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Holmgren article about athletic spending vs K-12 cuts

D

DVDA

Well-known member
I just saw a post on facebook sharing this article with "Wow. Ridiculous." as the only thing said by the poster. I feel like this is some pathetic clickbait from Holmgren as we're talking about 4 million per year for athletics versus K-12 which is in the billions per year if I'm not mistaken. Any thoughts?

http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/lawmakers-support-uw-athletics-spending-while-agreeing-to-k-/article_f3c9088a-3d77-5c06-bdef-1c0db3ab9387.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
It would be curious to see where else budget cuts were made.. I feel like keeping athletic matching vs cutting K-12 spending might be comparing apples to oranges. Of the K-12 budget cuts how much were things that actually needed to be cut? I know that Wyoming has been living pretty fat the last few years.. DVDA and I's alma mater had technology money coming out of their ears to spend in K-12 and they were just buying things to buy things just to spend the money allocated to them whether they needed it or not. Basically, I don't know if it's fair to compare the two unless we see -all- of the areas that saw budget cuts and gains and see where the return on investment is high vs low.
 
I doubt that it was Ryan's idea, but rather something he was given to write by someone who is trying to create a strawman argument.
First, the $8 million in matching funds is $4 million a year for two years. That's a 20 percent cut in the matching funds from the past year.
More than that, the cuts to K-12 amount to 1.5 percent of the budget.
And there were some major additions for the schools, including:

--$400 million added to the budget for new K-12 school construction;
--$102 million for Community College and UW new construction.
--And $100 million for creation of a School Foundation Reserve Account.

So the budget did increase an additional $602 million just for those three areas for educational purposes. But it's the $8 million in matching funds over two years -- a $1 million annual budget cut -- that is being portrayed as the culprit.
And had the money for matching funds not been approved who says the money would have gone to K-12. Who says it would have not been allotted anywhere?
 
All of those numbers were not present in the CST article which probably would have ruffled people's feathers a lot less had they been. $8million dollars is basically nothing when factored into the overall budget of the state.
 
It's intellectually dishonest to directly compare one budget line with another. You could ask the same question about anything the legislature pays for. "Schools Cut While Veteran's Cemetery Gets $X" "Schools cut While Roads Get $Y".
 
Pretty disappointing article from our beat writer. The overall tone was ''how could we fund athletics at the expense of our poor children?". He didn't even try to put a positive spin on things or dig deeper with bits and pieces of info like Tracy provided.

The most disappointing part was he didn't lay out what excellence in athletics will do for an institution, not to mention what it does for the city of Laramie. Everyone wants a vibrant college town? Well UW athletics is the single biggest economic contribution to Laramie's retail and hospitality industry. Students living here are cheap, people that come for games are not and will leave their money.
 
TracyRingolsby said:
More than that, the cuts to K-12 amount to 1.5 percent of the budget.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info, Tracy. Can you clarify this though? Does this mean expenses on K-12 have only been cut 1.5% from last year? Or does this mean the cuts to K-12 only account for 1.5% of all budget cuts? Also, are the construction additions for 1 year, or over a longer period of time?
 
IMO, UW and especially Burman is dropping the ball on this. Like Junky pointed out, Burman hasn't been doing terrible lately. However, he has been in an economy flush with cash (for WYO) which makes the job a lot easier.

Sad that the best responses to this (the 8 mill while cutting other things) that I've seen is on a freaking message board. PICK IT UP BURMAN!! Respond to this argument before it grows even louder.

The vultures are circling and agencies are about to go "Donner Party" on other state agencies. Tough days ahead to be sure.
 
I question the need for some of the K-12 construction. It seems to me much of this construction comes from legislators representing one area thinking "well they got a new school, so we should too". In my thinking, budget items should be based on need - not want.
 
TracyRingolsby said:
I doubt that it was Ryan's idea, but rather something he was given to write by someone who is trying to create a strawman argument.
First, the $8 million in matching funds is $4 million a year for two years. That's a 20 percent cut in the matching funds from the past year.
More than that, the cuts to K-12 amount to 1.5 percent of the budget.
And there were some major additions for the schools, including:

--$400 million added to the budget for new K-12 school construction;
--$102 million for Community College and UW new construction.
--And $100 million for creation of a School Foundation Reserve Account.

