PRESS EDITORIAL: Cut state funding for online teaching? Ridiculous.

It turns out that a pandemic, besides bringing death, suffering and economic collapse, comes with a lot of conflict. In the U.S., controversy rages bitterly over mask wearing, social distancing, closing and reopening businesses and public gatherings and even (in the weirder reaches of social media) whether the coronavirus that has killed more than 183,000 Americans is real or a hoax. Yet there is one element of dealing with the Covid-19 disaster on which almost everyone agrees: The kids have to get back to school.

No one knows best how to accomplish that. School districts have different school-opening challenges and different ways of meeting them. In Ozaukee County, this includes starting the fall semester with remote teaching via the internet only (Mequon-Thiensville), a hybrid of remote and in-school teaching several days each week (Port Washington-Saukville) and five-day-a-week in-school classes (Ozaukee, Cedar Grove-Belgium, Grafton and Cedarburg).

In each case, these choices were made by school board members elected by their district residents, and the decisions deserve respect as the well-intended actions of local representative government.

Though the school-opening strategies vary, they have one feature in common. They all require effective online teaching. In every district, parents have the option of choosing online schooling only, and many do. And every district has to be prepared for the possibility that a Covid-19 outbreak could force the suspension of in-school teaching.

Can we all agree that public schools should have the resources they need to provide remote teaching that gives at-home students the instruction they need to keep up with their peers in classrooms? Apparently not, judging from the letter to the editor from State Sen. Duey Stroebel in last week’s Ozaukee Press.

Stroebel, of Cedarburg, wrote that school districts should not receive full per-student state funding for students they educate through their own online programs. He argued that school districts should receive substantially less state compensation for their online students than the standard $13,393 per-student state aid amount. He accused districts that accept full funding for online educated students of “skimming” taxpayer money.

The timing of Stroebel’s criticism of online education funding may make sense to him as a political statement pushing the view that all schools should provide in-classroom teaching five days a week regardless of the pandemic, but otherwise it is bizarre. It comes at a time when the pandemic has thrust school districts into financial crises, a time when state aid to school districts has never been needed more.

 The cost of reopening schools with the coronavirus threat still present has broken school budgets. For one example, the Grafton School District reported last week that it expects a deficit of close to half a million dollars.

Online education programs are anything but cheap. They require large expenditures for Chrome books and iPads for students, computers for teachers (the Port-Saukville district is spending $224,000 on laptops for its teachers), software programs and outside IT services, among other necessities.

 Districts realize no savings by teaching some students virtually. Teachers still have to be paid, as do the usual expenses for school buildings and facilities, plus the cost of the modifications needed for social distancing requirements.

Reducing state aid as Stroebel proposes would punish districts at a time when they have no choice but to provide online teaching. And, most damaging, it would limit the ability of K-12 schools to provide virtual teaching that gives real education.