Thank you for joining us. Fox Cities Advocates for Public Education is a nonpartisan group focused on Wisconsin’s promise of a quality public education for every child. Today, we will share how schools faired with the passage of the 2025-27 Biennial Budget and some recommended next steps.
This graphic explains our urgency in meeting with you today and why we need your help. We will mail you the link to this presentation. Since we are continually updating the data, you may find new information each time you click in. If you would, please hold your questions until the end.
CONTENTS
- Enrollment/Demographics/Value
- Public School Funding Basics - Formula, Revenue Limits, Inflation, School Levy, Tax Credit
- Referenda
- Priority Needs - Special Education, Mental Health, Teachers, Solution
- Vouchers - Cost, Counts, Backpacks, Transparency & Accountability
- Putting it All Together - 3 Gaps, DPI, US Education, WI Budget Timeline
Kids and schools need your help. They honestly do. They need you and all your family, friends, colleagues and coworkers to tell legislators that public education is important and we need to improve its funding.
ENROLLMENT
"Public Education” means education that is publicly financed, accountable to the public, and accessible to all students. Public education is often described as the cornerstone of our economy, our democracy, and our society. That is why Wisconsin, and every state, has incorporated public education in its state constitution.
More than 85% of Wisconsin kids are educated in our public schools.
EVER HEARD SOMEONE COMPLAIN ABOUT DECLINING ENROLLMENT? - Check the individual school report cards, because this isn’t true for every school district. Over the Fox 12 area, enrollment has remained relatively stable. For those school districts whose enrollments have declined - school funding formulas are based on per pupil counts and actual historical trends.
BECAUSE schools are funded on a per pupil basis, declining enrollment is ALREADY BAKED INTO THE CAKE. When a child is lost, it reduces the funding, but not the fixed cost.
The backpack does not follow the kids. Consider, for example, a first grader’s parent’s job transfer causes his family to move out of state. The size of his first grade class is now reduced from 25 to 24 students. The cost of a set of textbooks is avoided. Unchanged, however, are the costs of instruction, administration, student transportation, facility maintenance and food service.
Transferring a limited number of students out of a school district does not, therefore, significantly reduce cost.
This chart includes school district populations of area public schools as reported in September 2025. For all practical purposes, enrollment numbers have now stabilized, or in some cases, are increasing in our Fox 12 schools. (Appleton, Freedom, Hortonville, Kimberly, Kaukauna, Little Chute, Menasha, Neenah, New London, Oshkosh, Seymour, & Shiocton).
In addition to district enrollment, here you can see the priority needs populations in each school district: Students of color, English learners, economically disadvantaged, and students with disabilities. These students generally require additional resources to meet their specific needs. The RED numbers in this table indicate the highest population level in each demographic. Notice especially the column on the right, “Students with Disabilities”. Later in this presentation you will see how this impacts overall budgeting.
Test scores have become an obsession. Standardized tests are merely a snapshot in time of one student in a limited number of academic areas. It is important to understand that criteria used in standardized tests have changed over time. In addition, using average test scores to compare schools can be problematic because public schools educate all students of all abilities, even those who bring down the school’s average test score. Here you can see some of the many ways student success can be measured in addition to standardized tests.
FCA4PE joined school districts all around the state advocating for three main budget priorities for the 2025-27 Budget: Increases in Revenue per Student, Special Education, and Mental Health. The WHITE bar indicates the NEED. The $1,510 /pupil (over the two-year budget) was needed to recover the zero increase in the previous budget and the anticipated inflationary increase for 2025-27. Raising the special education reimbursement rate to 60% would be a huge improvement that would benefit all students. And, provide much needed mental health funding in sustainable aid. The RED bar shows how the budget met that need.
The rest of the presentation will explain the challenges our public schools face, both monetary and non-monetary, and what next steps are needed to help our kids thrive.
We model our recommendations based on the 2019 Blue Ribbon Commission Report. The legislature at that time had established a bi-partisan committee lead by Republicans that included experts in the field. This report presents their findings to improve educational outcomes in public schools.
