GREEN BAY – During its March 10 work session, the Green Bay Area Public Schools (GBAPS) Board of Education got a glimpse of the financial outlook for the 2025-26 school year.
During a staff presentation that evening, GBAPS Superintendent Vicki Bayer expressed concerns about a potential $10-$12 million deficit’s effect on the district’s students.
“We are not the only district in the state of Wisconsin — 420 of us that are facing a deficit, and many of them are depending on referendums to be able to keep their doors open,” Bayer said. “So, I hate to be the one to have to keep coming to the board and say this and saying it to the public. We truly are doing the best we can, and our goal is when we're reducing our budget to have the least amount of negative impact on our children. At some point, the state of Wisconsin has to realize we can't keep cutting without hurting our children. Now, that's out of my hands.”
Chief Financial Officer Angela Roble said that an ongoing issue with school funding was the revenue controls, or revenue limits.
“Back in 1993, the state put a cap on how much schools could spend per pupil with a combination of state aid and property taxes Prior to revenue controls or revenue limits that were put into place, the school boards were able to assess property taxes for what the needs were, and the state gave us the aid,” Roble explained.
“So once we had the aid, then the school boards could tax as much as the school needed. But once these caps were put into place, that went out the window. So conservative spending school districts at the time, like Green Bay, we were locked into the lowest revenue spending per pupil. So we were locked at that low revenue ceiling… we are now locked into spending for what we spent 30 years ago, right with limited amount of increases.
“Prior to 2009, school districts would receive an inflationary increase. So whatever the CPI was, the per pupil would be increased along with that for school districts. But then in 2009, that was stopped due to the Great Recession, and ever since then, school districts never got caught up, right? We've never received the funding to make up for the stop in that inflationary increase.
“Prior to the 2023-25 state biennial budget, we were facing a $36 million budget deficit. So prior to 2023-25, if you recall, we did receive additional funding from the state; in fact, significantly higher than what we had proposed and what we had projected in our original projection. So with that additional revenue that came from the state over these last couple of years, that dropped us down quite a bit. I mean, we were facing like maybe a $20 million at this time, and then once the state funding came, we were able to close that gap. It was around $2-$3 million, so over the course of the 2023-25 school year, with the additional funding from the state and with our Esser funding, that's how we've been able to close that gap, especially this year — in 2024-25.”
Bayer said that it was likely that the state would enter into the next school year without a budget.
“July 1 begins the 2025-26 school year, and it is very likely that the state will not pass the budget by that time. So we have to make decisions based on the assumption that things will remain the same,” she said.
“The last budget that came through included, for example, an additional $325 per pupil. We're assuming that's going to be there and that the state is going to pass a budget that is at least equal to what we have today. We are facing a 10 to $12 million deficit. And I'll repeat what I said at the beginning. We are not the only district in the state.”
The staff offered a few items for consideration to help eliminate the deficit by the fall of 2025, which included reducing department and school building budgets; moving COVID vaccine clinic back to the doctor’s office or CVS; reviewing stipends and riders; freezing annual wage increase on riders; freezing annual wage increase on riders; freezing steps for one year, or until the state budget is finalized and this can be reviewed; replacing Income Protection Plan (82.5% of salary) with voluntary, employee-paid short-term disability insurance instead; and reducing or closing KJ Academy School (initially funded through ESSER).
The matter was for discussion only and no action was taken.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here