The issue of school districts having to cut budgets or ask voters to approve operational referenda is nothing new, but it’s getting some notice after the Shawano School District announced in January that $1.6 million needs to be cut from operations to balance next year’s budget.
Superintendent Kurt Krizan has previously said that one of the reasons the district has to take the step is because state aid has not kept up with inflation, and with spending limits set on school districts by the state, that leaves the district with limited options.
Rep. Elijah Behnke noted that the Wisconsin Legislature opted not to increase the per pupil funding when it approved the 2025-27 biennial budget. He said that Gov. Tony Evers had already set up a $325 increase per pupil annually for the next 400 years when he signed the previous biennial budget in 2023.
“We were trying to do it for two years, and then he scribbled out the date and years and made it for 400 years instead of two years,” Behnke said. “When the schools got an increase every year, the legislature chose the next time to not give an increase because they already had it.”
With that move, Behnke believes the burden of education funding has been shifted to local taxpayers.
“We’ve seen, through referendums, the taxes go up,” he said. “Taxes go up, because school boards choose to spend a little bit more.”
Behnke’s office has been hearing a lot of complaints about property taxes, which has some money go to school districts.
He noted that he has visited the school districts in the 6th Assembly District, which includes Menominee County, most of Shawano County and a segment of Oconto County, and some of the stories he’s heard from administrators have concerned him.
“Some schools say, ‘Hey, if we don’t get this fixed in the next five years, we’re going to go out of business,’” Behnke said. “This is a very serious problem.”
Behnke said the legislature tried to help schools in regards to funding for special education, which many have claimed has not been enough to help students to have special needs. He said that the special education funding went from 31% coverage to 42% coverage in 2025 and 45% in 2026, but now schools are reporting more students with special needs, so the funding is not covering as much.
“Schools are still receiving hundreds of millions of dollars more in actual funding than before,” Behnke said.
The existing school funding formula needs to be reworked, in Behnke’s view. Metropolitan school districts receive more funding per pupil, he said, while rural school districts like the ones he represents get less, usually in the $11,000 range.
“It’s a 50-year-old formula,” Behnke said. “It’s not fair across the state. The way Shawano County can tax for public schools is different than the way Milwaukee County can tax for public schools. I’d like to even it out. You can have a per pupil rate of $14,000 or $11,000 or $16,000. The formula is broken. We need to fix it.”
Behnke isn’t optimistic about a solution to school funding coming in 2026, noting that the legislature is only in session for another month or two before members have to turn their attention to the next election cycle. There are some bills addressing education, he said, citing one where retirees can return to teaching full time without negatively impacting retirement benefits to address the ongoing teacher shortage, but nothing that would resolve the complex situation of school funding.
The decline in student enrollment has come about due to more young couples holding off on having children or even not having children at all, Behnke said. Estimates at the state level show student enrollment could drop as much as 25% in the next 10 years, he said, which means Wisconsin is “racing toward a cliff.”
“I don’t want to see any schools fail while I’m in state government,” Behnke said.
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
