The slow starving of public education

The Wisconsin Legislature, led by the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee, has been dragging public education backward by starving school districts of adequate state funding.

This has been going on for years, to the point where Wisconsin, once in the top tier of states in public school funding, is now below average and ranked 25th among the states in financial support of public K-12 education.

The expectation, as the JFC, the budget-writing committee, began work on the 2025-26 state budget, was that the trend would be reversed because the state has a historically huge surplus of  $4.3 billion. Gov. Tony Evers and other education advocates made a strong case for spending a part of it to relieve school districts of some of the crushing financial burden of special education.

That logical and sensible hope proved to be forlorn. The JFC decided it would be business as usual: Regardless of the surplus, there would be no meaningful increase in special education funding. 

The committee voted to increase state aid for special education by less than 5% in the first year of the budget—a mere token that does not begin to address the unfairness of a cost-sharing policy that puts the onus on local property-taxpayers to pay roughly two-thirds of the cost of providing federally mandated special education.

The impact is a direct hit on local taxpayers. In the Port Washington-Saukville School District, for example, if the JFC limit on special education funding is written into the final state budget, it may force a tax increase that school officials have taken steps to avoid.

In urging voters to approve a $59.4 million building referendum last year, the School Board and School Supt. Michael McMahon promised that the spending authorized by the referendum would increase the school district tax rate by no more than 26 cents per $1,000. The referendum was approved and its impact on the taxes will be exactly what was projected. But under the current state budget proposal, the school tax may have to increase beyond that.

School officials had been led to believe that, given the state’s cash surplus, an increase in the state’s funding share to about 60% of school districts’ special education cost was likely. But by a 12-4 party-line vote on June 12, the JFC made it clear it doesn’t want any significant amount of the surplus spent on education.

The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act mandates that states provide special education. To comply with the law, states are required to provide financial aid to school districts for teaching students with disabilities. Wisconsin reimburses districts for one-third of special education costs. 

Special education costs the Port-Saukville district about $6.2 million a year. The state reimburses $1.9 million, just 33% of the cost, which means $4.3 million has to be taken from the district’s general education fund to cover special education costs. This leaves the school district, like many in Wisconsin, struggling to pay the cost of conventional education for every student.

That struggle is exacerbated by the refusal of the Legislature to fund general public school aid at a level sufficient to meet the rising costs of education. State school aid was once adjusted annually for inflation. That hasn’t happened for years, with the result that Wisconsin school districts now have $3,200 less per student to spend than they had in 2010, according to the Education Law Center.

State caps on local tax levies further constrain school revenue, leaving a number of districts facing budget deficits that force them to ask voters in referendums for permission to exceed levy limits for operational spending.

The fact that hundreds of school districts have had to resort to operational referendums in the past few years is an unmistakable sign that Wisconsin’s public education funding is deficient—to the detriment of students and local taxpayers.

How are legislators reacting to that? By treating the symptom rather than the disease. Three Republicans have introduced a bill that would prohibit recurring referendums and limits all referendums to once every four years.

The state public school aid formula needs a complete overhaul based on a realistic evaluation of the cost of high-quality K-12 education. In the meantime, the Legislature should take the opportunity to give public schools a modest but meaningful financial lift by increasing the reimbursement for special education to at least 60% in the new budget.

If fairness mattered to the legislators, it would be even more than that. While the state has been paying 33% of the cost of public school special education, it has been reimbursing private voucher schools for 90% of their special education expense.