April 13, 2011
Walker Budget Proposes Cuts for Public School Aid
Governor Walker’s budget proposes cuts to both general and categorical aid to Wisconsin public school districts. These cuts will negatively impact students in all districts, particularly those in low-income areas. Without access to a quality education, Wisconsin’s young citizens will have fewer job or higher education opportunities, which negatively impacts the economic health of our state.
General Aid
Walker proposes decreasing funding for general school aids by roughly $7.5 million, or 8.1 percent, over the biennium. In addition to cutting aid, his budget would make several changes to revenue limits making it more difficult schools to offset the effect of cuts to aid. Revenue limits impose a restriction on the amount of revenue a school district can raise from general school aid and computer aids, as well as property taxes, in a given year. Proposed changes include:
- Repealing the guarantee that total school district base revenues in the current fiscal year must be maintained at the prior year level.
- Reducing the low revenue spending ceiling from $9,000 to $8,900 per pupil in both years of the biennium. Under current law, this ceiling will be set to $9,800 per pupil in 2011-12 and each year after.
- Eliminating revenue limit exemptions related to school nursing costs, pupil transportation costs, school safety equipment and security officers scheduled to go into effect during the 2011-12 school year.
- Reducing the revenue cap by 5.5% so districts can not raise property taxes to make up for lost aid.
The reduction in the revenue cap, along with cuts in the general aid, will lead to a $1.7 billion cut in revenue for school districts (DAWN Biennial Budget Explanation).
Walker’s bill further proposes a 10 percent cut in high poverty aid, equal to a $3.74 million deduction over the biennium from the current $18.7 million base amount. This aid is given to districts with at least 50 percent of its students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, and is used to reduce the districts’ property tax levy. This reduces the tax burden on low-income district residents. Decreased funding for high poverty aid means that school financing will increasingly fall to local districts and their residents.
Categorical Aid
- Freeze special education aid to school districts, resulting in a 3.4 percent drop in the percentage of costs reimbursed by the state by the end of the biennium.
- Eliminate grants for preschool to grade 5 programs designed to improve the education of students enrolled in districts with high concentrations of low-income and low-achieving students.
- Ten percent reduction to sparsity aids that help pay the cost of educating students in rural, lower-income areas of Wisconsin.
