Shortchanging public schools hurts all Wisconsinites
We need to bring public school funding up to meet rising costs and inflation and freeze unaccountable private voucher payouts in the 2025-27 biennial budget
By Amy Nasr
It’s wrong that private voucher schools are getting more funding than most public schools.
Anne Chapman, research director for Wisconsin Association for School Business Officials, clearly shows that Wisconsin legislators in our last state budget created a '$12,731 per pupil price tag for (private) voucher high school students that is higher than the revenue limit per pupil in 359 of the state’s 421 public school districts.' ('The Price of Parallel Systems.')
In the 2025-27 biennial budget, legislators are proposing zero state aid increases for public schools while simultaneously increasing funding to private voucher schools by another $30 million. This will mark 18 years in which public schools, (where 85% of our Wisconsin kids learn and grow), have not seen inflationary increases. This dismal fact applies to every one of our Fox Cities Public School Districts.
Meanwhile, voucher schools aren’t required to submit school-wide report cards, transparent public balance statements, or open records requests like legislators require from public schools. Wisconsinites should and must demand legislators require consistent reporting and performance metrics from any school that receives taxpayer funding. This way, we can see pros and cons of both systems to evaluate return on investments.
We need to bring public school funding up to meet rising costs and inflation and freeze unaccountable private voucher payouts in the 2025-27 biennial budget. Otherwise, we are bowing to a national privatization marketing scam and are hurting not only our youth, but our community and our state.
