Gov. Tony Evers wants public school funding to be more predictable.
Every two years, the majority of school funding is at the whim of the Legislature and governor. In recent years, it hasn’t kept pace with inflation — leaving districts in a bind.
In a dramatic move, Evers used his veto pen to give schools a $325 per-pupil spending hike, increasing what’s known as the revenue limit, for the next 400 years.
Evers’ veto is bound to be challenged by Republicans. But what does it say about school funding?
Revenue limits
The majority of school districts' budget are determined by revenue limits — a per-pupil amount that controls how much general state aid and property taxes each district can spend per student.
"They were originally imposed in 1993," says Sarah Shaw, a senior researcher at the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum. "Legislators at the time were concerned about school districts jacking up their property taxes because of rising costs."
According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the average revenue limit statewide in the 2022-23 school year was $11,888. But there is variation between districts, depending on whether they were high or low-spending when limits were locked into place in the 1990s, and whether the district has passed a referendum allowing it to exceed revenue limits.
For example, last school year, Glendale-River Hills had a $15,062 revenue limit, Milwaukee had a $12,669 revenue limit, and Waukesha had a $10,947 revenue limit. That essentially means Glendale could spend about $4,000 more per student than Waukesha.
Unpredictable funding
Originally, revenue limits were indexed to inflation, meaning schools received regular spending increases each year.
But during the 2008 recession, Gov. Jim Doyle lifted the requirement for revenue limits to keep pace with inflation.
"We started seeing much more variability [after that,]" Shaw says. "Perhaps the biggest one was in the 2011-2013 budget, which went along with Act 10, which decreased the revenue limit by 5.5%."
Shaw says unpredictable state funding increases have pushed more school districts to referendums, in which districts ask voters to raise property taxes beyond revenue limits.
In the previous budget (2021-2023), Republican lawmakers included no revenue limit increase, saying school districts didn't need more state funding because they were getting an influx of federal pandemic aid. That strained many district budgets, as the last two years have brought high inflation and teacher shortages.
"It is difficult for districts not to know year-to-year what to expect," says Shaw. "It does certainly limit what they might think of doing strategically on behalf of students."
Evers' veto
Republicans agreed to increase revenue limits in the new biennial budget, by $325 each year from 2023-2025. Evers used his powerful veto pen to extend the increase until 2425 — more than 400 years from now.
Evers wrote: "This veto provides school districts with a level of budgeting certainty that they have not experienced since...2009-10."
Republicans responded with outrage and pledges to challenge the move in court. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) tweeted that the per-pupil spending increase will cause a "massive property tax increase" for homeowners.
Shaw says the 400-year revenue limit increase is "a little bit of a rhetorical flourish," and that the law could be changed.
"It is a line in the sand, one could say, of the governor communicating what he thinks is important for school districts: predictability and stability," Shaw says.
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