Cian McKeown, Contributer
On Wednesday, February 7, the Wisconsin Public Policy Forum hosted the latest installment in their Know Your Local Government series at the Beloit Public Library. The Wisconsin Public Policy forum is not a lobbying organization, but an educational and scholarly one. They focus on studying public policy and informing the public. The purpose of the event, as organizer and Associate Professor of Economics at Beloit College, Laura Grube says: “Our primary goal is to educate the residents of Beloit and encourage civic engagement.”
The main focus of the event was to discuss the effects that school funding in Wisconsin has on the local Beloit school district. The event’s primary speaker was Vice President and Research Director of the public policy forum, Jason Stein.
Wisconsin schools are primarily funded by state governments as well as additional contributions from local and federal sources. Stein identified that: “This district is very heavily state funded,” in reference to Beloit’s local schools. Wisconsin had the twenty fourth highest burden for taxpayers in 2021, with state limits on school revenue being outpaced by inflation. A district’s revenue limit is the amount of additional funds a district can raise via local property taxes or state general school aids. One of the main deciding factors in the amount of state aid that a school gets is the property values of the homes within the district. Stein commented on this, saying: “The districts that tend to receive a lot [of state aid and relief] are low income or rural districts.”
Stein went on to say that “the [state] budget is out of whack right now,” describing how Madison teachers had a 10-15% pay increase and did not have the revenue source to do this. A lot of districts have turned to budget referendums to rectify their revenue ceiling woes. “Since 2016, referendums have been quite common.” Despite this, the Beloit school district has not filed a referendum.
Beloit schools received an estimated $30.5 million, or $5,292 per student, of federal pandemic aid, which was significantly more than the $1,721 per student state average. This goes along with the fact that the Beloit school district has lost around 2,000 students since COVID.
“This reflects the rise in alternatives to public school,” said Stein at the event. These alternatives could be many switching to homeschooling during the pandemic as well as the opening of a new charter school in Beloit called The Lincoln Academy, funded by ABC Supply Billionaire mogul, Diane Hendricks. When asked about the decline in enrollment in Beloit and how this could be related to alternative schooling, Stein said: “One thing that districts can do is fight for the students that are there.”
Another possible cause of enrollment decline could be Beloit’s stagnating population. Since 1990, Beloit’s population has only increased by 500 people. The current population is a lot older than it was then, and that could affect that school system.
“For thirty years Beloit has been at the low end of revenue limits,” said a disgruntled local resident at the forum. And without a referendum or some government action, it looks as though it will stay that way.
When Stein was asked about what policies or actions districts could possibly enact to alleviate this revenue limit disparity, he didn’t provide any concrete answers but did leave us with an apocryphal quote about the state of local and state public policy: “Doing nothing is always an option in policy debate. It might be hard to sustain quality teachers for a long time, and certain programs will fall away.”
On Wednesday, February 21, the next event in the Know Your Local Government series takes place at the Beloit Public Library.
Featured Image Credit: Beloit Public Library
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