SCHOOL FUNDING BASICS
The bulk of state aid to schools is constrained by a revenue limit or revenue cap. This aid flows from an equalization formula that seeks to equalize educational opportunity by sending more aid to poorer districts. This aid is also called "state general aid".
The state also provides other funding that isn't constrained. Per pupil aid reflects a felt need to fund schools equally. Categorical aid enables the state to fund specific needs like transportation. Communities who seek more support can exceed their revenue limit through referenda.
Your school district might, for example, have a revenue limit of $11,000 per pupil. If state equalization aid was $6,000, then the property tax would come to about $5,000 per student.
Revenue limits are reported in two ways: (1) Revenue Limits without Exemptions (RLwoE) are base levels and (2) Revenue Limits with Exemptions (RL-E). RL-E includes both money that is paid to local private voucher schools and referenda. Revenue limits without exemptions (RLwoE) accurately portrays the amounts school districts remain capped in funding by state law. The only way to exceed them is via local majority vote. Revenue limits are unequal across the state and have been essentially legislatively frozen that way since 1993.
The 2025-27 Biennial Budget allowed the low revenue caps to increase to $11,325 per student. You can see the progress here as you compare the map on the left with the one on the right. This chart, however, doesn’t portray the impacts of that legislative freeze in revenue limits because it includes both money that is paid to local private voucher schools and referenda, revenue limits with exemptions (RL-E).
It is our belief that referenda and voucher money should not be reported here. (1) Districts don’t get the voucher money and (2) not every community can afford to pass referenda. We would like to see this data reported without those dollars, base revenue limits (without exemptions).
You’ll have to download the file and open it up in Excel. RL-E = Revenue Limit with Exemptions. RLwoE = Revenue Limit without Exemptions.
These two charts report revenue limits without exemptions for Fox 12 schools. Most, if not all Fox Cities School districts are LOW REVENUE DISTRICTS (LRD’s) and remain among the lowest in the state. You can see some comparisons in the table below:
The Chicken and the Egg. A $325 per pupil inflationary adjustment to revenue limits was proposed in the two-year budget without state general aid increases. With ZERO general aid increases, local property taxpayers had to pay more -AGAIN!!!
Even with this adjustment - paid for by property taxpayers NOT state aid…many of the Fox 12 schools still remain low revenue districts with revenue limits of $11,650 per student in 2025-26. The Fox 12’s average base revenue limit per pupil is $11,765; about $800/student less than the state average of $12,555 per pupil. With 15K students, imagine if Appleton had $7M more in funding per year just to bring them to the state average levels? (15,000 x $477 = $6,705,000). What would Oshkosh do with $7.2M more per year? Neenah with $6M? Hortonville with $4M?
Inflation is a major issue that schools face with historic and chronic underfunding. The truth remains that the $325 veto doesn’t come close to meeting the Inflationary Gap in public schools. You’ll see that in the next two slides. Because 75% of district operating revenue goes to staff salaries and benefits, educators and other staff expect their salary increases to at least keep pace with inflation. If not, they consider leaving the district or the profession of education.
Unfortunately, increases in school revenue have lost pace to inflation since 2009.
In the last two years, no increases were granted in either the revenue limit or per pupil funding. When factored with inflation over time, this amounts to a $3,600 ($3,571) per pupil funding gap. A practical and effective way to solve this problem of underfunding is to index the revenue limit for inflation. That way, districts won't fall behind.
In addition to these funding gaps, the legislature has been disguising property tax reduction as school funding. In the current year, $1.4 billion will be spent to reduce local property taxes while labeled as school aid.
Legislators can claim that they spent more on education and simultaneous reduced taxes - we call those claims a shell game.
The revenue limit can lead to manipulation of funding. Increasing general aid while freezing the revenue limit diverts the money to property tax reduction. Legislators can claim that they spent more on education and simultaneously reduced taxes - but it isn't so.
REFERENDA
With inflation and state aid not meeting rising costs, districts across the state have increasingly tuned towards referenda. Since legislators are not adequately funding schools, school districts have the choice of closing schools, cutting staff and programs, or asking local citizens for help fill funding gaps via referenda.
