to owners of small volume old wells to pump out the rest. The oil companies in return give back over $40B in taxes to the govt. If they did not have the money then gas would cost more, some jobs would not be there and taxes would be less to the treasury. Obama wants to give the $4B to GE (a company that paid no corp taxes) to develop green energy. Wind and solar are not even close to cover our energy needs. The govt's, state and fed earn more money per gallon in taxes($.50) than the oil companies get in profits per gallon.I do agree with you that Obama set his tax sights to low. It should be at the $500,000 level.

ummm. so now income taxes pay for education? weird.

How can 24 retiring teachers only save 14 jobs?

noexcuse: She didn't announce it; I found out about it and asked her about it. Also, if you want to find out who donated to whom, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign has a website for that, so you don't have to make unfounded accusations.
-- Gazette reporter Frank Schultz

gmaof3 I am grateful you are not the other grandmother of my gradchildren as you have IMO no value for their education.My grandchildren deserve the best I wish yours did. 1 in 4 go to bed hungry because why? 1. the money is not their because of lost jobs. 2 The Government programs are minimal in this state to help needy families.3 there is no financial benifits for needy families. 4. badgercare and foodstanps will be less under the GOP of this state if any,and they are very low now.5. The wealthy get the tax breaks and the poor get the shaft.

Hire back layed off teachers as nonunion so you can pay them less and give less (no) benefits. How much did Schulte contribute to Walker's campaign. This is exactly the Republican goal of no collective bargaining. She should have waited a little while before announcing this.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracy...
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If you REALLY want to balance the national budget:
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"the Congressional Progressive Caucus plan wins the fiscal responsibility derby thus far; it reaches balance by 2021 largely through assorted tax hikes and defense cuts." Which is pretty interesting. Have you ever heard of the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget plan? Neither had I. The caucus's co-chairs, Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota, released it on April 6th. The budget savings come from defence cuts, including immediately withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq, which saves $1.6 trillion over the CBO baseline from 2012-2021. The tax hikes include restoring the estate tax, ending the Bush tax cuts, and adding new tax brackets for the extremely rich, running from 45% on income over a million a year to 49% on income over a billion a year.

whzbng - i beg to differ. making the super rich pay their fair share would completely wipe out our fiscal woes. just look at the history since reagan's onset of the "trickle down theory." when the rich stopped paying their share is when our deficit began to climb.

Fear - merit pay in a school setting will develop an environment where teachers lower the bar so that all students are "high achievers." I would guess also that you would find teachers finding very creative ways to teach to the test for standardized testing results as well. It won't create higher level learners. It will create more low level learners who appear to be doing well.

This is the most backwards example of school district management I have ever seen. One hundred thirty teachers receive layoff notices. Of the one that are most likely to be called back, most are LMSs and Guidance Counselors. Two weeks ago, when they received those notices, they had two choices:
1) Accept a transfer to a position they previously held and bump out someone with less experience.
2) Pray their job is reinstated and hold out.
If they take the transfer, they have a job, but if their job is reinstated, someone else gets it, because they are no longer on recall status.
At the same time, Dr. Schulte lets the staff know that jobs may be "redesigned," meaning they will not be called back to it because it's not the same position eligible for recall. That, of course, encouraged even more to accept jobs they didn't want.
So right now, many many counselors and LMSs are back in positions they chose to leave years ago, but would rather have the security of a job than be without one.
What a nice way to set up a district of mediocre performers, placing them in positions they don't really care to be in.
Unbelievable.

"unionism" is a device to protect middle class teachers from becoming LOWER CLASS wage earners. Please dont act as if any of you care about the "quality" of education. All you want is for teachers to be paid less and less. The article Mr Schultz wrote about college students making other choices rings true. Why would ANYONE want to spend 50,000+ on an education to become a teacher that will be reduced to low pay celiengs and rising expectations? Merit pay is a disguise for lowering wages, period. Thats what these people are interested in. NOT incresing quality, just asking for more for less. Sounds like health insurance!

