Wisconsin has 421 school districts dedicated to helping teach all children, regardless of who they are and where they gain the tools they need to have a better tomorrow. However, that tomorrow is underfunded.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, the funding of school districts is restricted by policies that limit the amount of revenue from both the state and property taxes. However, this causes a problem. There used to be an inflation adjustment part of the revenue limit, but it was deleted in the 2009-11 budget. This led to a decrease in money for school funding, and schools have been playing catch up ever since.
This is why around 120 school districts are asking their communities for a referendum to gain more funding to fit the buildings, pay staff or get the tools needed to help students learn and understand. This is worsened by the voucher system, which is a system that takes state funding that would normally go to public schools and sends it to private or charter schools if parents fill out a voucher requesting the state to help fund the student’s education.
This helps create a cycle where students are leaving school and taking money with them to go to a private school, making the school worse and causing more students to leave.
A way to help solve this problem is to vote for lawmakers who want to help solve the funding issues with education and give money back to the schools in need with no strings attached. However, that is easier said than done, especially because of how much the schools need.
“I talked to a lot of legislators. They said schools got a billion dollars. That’s a lot of money. But it doesn’t make up for the 30 years of defending. It doesn’t make up for the 16 years of no rates of inflation given public schools,” said Chris Hambuch-Boyle of Eau Claire, a retired educator and former school board president.