Basically, there are two different types of referenda: (1) CAPITAL - i.e. new buildings, renovations, or additions and (2) OPERATING -i.e. salaries, maintenance, utilities, etc.
LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICTS ARE NOT the problem. Over 200 school districts (almost 50%) went to operational referenda in the last 2 years (WI Policy Forum).
Fox Cities citizens want to fund their public schools and vote to do so consistently. Over the span of 9 years, Fox Cities citizens voted overwhelmingly, by 72%, to pass referenda in support of their school districts. We need to send this message to our legislators so they will step up and do the same.
When we force citizens to fund at local levels, we shift greater financial burdens onto property taxpayers. With a surplus now for the sixth year in a row, have the means to fund more from our state level without even raising taxes.
Taxpayers complain about rising taxes. The fact remains that their taxes as a percentage burden have decreased considerably. Wisconsin’s state and local tax burden is at its lowest level since the 1970’s. Thanks to Anne Chapman, Research Director for WASBO (Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials) you can see these facts in these slides; from property taxpayers and income perspectives to Nation-wide. A button link to her presentation follows.
PRIORITY NEEDS
On top of these funding gaps, priority needs are increasing while their funds are not. Underfunding these service-mandated populations negatively impacts ALL students. In conversations, ask for increased funding for two blue ribbon areas: SPECIAL EDUCATION & MENTAL HEALTH. Adequate funding for them would provide immense help to schools across the state.
Special needs programming is mandated, meaning that the school districts MUST provide the services. This means, school districts across WI have to take funds from (what typically amounts to 10% of) their general funds to cover the unfunded costs. ALL kids and programming suffers when this happens. Across WI, this amounts to over a billion $ deficit. A blue ribbon expert called WI WORST IN NATION because of this.
In 1980, WI funded 66% of special needs programming in public schools, in 2021-23, 30%. The 2025-27 had only a meager increase, to funding 35%. Meanwhile, our state funds 90% in private schools. Public schools must also pay for and provide transportation to private schools.
Public schools have also been known assist special needs programming in private schools. This is grossly inequitable.
As you can see, even though funding is large for private schools, there are a lot of NO’s in offering’s for special education students in private schools:
This chart shows a long history of special education funding over time. Costs are rising while reimbursements decline; between 2001/2-2024/25, aidable costs increased by approximately 103%
Youth with poor mental health may struggle with school and grades, decision making, and their health. Mental health trauma and or problems in youth are also often associated with other health and behavioral risks. This lack of support for mental health drives teachers to supplement as coaches, and as you can imagine, this has been an incredible challenge for teachers that's been driven upwards in the pandemic and current political climate. A challenge indeed as more time and effort is needed to create a culture of comfort for learning in classrooms.
2025-27’s MENTAL HEALTH BUDGET also was a big shortfall. $20 million / 800K students amounts to $25 per kid per year. Another $50 million as directed to districts via grants that are not guaranteed to districts. How is that going to make a difference to help these kids struggling with mental health issues? $270 million was and is still needed.
Sad statistics. Mental health has been a problem and underfunded issue for WI long before the pandemic. But, the pandemic exacerbated needs, and districts continue to work hard to bring students back from its and other mental health challenges.
Let’s also not forget the Teacher/Staff crisis that we’re in. Fund those needs of students adequately, and you will provide relief to many staff and teachers. Teachers are the backbones and miracle workers upon which our economy past, present, and future, depends on!
The fact remains that teacher compensation has plummeted. WASBO tracks the compensation decline below, while we added a plot of CPI (the consumer price index for a basket of goods) over the same timeframe below. Costs rise in community for teachers - such as housing, gas, utilities, and food, while their compensation has not.
We all know this is real, and if we funded the needs of students and compensated teachers appropriately, we wouldn't have a teacher crisis. Teacher benefits and wages are not keeping up with like professions and degrees in industry.
Compensation also doesn't justify Masters degrees, so fewer teachers have them. Many of those that do are approaching retirement. These masters degree teachers are the CAPP and college credit instructors, social workers, nurses, special needs teachers, etc. upon which our families, workforce, and economy depend.
