GREEN BAY – The Green Bay Area Public School District’s Board of Education heard several presentations at its Oct. 13 meeting, including suggestions and recommendations for increasing school safety and security stemming from community feedback at a Sept. 15 roundtable event and took an in-depth look at the final draft of the 2025-26 budget.

Safety and security

Less than one week after a weapon and ammunition were found at Preble High School, community members were invited to engage in a roundtable to review current safety measures and practices implemented in GBAPS buildings and share what safety measures they’d like to see added to the district’s protocols.

Several recommendations emerged from the roundtable discussion in regards to steps that could be taken to increase the physical security of school buildings — implementing metal detectors, adding exterior door alarms, changing the dress code, switching to a closed campus, increasing school resource officers and enforcing harsher consequences for unsafe behavior — as well as to build a more supportive school community — building relationships with students and increasing mental health services.

Board members were asked to consider these recommendations in order to determine and strategize which should be prioritized, funded and embedded into policy.

Amid concerns over potential negative impacts on school environment and high costs, the board indicated it would like to move forward with an RFP (request for proposals) process and a potential live trial to collect more data about the efficacy or metal detectors in GBAPS school buildings.

“I don’t like the idea of metal detectors, but if we don’t know what we don’t know right now, we have to find that out before we can make a really good decision…” said board member Jeanette Knill. “If we were voting today on metal detectors, I probably would vote it down because I don’t have enough information. I would support an RFP.”

A proposed policy which would require high school students to keep their backpacks in their lockers, as is already required at the middle school level and in many surrounding school districts, raised questions from the board regarding locker availability, processes for requesting a new locker location if necessary and fees currently assessed to students for locks which would need to be answered at a future work session.

The board generally did not feel it was necessary to prioritize dress code revisions such as restricting the wearing of coats and jackets during the school day at this time, noting the uncertain efficacy of such revision and the potential for bias in enforcement of such policies.

“When looking at the dress code policy, in research I did there wasn’t really a good correlation between dress code and keeping weapons out of the schools,” said Board President James Lyerly. “I did read that it led down a path towards bias and it wasn’t necessarily equitable when it came to the evaluation of a particular dress… In the context of security, I don’t know that I’m willing to prioritize this for an immediate review.”

While a recommendation did emerge from the roundtable to consider switching to a closed campus from the current open campus model, which allows high school students to leave their school’s campus during their lunch period, the board generally trended against pursuing this option but members noted they would be open to further conversation with additional evidence and student input.

On the topic of bringing in additional school resource officers (SROs), the board indicated the need for more information about the district’s current SRO program and requested that such information be presented to the board at a later date.

With five years having passed since the last calibration of the district’s behavioral system and review of behavior policies, the board indicated it would like to see those policies brought back before the board for review at a future meeting.

2025-26 Budget

The board got a look at the final draft of the district’s 2025-26 budget, with special attention paid to the general operating budget — Fund 10 — which is funded by state aid, property taxes and federal funds (via grants) and a previously passed operational referendum.

The district is currently looking at a projected $3.6 million deficit in Fund 10.

The state-allowed $325 increase per pupil in the district’s revenue limit brings the district up to $3 million in revenue ($11,650 per student).

That increase in the revenue limit, though, is not enough to overcome the impacts of inflation.

“It’s the 18th year in a row that state caps have continued to trail behind inflation,” said Chief Financial Officer Angie Roble. “So as our costs increase as a district — wages, benefits, construction costs, supplies, transportation — we’re facing those increases, yet we are not receiving the funds from the state to reflect the inflationary pressures that we feel.”

And although the revenue limit increased, the state did not offer any additional aid, meaning that $325 per pupil gets added to the levy assessed to taxpayers in the district.

The district also saw a $3.3 million reduction in state aid overall this year and increases to both amounts paid for private school vouchers and independent charter schools — $640 per pupil for a total increase of $1 million — and regular open enrollment students — $1,140 per pupil for a total increase of $2.2 million.

“This is really a picture as to why we are where we are currently,” Roble said.

The proposed 2025-26 budget includes a total school tax levy of $114,826,604 — a $5,475,453 or roughly 5% increase over last year’s tax levy — with a mill rate of $7.38.

Added to State Equalization Aid received by the district in the amount of $191.4 million and other revenue sources, Fund 10 revenues for the 2025-26 school year will be $309.3 million — still $3.6 million short of what is needed to cover the district’s $312.9 million in Fund 10 expenses.

For the 2025-26 budget, the district will use its fund balance to fill that gap.

“In the face of insufficient funding — the $325 not being offset by state aid, increased voucher expenditures, increased open enrollment expenditures — budgeting is still just a set of choices and it’s a set of priorities,” Lyerly said. “It has to be known that in the face of all of that, we decided not to balance the budget on the backs of teachers. We made some very specific moves to make sure that cost of living increases, steps and everything remained intact because we recognize that that is important.”

Knowing that such structural deficits contributing to the district’s funding gap are likely to continue into the future, the district has already implemented strategies to move towards closing the gap including a 2024 operational referendum, another potential operational referendum in November 2026, closure/consolidation of three schools, reductions in staffing, reductions in department budgets, delayed purchases and employee benefits plan design changes.

A hearing for the 2025-26 budget will be held on Monday, Oct. 27, followed immediately by a regular board meeting where a vote will be taken on the budget and levy.