Continued from last issue

NORTHEAST WISCONSIN – In schools, a lack of funding can mean closing school buildings, laying off staff, increasing class sizes, shutting down programs and even dissolving the school district altogether.

Several northeastern Wisconsin districts will go to their communities to balance their budgets this fall:

Seymour schools are going to referendum in November to maintain their programs and facilities.

Green Bay has closed seven schools in the past five years and will go to an operational referendum this fall.

Gillett school leaders warned a failed operational referendum in November could lead to stopping courses not required by the state, like tech ed, band and choir.

Other districts have had to deal with the consequences of failed referenda throughout 2026:

Fond du Lac has had to lay off teachers and library media specialists.

Southern Door County has laid off staff, cut programs and changed its employee health plan.

After a failed spring referendum, the Hustisford School District is taking steps to dissolve, with the final decision in the hands of the DPI’s boundary appeals board as of July 20.

More schools are going to referendum as fewer voters indicate they want to support them. According to a Marquette University Law School poll from February, a record number of voters, 60% to 40%, said that lowering property taxes was more important than increasing funding K-12 for education. At the same time, the Wisconsin Policy Forum also found that 2025’s 94 referendum questions were the most in an odd-numbered year since 2007 and that almost 40% of these questions were “retries” − where voters rejected a referendum question, and a district goes back to the voters to try to pass the measure again.

Shaw said that while school referenda were originally meant as a way for communities to exercise local control, it seems to be contributing to funding gaps between districts. According to another report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the gap in per-pupil funding between the top 90% and the bottom of 10% districts has grown in the past 20 years from 24.6% in 2005 to 37.6% in 2025.

Efforts made to explore potential funding solutions

The Legislature has examined school funding before, and in 2017, the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission on School Funding began examining ways to adjust school funding in Wisconsin.

The commission, which included lawmakers, district administrators and other stakeholders, published its report in 2019, along with 20 policy recommendations. Among other potential actions, it recommended:

Increasing per-pupil aid and matching those increases to inflation.

Gradually increasing special education reimbursement to 60%.

Changing how English language learners and students from lower-income households are counted for the revenue limit.

Adding support to low-enrolling rural districts.

Providing additional funding for Head Start and school-based mental health services.

In May, Evers and a group of Republican lawmakers tried using the budget surplus to give schools more than $617 million by increasing the special education reimbursement and general school aid. While the plan had broad support from voters, it failed when Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany and Democratic lawmakers opposed it.

A group of superintendents from the top five school districts in Wisconsin, as well as the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, expressed disappointment the deal failed in separate statements. However, the Wisconsin Public Education Network said that the deal didn’t do enough because the general school aid would have fallen under revenue limits — meaning it would have delivered property tax relief but not actually given districts any extra funding.

‘This is not sustainable, point blank’

Meanwhile, groups of education professionals and advocates believe the current state of Wisconsin school funding is inequitable enough to violate the state Constitution — and they’ve taken the state Assembly to court to force a solution.

The lawsuit was filed in April by Law Forward and the Wisconsin Education Association Council. The plaintiffs are the Wisconsin Public Education Network; the Wisconsin PTA; the Necedah, Adams-Friendship, Beloit, Green Bay and Eau Claire school districts; and other education associations and individuals. They are asking the court to rule the current school funding formula unconstitutional.

“We’ve exhausted every opportunity that democracy affords us in this work, and it seems to fall on deaf ears,” said Heather DuBois Bourenane, a Sun Prairie-based parent and director of Wisconsin Public Education Network. “If our lawmakers aren’t going to do their job, it’s time for the courts to hold them accountable for doing it.”

The group’s position is that the state needs to “align its spending priorities with the priority needs of our children,” DuBois Bourenane said

She called the current funding system “antiquated and deeply broken” and “picking winners and losers” among students.

“We have a school funding system that’s based more on property tax relief than it is on meeting the needs of kids,” she added, saying that Wisconsin has fallen short with students with disabilities, English language learners and students from lower-income households.

In response to the initial suit in April, Assembly speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a statement, “This complaint is another meritless attempt by liberal activists to defund the state’s highly successful school-voucher program and interfere with the Legislature’s authority to fund public schools. We will vigorously defend against this suit and are confident that the courts will soundly reject it.”

Lawsuits related to school funding have had mixed success in court across the country. In 2000, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the state’s funding formula was constitutional, but left the door open for the current case to be brought.

As the lawsuit plays out, Shaw sees the next election as an opportunity for voters and their representatives to consider their priorities — and to envision “what equitable planning and adequate funding looks like” for their schools.

But until a solution is found, school administrators’ warnings have become increasingly dire. Burr said school districts across Wisconsin find “their backs against the wall.”

“This is not sustainable, point blank,” she said.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of five news outlets.