Yesterday, I posted a reader note on an alternative response to budget cuts in our school district. Afterward, I received two notes from another, longtime reader, suggesting a second alternative. I’ve combined the two notes on the second alternative with an ellipsis.

Mr. Adams, I hate to sound like a broken record about this, but if the WUSD citizenry is looking for place to ‘cut’, how about employees’ health retirement benefits? I’ve no doubt the district could have made up for most of the staff cuts they just announced if they simply stopped increasing their employees’ retirement health benefits, which for most employees now totals well over $100,000 per employee. Of course, you will not hear this from the district nor the Register, but it is worth pointing out nonetheless…

You might want to include also the fact that increases in their health retirement benefits are NOT included in reported pay raises that we all hear about.

Every time a teacher retires, it costs the district over $100,000 in health benefits on the spot.

There’s more than one way to compensate for a reduction in state aid, to a school district or municipality.

(And, if it should be true that the Obama administration establishes some form of universal health care – an effort that I am convinced would be wildly imprudent – the proposal outlined above would be doubly compelling.)

Loss of state aid may be addressed in more than one way, and although corresponding reductions will be necessary, there’s more than one response available, no matter how often one might hear from politicians and bureaucrats that only one choice was possible.

I received a message recently from a student who remarked on budget cuts in the school district.  Here’s part of what he had to say — 

I don’t know if you have heard but recently the WUSD released its tentative cuts for next fall.  They might be cutting the 5th grade band program but for sure they are getting rid of Josh Barret the current band director at that level.  The administration of course will still be receiving its 10% raise this year though.  I feel that this is a serious mismanagement of government at our school level by the administration because most Americans across the country are taking pay cuts now.  If you should chose to run with this story you may email me at any time and I will be willing to help you out.

I wrote back privately, and here’s a longer public reply — 

Our community will often hear that a certain cut had to take place, because of a loss of state aid, the bad economy, etc. Someone will declare that we’re out of money, and so a certain cut had to take place. 

That’s not true, as the reader correctly observes. Cuts may be necessary, but that doesn’t justify any particular cut. Our city and school district confuse – deliberately, sometimes, I think – cuts generally with specific cuts. We find ourselves in the position where the City of Whitewater and the Whitewater Unified School District will surely lose contributions on which they had counted from the State of Wisconsin. 

As the state budget’s unfavorable, we can expect that cities and school districts across Wisconsin will feel that impact.  And yet, it’s so easy to declare that cuts to a particular position, or service, where inevitable, because we’ve received less state money.  It’s as though, faced with less from the state, there were only one choice possible — the very choice that politicians, administrators, or bureaucrats made. 

Choices are seldom so constrained, that there is only one possible solution.  It’s not as though we’re on a lifeboat, with one cracker left to share.   

One might cut staff, but there are other options, too.  We might have chosen differently before now, and we might choose differently now as well.   

Declaring that cuts made were forced as a consequence of declining state aid masks the responsibility and accountability for choosing one cut over another.  

Specific cuts, by the way, often seem to fall on others, including front-line workers, rather than politicians, bureaucrats, etc., themselves.