So the budget did increase an additional $602 million just for those three areas for educational purposes. But it's the $8 million in matching funds over two years -- a $1 million annual budget cut -- that is being portrayed as the culprit.
And had the money for matching funds not been approved who says the money would have gone to K-12. Who says it would have not been allotted anywhere?
Click to expand...

I agree with the bold part Tracy. When I first saw this I was thinking why in the heck would our sports writer be getting involved in this outside stuff and comparing it to the athletic matching funds. It didn't make any sense. I can almost guarantee one of his bosses told him to write about it to create a tizzy and get more people reading the paper or article.
 
cali2wyo said:
TracyRingolsby said:
More than that, the cuts to K-12 amount to 1.5 percent of the budget.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info, Tracy. Can you clarify this though? Does this mean expenses on K-12 have only been cut 1.5% from last year? Or does this mean the cuts to K-12 only account for 1.5% of all budget cuts? Also, are the construction additions for 1 year, or over a longer period of time?
Click to expand...
The K-12 budget, as I understand it, was cut 1.5 percent.
As for the construction additions my guess is it is over 2 years because the budget, I believe, is a two-year budget, which is why the CJC matching funds are for two years, or $4 million a year, which is down 20 percent from the previous allotment.
 
Hypothetically, if UW dropped sports, what would it do to our bottom line?

On the flip side, what would a perennial MWC contender in men's bball and football do?
 
ragtimejoe1 said:
Hypothetically, if UW dropped sports, what would it do to our bottom line?

On the flip side, what would a perennial MWC contender in men's bball and football do?
Click to expand...

What would having a pet unicorn be like? What would winning Powerball feel like? We don't know, nor will we ever know, so I don't think your argument is valid there, Joe.
 
ragtimejoe1 said:
Hypothetically, if UW dropped sports, what would it do to our bottom line?

On the flip side, what would a perennial MWC contender in men's bball and football do?
Click to expand...

If UW were to drop sports I think it would have a very adverse effect to not only the university as a whole, but certainly to Laramie and Albanay county as well. UW athletics brings a lot of money in to the city, county, and (to a lesser extent) the state. The university itself would lose a lot in the advertising and marketing value of having a D-1 athletics department. In addition, they would being losing hundreds of jobs that are there because of the athletic department's existence. Also, as Tracy has mentioned before, schools with athletic departments tend to get more donations from alumni to non-athletic programs.

I can't put a dollar value on it, but I think when you add up the value that an athletic department has to a town like Laramie as well as to creating jobs and allowing for nationwide marketing, the value is probably greater than the actual cost of operations.

On the flip side, having a perennial contender in our money sports would certainly help more than losing does, but I'm not sure if there is a tipping point where spending X dollars supercedes that value that the department brings to the school.
 
MrTitleist said:
Can anyone name a college -without- an athletics program?
Click to expand...
Frontier School of the Bible in LaGrange (only reason I know that is because I drive through LaGrange on occasion and that school is pretty much all there is in town)
 
MrTitleist said:
Can anyone name a college -without- an athletics program?
Click to expand...

I meant it more from a hypothetical standpoint for a cost-benefit type of analysis. How much does it really cost and how much would we really save if we had no athletics vs what is the ceiling of the ROI? If that makes sense.

Bottom line is that if athletics already loses x million even factoring in advertising benefits and successful programs don't add substantially to that, then it is a tough sell to your average Joe. In other words, if athletics already loses and is subsidized say 15 million per year. A highly successful program will only net another 2 million per year. Spending 4 million (or whatever) more per year to get 2 million in return is a tough sell.

This is where Burman needs to evaluate successful programs and lay out some real numbers that could be attained if athletics were more successful. It can't just be about the experience or image of athletics. Somehow, he needs to put a dollar amount to it.
 
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