The superintendents of both Manitowoc and Two Rivers Public School Districts are asking for more transparency on residents’ tax bills.
TRPS Superintendent Diane Johnson, TRPS Finance Director Mary Kay Slattery, and MPSD Superintendent Lee Thennes gave a presentation to the Two Rivers City Council Monday asking them to put the cost of the voucher program as a separate item on a resident’s tax bill.
The voucher program was started in Milwaukee in 1989 to help low-income residents send their children to school.
It eventually expanded into religious schools and became the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program, making it available statewide.
Vouchers allow public school students to go to private schools.
Slattery says districts don’t find out how much vouchers cost per school district until the fourth month of their fiscal year.
“Our fiscal year runs from July to June,” she explained. “So at that point, we have all of our enrollment set, and we have a pupil count that we have to do in September, which determines those numbers roll into how much our tax levy will be. And we are just about ready to finalize everything, and then we find out how much our vouchers are.”
Slattery says the State sets the per-pupil amount, and the money for that is deducted in January from the district.
For Two Rivers, the state takes out of the district’s state-aid payments.
This school year, Two Rivers reached over $1 million in their voucher tax levy.
Slattery showed how much it would cost a homeowner whose home was valued at $200,000.
“Of their total taxes, $182.52 was for supporting the voucher program,” she stated. “This is really good information for taxpayers to know.”
MPSD’s voucher tax levy is six times what Two Rivers’ is, at around six million.
For a home in The Clipper City worth $200,000, residents paid around $266 in property taxes to the program.
As a former government teacher, Superintendent Lee Thennes told the council that facts are important and said that the district is funding different programs, vouchers, and open enrollment.
The difference is that open enrollment money would come back to a public school district that a student would transfer to.
But the educator says that doesn’t happen in the voucher school program.
Thennes stated that is why he thinks everyone should work under the same rules and be transparent.
“That’s all we’re asking for is to be transparent around the number of dollars that our board doesn’t and can’t account for that are coming in under the guise of the Manitowoc Public School District,” he expounded. “It says on that tax bill we get 30 million bucks, but we don’t. And that $6 million that was collected, we can’t tell you where it went.”
Thennes, Johnson, and Slattery finished showing how the Green Bay Area School District put voucher costs on their resident’s tax bills.
Council members had questions about where voucher funding is going and how public and private schools are doing according to Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction stats.
The Two Rivers City Council did not take a vote on the presentation.
You can see the entire presentation on the City of Two Rivers YouTube channel, starting at the 20:00 minute mark and finishing just after 47:00 minutes.