We know and have the solutions to create a high quality learning environment for kids. Fund the needs of ALL students, index salaries to inflation, provide incentives to retain and attract quality staff, and foster a culture of appreciation, respect, and joy.
VOUCHERS
Vouchers are per pupil payments paid by taxpayer money that are sent to private schools for children (currently within an income cap).
DPI has created an interactive map and other reports that you can access to find out how vouchers are affecting your area.
The various growth of voucher programs by type over time is outlined below. There are four types of voucher programs in WISCONSIN: Wisconsin, Racine, Milwaukee, and Special Needs. The two that mostly affect our Fox Cities area property taxpayers are the Wisconsin Choice program and the Special needs voucher programs. Here are the combined totals of voucher types. Milwaukee Vouchers are paid for by all taxpayers around the state, because they are decoupled and are paid for straight from Wisconsin’s General Purpose Revenue (GPR) fund.
As presented, enrollment and the costs of vouchers in the statewide expansion grow. The data you have seen and see here in these next two graphics explains why school vouchers are an obstacle to public school funding.
Of all private schools accepting voucher payouts, 61% of their students are funded via vouchers. Is that a private school if over half of them are funded with public money?
Further, a good majority of these voucher students (Wisconsin Examiner estimated 77% in a 2021 report) never set foot in a public school and they don’t have to prequalify for income limits once in if their economic circumstances improve. (They only apply once and don’t update economic status ever again while in the preK-12 system.)
Revenue limits are unequal throughout our state and private high schools now receive over $1,400 more per pupil than our Fox Cities high schools in 2025-26. In 2026-27, private voucher high schools will receive over $1,700 more per pupil!
For every voucher student who transfers from a public to private school, taxpayers now pay twice. First, they pay the cost of providing an educational opportunity at a public school. Second, they pay for the voucher.
The cost burden of vouchers is borne by property owners. The graphic outlines the costs to local property tax payers in Appleton for vouchers per $100K home value. It also points out that property tax statements include costs for private schools but lists them only as public school costs. This is wrong and FCA4PE advocates to fix this.
Proposals for itemizing the voucher tax on real estate tax bills have stalled in the legislature, and in fact, in the case of the last 2025-27 biennial budget, a bill proposing this be disclosed was voted down.
Next, you’ll see a series of charts that demonstrate the breakdowns and funding for vouchers statewide, the top 10 largest voucher schools, and specific impacts to local Fox 12 districts. You can orient your eyes to the total population counts, the percent shows how much of that school is on vouchers, and the payouts they receive. Further illustrative options include religious breakdowns and / or local district impact.
This slide breaks down voucher enrollment as it directly impacts its geographic public school base. The 12 school districts in our FCA4PE tree are outlined above, mostly color coded by each of the school district’s colors. (Orange represents Oshkosh, bright blue Appleton, red Neenah, and so on). The dollar values represent the amount paid for private school vouchers in that district.
This is another way to look at vouchers. It sorts each private school within the 12 public school district umbrella individually, showing the largest voucher schools sorted to the smallest. For the most part, these voucher schools are color coded by public school district colors, so you can quickly see what private schools are in Appleton, Oshkosh, Neenah, and so on.
In the center, you will find the total population of that private school. The % indicates what % of that total school is on vouchers, and the $ shows the amount of taxpayer money that private school receives. Note the high percentage of vouchers students some of these private schools depend on. Could their doors be open without taxpayer money? Is it a private school, if it is funded half or more by taxpayer money?
This chart explains many of the differences jn accountability of public schools vs the unaccountability in private schools. This includes lack of licensure, certification, access to service, and assessment requirements in private schools. If we are to fund private schools with Wisconsinite money, then we should demand similar requirements from both systems to safeguard and protect the rights of students.
Clearly, there is a vast system of oversight with publicly elected school board members in public schools. If private schools want taxpayer money, we should have the same system of oversight in private schools. Budgets and meeting documents posted online, open records requests, etc. should all be required from private schools.