Medicrity? I thought the test scores that you republicans hold in such high regard , just increased? Under union representation, how on earth could that happen? the only thing that is mediocre at best in this school system are the parenting skills being displayed. Parents that think the schools should raise and educate their kids. all while screaming for tax cuts on the lowest tax rates in 60 years.
As Koch bros would say.....Beautiful!!

Of course whzbng the 70% of the taxes you refer to are INCOME taxes. Of course taxing someone that makes 6 figures plus a few hundred dollars more a year or even a few thousand , to protect things like education and medicare might be nbeneficial to them and the great majority of the American people and help the US to rise again. maybe a repeal of free(unfair) trade policies would help shift the tax burden as well. The arguement about the top 10% paying the majority of the taxes arguement really falls on deaf ears with me. Generally those folks are the ones benefitting the most, so why shouldnt they pay the most?
Honestly whzbng, I would be more for raising income taxes on those that make 500,000 a year and above. And raising sales taxes, on everything except groceries.
Whzbng- How do you feel about the most profitable companies on Earth getting subsidies to the tune of BILlIONS a year! WE literally give them welfare(handouts) the very thing that most conservatives rail about for poor americans! So what is it screw the poor folks, and give Billions to markets that are artificially inflating prices and hauling in record profits? I just dont get the thinking. We all pay at the pump, and we also give them subsidies on top of it? And guys like Paul Ryan support this practice? All while destroying public ed and medicare?
I could listen to the tax arguements against wealthy folks a little more IF these kinds of things werent happening. Corporate welfare and free-trade stop, I would be all for tax cuts for the wealthy. However, they cant just keep taking, at some point this has to balance out, otherwise the US will become a 3rd world nation. We are well on our way to just that.

fear, the upper 10% you refer to includes people that earn $106,300 annual income and above. They pay 70% of the taxes. That would include a lot of teachers who are pulling a double income with a spouse. It covers a lot of our Public sector, police,firefighters,politicians who are in a similar arrangement in this area. For the most part the obscure 10% that is referred to as rich is you and me.Only the top 1% are the super rich and taxing them to the max would not make that much of a difference, even if you confiscated 100% of their earnings.

“We want to keep our good people,” Superintendent Schulte said. Too bad our contract with the unions don't allow us to layoff only the not-so-good people. In fact, our contract with the unions don't even allow us to fully evaluate our employees to discover which are the less-than-good ones. Unionism seems to have evolved into a device to protect the mediocre. Now if this were GM or some other private group, then the consumers would have other choices. Since mediocre workers make mediocre products, in the private marketplace, you can always buy a Toyota if the quality of your GM isn't up to snuff. But in the public school system, most folks don't have any alternatives but to take the mediocre product that public schools have become due in part, a large part, to unionism. Is mediocrity what we have to settle for? If Mr. Parr and his lawyers have their say, it is.

What I also find funny is Schulte's anti-union stance here. Wasn't she a member for a number of years? Replace teachers with non-union jobs? That is just funny! She is grasping at straws. 24 retire , 14 come back! Glad she isn't a teacher anymore. 750,000 divided by 24 equals 31,250! REALLY? The retiring teachers make an average of 31,000 dollars? Like to see the reasoning behind that one! Fuzzy math? FALSE math! Even 14 teachers into 750,000 is 53,000 a year, that is closer yet probably still not what the retirees make. Just goes to show that Schulte and the board are NOTHING more than anti-union propagandists trying to sway public opinion with absolute lies! Its like Bush talking about WMDs, or how tax cuts will help the economy. We see how that worked, at least some of us see it, others just keep repeating. "Way to go Karen, your saving us tax dollars!" Yaaaah, way to go, keep your six figure tax payer funded salary(with raises) while destroying quality here in Janesville! Whooo hoooo! That certainly is something to celebrate dont you think??
Also try to remember most folks that whine about high taxes CAN afford to pay more. I said MOST not all.

