The New Math In Wisconsin Schools, Fewer Students and More Staff

dcJohn (CC-BY)

Public school enrollment is down in districts across Wisconsin. But a new report finds that having fewer students does not necessarily mean lower costs for schools.

Over the past 15 years, public school enrollment in Wisconsin has dropped by more than 9 percent, according to data from the Department of Public Instruction.

“That is largely contributed to by declining birth rates,” Sara Shaw, deputy research director for Wisconsin Policy Forum, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “And it means a real financial crunch for school districts because as they lose students, they also lose the funding that would come with those students.”

Shaw is one of the researchers behind the report, which looks at the ripple effects of declining K-12 enrollment and the difficult budget decisions school districts face while trying to maintain services with lagging funding.

The report found that Wisconsin schools are serving around 80,000 fewer students now than they did in 2011 for a total drop of 9.2 percent, with the decline projected to continue.

During that same time period, the number of public schools declined by only 3.2 percent.

“One of the biggest misperceptions about shifting enrollments or declining enrollments is that you can easily save money with them,” said Erica Turner, a professor in education policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “If you have a class of 25 kids and five students are no longer there, you still need a teacher and you still need a school building.”

What was more surprising to Shaw and her colleagues is that despite falling enrollments, school staffing has increased 7 percent. The most growth was in paraprofessionals, also known as teachers’ aides, and non-classroom jobs in school administration or counseling.

District leaders that the researchers interviewed said this higher staff-to-student ratio is due to increased student need in areas like special education, English language learning and mental health services.

Spending on special education is on the rise throughout Wisconsin. Public schools are required by federal law to provide these services for students, but “it doesn’t come with sufficient money,” Turner said. Schools “have to make up the extra through their budgets.”

The state currently reimburses special education services at a rate of 35 percent, which educators and disability advocates say isn’t enough.

Last month, Gov. Tony Evers struck a budget deal with Republicans in the state Legislature that included $300 million for special education funding. It would have raised the reimbursement rate to 42 percent for the 2025-26 academic year and 50 percent in 2026-27, but the deal failed to pass the state Senate.

Some districts move to closing, consolidating schools

One option for schools struggling with declining enrollments and tight budgets is to close school buildings or merge districts. In November, Republicans in the state Legislature introduced a series of bills aimed at incentivizing school districts to consolidate. The proposal failed to pass the Senate in March.

The last time a school district consolidated in Wisconsin was in 2018, when the Friess Lake and the Richfield Joint 1 School Districts combined to become the Holy Hill Area School District. It was a major undertaking, former Superintendent Tara Villalobos told Education Week. “We had a lot of huge rocks that needed to be moved,” Villalobos said. “It was all kinds of things that, as an administrator, had never been on my radar.”

School closures and mergers within a district are more common. The Waukesha School District, which is the seventh-largest in the state, is in the process of combining and closing multiple elementary and middle schools after months of community debate.

School enrollment has declined more than 25 percent in the district, Superintendent James Sebert told WPR, with an annual 2 percent decline projected for the next decade.

After a series of public input sessions, the school board voted to close two elementary schools and one of its three middle schools.

“We think we can continue to have great results, and just do it in fewer buildings,” Sebert said. “The building is less important than the people in the buildings.”

Not everyone is happy, though. One parent told FOX6 News that community members feel “like the rug was swept right underneath them.”

It’s not unusual for families and communities to feel a strong connection to their local school, Shaw said.

“I had a colleague once who (said) the hardest animal to kill is the school mascot,” she said. “There is just a lot of community identity wrapped up in individual schools. Closing them, consolidating them is very hard.”

For his part, Sebert is grateful the Waukesha School District is debt-free as of April and does not need to raise revenue through referendums in the near future.

But as costs rise and enrollments decline around the state, many other districts will find themselves turning to operating referendums, which may or may not pass. This creates “troubling gaps in funding between districts,” according to the report.

“This problem is not going away,” Shaw said.

Wisconsin’s K-12 schools face declining enrollment, rising costs was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.