If we truly care about wanting what’s best for kids, then our legislators should require all private schools to submit school-wide performance data to dpi and publish this information online for all parents and Wisconsinites to see. Legislators do not require private schools to submit this data, but they require public schools to. To our knowledge, there is only one local private school that willingly and voluntarily submits school-wide performance data to dpi, and that is Fox Valley Lutheran High School. If we want parents and children to make the best choices for their schools, and taxpayers to see their returns on investment, this data should be made public.
Consistent metrics are best practices in business, why not in schools?
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
It has been 17 years since public schools have received an annual increase that met inflation. Thanks to the Governor’s $325 veto, the 2025-27 budget made some progress. The leviable increase of $325 per student was desperately needed. This helped our Fox Cities schools but they still remain over $800 per pupil below the state average. Many challenges still remain and are growing. Funding schools via local referendum only creates more haves and have nots, not to mention puts more burdens on local property tax payers.
Prior to the 2025-27 Budget, Wisconsin had a surplus of over $4B. Now, it is expected to have a surplus of over $2B. This is the 6th year in a row that Wisconsin has generated a surplus. So, yes, we can afford to fund public schools better WITHOUT FURTHER COSTS TO TAXPAYERS. Also note that the total of all the school referendums in 2024 was over $4B, some of which would not have been needed if schools had been adequately funded over the years.
Because of the threats to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, it is extremely important that we fortify Wisconsin’s support for public education. There are many unanswered questions.
Will our schools continue to receive federal funding, which covers 8-10% of their budgets? What will happen to programs like Title 1, Title 9, IDEA, and government grants? Will there be any enforcement for sex discrimination? What will happen to protections for students with disabilities? State elected officials need to feel the pressure to come through for our kids, especially with this budget.
Our U.S. Senators and Members of Congress also need to hear our concerns. It is up to us to get the message across! We can do that by showing up to vote to elect public education champions in 2026. There is a lot at stake for public education starting this April 7, 2026. We need to get our friends, families, and colleagues to show up and vote for public education champions across the board!
A Supreme Court Justice who values meeting constitutional obligations is a big start. There is a lawsuit now for public education that will likely need her (and others’ votes).
The Plaintiff’s requests are: Declare that Wisconsin’s current school finance system violates Wisconsin Constitution and must be declared invalid.
Establish a schedule that will enable the Court—in the absence of a superseding state law, adopted by the Legislature and signed by the Governor in a timely fashion—to adopt and implement a new school finance system that meets all relevant state constitutional guarantees.
Here’s a brief timeline of what YOU can work on this year while we prepare for the next biennial budget.
Stay tuned, because this coming November, we will have updated and guidance leading into the next biennial (2027-29) budget planning cycle. A brief sketch of what to expect follows:
We challenge you to get loud, starting now. We all depend on quality public education, whether we have kids in school or not. We all want to live in a civic-minded community with great amenities and services. And, businesses want quality employees. Our quality of life comes down to having strong public schools. We are counting on your help.
The following budget guide handouts will be updated in the Spring of 2027. So please follow us on Facebook and check in with us for updates in the interim. include this timeline, links to resources, and a list of actions you can take. Please stay informed, connect with your legislators, share the good news of your public schools, and join us in our advocacy. We really need you now . . . more than ever!
Do you have questions about public education? Reach out to your local Superintendent, attend your local school board meetings, and sign up for your local school district’s newsletters. Join our FCA4PE group. Follow our Facebook page and newsletter.
Sign up for the statewide WPEN action network for updates on budgets, bills, and other important legislative news:
Thank you for allowing us to present this update today. We hope you will continue to advocate for what our kids need. Are there any questions?
Credits:
Created with images by LIGHTFIELD STUDIOS - "bottom view of happy multicultural kids looking at camera" • davit85 - "Group of kids going to school together." • Sabrina - "Crowd of multiracial people having fun together at city park - Social gathering and community concept" • Prostock-studio - "Female child entering school bus and giving high five to female driver" • Andrei - "Boy doing math homework with a touch pen on his tablet"