EDUCATION

Legislative leaders on both sides say public school funding needs to increase

Annysa Johnson
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Darienne Driver, then-superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, testifies before the legislature's Blue Ribbon Commission on School Funding in February 2018. The Commission has issued its final report, recommending the state increase funding for schools.

After a year crisscrossing the state taking testimony on what many describe as Wisconsin's "broken" school finance system, a legislative panel is proposing a slate of measures that would, if enacted, significantly boost funding for public schools.

The recommendations, outlined in the much-anticipated Blue Ribbon Commission on School Funding, propose measures that would increase spending on a number of fronts — for mental health, special education, high-poverty students and more — and restore increases in revenue limits that keep up with inflation.

And while the panel recommends fulfilling the state's lapsed commitment to fund two-thirds of school costs, it also opens the door for local property taxes to climb, depending on how much the state actually kicks in. 

The report reflects the realization on both sides of the political aisle that the current funding formula leaves many districts at a disadvantage. It also marks a retreat for the Republican-controlled Legislature from its emphasis the last eight years on increasing tax savings over school funding.

The commission is not proposing free-standing legislation to enact any of the recommendations. That could provide political cover for GOP lawmakers who face criticism from tax hawks. Instead, it's punting the recommendations to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who has proposed extensive reforms of his own, for inclusion in his 2019-'21 budget proposal.

Luther Olsen

"I think everyone agrees that something needs to be addressed, more so than in the past," said Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), longtime chairman of the Senate Education Committee who co-chaired the commission with Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay).

"Our hope is that Gov. Evers will look at some of this stuff and say, you know what, I'm going to throw some of this into my budget and run with it."

On Wednesday, Evers wouldn’t commit to doing so but called the recommendations a “great first start.”

“I think you’ll find some intersection (between the commission report and his budget plan)," Evers told reporters at a news conference at Mendota Elementary School in Madison.

"But we ... are going to put together our budget that we created at the Department of Public Instruction. And going forward, in negotiations with the Legislature, we can see where the points of intersection are.”

The highly technical report, which covers such arcane concepts as "negative tertiary aid" and "revenue limit adjustments," recommends a host of measures, including those that would:

  • Dramatically increase funding for special education, which has not budged from about $370 million annually for the last decade. Options in the report would boost funding by $45 million to $531.1 million over the next two years, or increase the amount at which special ed costs are reimbursed by the state from 26 percent in 2019-'20 to 36 percent in 2029-'30.
  • Allow school districts with large numbers of low-income and bilingual students to count those students as 1.2 full-time equivalents for state and local funding.
  • Provide additional per-pupil funds for mental health services of $25 in the first year and $50 in the second, at a cost of $21 million to $42 million.
  • Restore the inflationary increase for revenue limits — the amount of money a district gets from the state and local taxpayers — that was eliminated in the 2009-11 budget bill.
  • Provide incentives for districts, particularly in smaller rural communities, to consolidate or share programs and services.

Many of the provisions echo Evers' own budget proposal, announced during the campaign, that would pump an additional $1.4 billion into schools over the biennium.

RELATED:Tony Evers seeks $1.4 billion increase for Wisconsin schools

Evers' plan calls for an additional $606.1 million for special education, $58 million for mental health, $40 million for bilingual-bicultural programs and $20 million for after-school programs.

The report does not address some issues school advocates wanted. For example, it does not address inequities in revenue limit authority that value some children higher than others depending on where they live; or the growing voucher programs for children to attend private schools and the effect those have on public schools and local taxpayers. Still, public school advocates welcomed the recommendations.

"Our hope all along was that there would be bipartisan support for common sense solutions and putting politics aside to prioritize what kids need now. And I think this is a real opportunity to do that," said Heather DuBois Bourenane, executive director of the Wisconsin Public Education Network.

"I'm glad we can now agree that these are the priorities."

Dan Rossmiller, government relations director for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, who sat on the commission, said he would not be surprised if at least some of the measures made their way into free-standing bills as a way to elevate those issues for public debate.

Should lawmakers reject Evers' budget proposal, he said, the report could form the basis of an alternative budget plan.

"Whether they get political traction remains to be seen," Rossmiller said. "But I'm heartened that ... we're not that far apart in our goal of providing more money for education ... and the mechanisms for doing that."

Molly Beck of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.