1 in 8 going to bed every night is the UNIONS fault? That has to be the DUMBEST thing I have ever read! Teachers and other union members fighting for livable wages is the cause of poverty and hunger? While the upper 10% controls more and more of the general wealth? The wages in the state continuing to go down while jobs being outsourced seem to be the culprit to me, not higher taxes or unions. Tax rates are at their LOWEST since the 1950's. People make less now than they did 20 years ago! This will be the first generation that will have LOWER income and education than the last in the HISTORY of the nation. Also the decline of union membership can be DIRECTLY correlated with the decline of wages and the outsourcing of work to put money into the pockets of stockholders and CEOs. While stockholders are important, it seems they are more important than people that work for a living. What a wonderful snapshot of America! Add to all that the most corrupt , overpriced health care system in the world look around, conservatives hyperbole of "big government rule" doesn't seem to be true at all. The dumbing down of this country is very scary, and by reading local blogs, seems to be working. let the race to the bottom commence!

Some fuzzy math going on here. 24 retiring= 14 returning? Assuming the retirees are at the top of the pay scale, this makes no sense.
Also we lost 175 students over 2 years, how does that equal 50 lay offs? That is one lost teacher for every 3.5 kids? I see some BIG class sizes coming up and that is not good for kids, especially at the elementary level. Why is it just "due to lost enrollment" with no mention of the vote to increase class sizes???

gmao--What's with all of the capitalized words for emphasis? I think you've been reading too much Eyster. :-)

rkkraa:Teachers work 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week? Come on now.

When my mom retired, she had her health bennies for I think about two years, and that was three or four years ago. I may have heard that it changed. So to start to end this, I hope, the retirees are not like GM. They don't keep it until they die.

samibl
"To all teachers- LEAVE Janesville schools as fast as you can."
Yes,please, so my taxes will go down!

I am baffled that some people still do not understand what time teachers put into school work. Some teachers work thier entire breaks to grade papers or get lesson plans ready. Most work at least 6 or 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. What awful people.

Justmy- it appears the calculator being used for this math is the same one that says overall healthcare expenses will go up 12% (or more, not sure) even after eliminating 100+ positions. A family plan is called a 17,500 benefit. $1,750,000 saved up front still means expenses will go up that much? A minor detail that keeps getting left out. Just like the fact that 14 fewer elementary classrooms will be running next year and other classes/programs that have been slashed. The savings in salary is well published, but other savings through these eliminations go unmentioned for some reason.

Samibl, If the teachers leave they will be replaced by qualified teachers that are not currently employed. That is not negative towards our current qualified teachers. Similar cutbacks to Janesville's are happening in many area districts and throughout the country.

Justmy414-I think the answer is in the benefits after they retire, unused sick time turned into health care benefits etc. eat up the difference. Just my guess.

OR, they are high enough in longevity and extra degrees that the 24 leave and we can hire 38 in their stead? Another guess.

That Walker, I knew he was going to lay 280...well maybe not that but over 2... umm I'm sure it was...Didn't you say there was... Oh...is that all?
Nevermind...

How does 24 retiring teachers, presumably at the top levels of teacher pay, become only 14 positions? The math doesn't add up, itshould be at least 24 positions, probably more since it could be assumed the new positions would be lower on the pay scale.

To all teachers- LEAVE Janesville schools as fast as you can. It is a sinking ship and you will be sucked down with it. Go somewhere where you can be treated fairly and honestly. Take a pay cut, lose benefits, anything, just GO!
Parents- Do the same. Vote with your feet and tell the school board what you think of their "education policies".

Unions ruled by the majority (they are just made up of people, not a big monster). If the union members wanted something they simply take a vote and it is done (or not done). Like the general population (and this blog) the screaming far left and far right are all you hear (and read). The middle 80% of the population swings right and left depnding upon who did the last stupid thing in public.

gmaof3 said, "For those retiring from their 9 month a year job..."
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How ignorant can one get? We're awfully close to an answer.

She's over a barrel with the Budget Repair Bill. I think this would be a fabulous way to retain personnel. However, if the union says those same staff members can NOT be rehired under a different title/duties, then it is the UNION'S dirty work. If they are NOT allowed to be rehired, someone else WILL take that job.
For those retiring from their 9 month a year job... my calculations put them at $37.00 an hour at the least. Plus their past bennies of health care and pensions. Quite a sweet deal they had, if you ask me.

This is a glimpse into the future. Want to bet that the salary structure of the re-hires will be lower too, with lousy benefits to boot? Thanks Dr. Schulte, for giving the School Board total control.