To the editor,

I wish to highlight the funding gaps in Wisconsin relating to special education. Our general public school aid formula is antiquated (formulated on base funding from the 1990’s) and the special education funding formula in the state of Wisconsin is broken. Wisconsin continues to fund special education in public schools in the same manner it did 30 years ago when everyone knows, the complexity of student needs has increased astronomically.

Our districts receive on average 25-30% of their special education costs from the state government. The

remaining cost is paid by the general fund. The reimbursement rate is the same for students with mild disabilities as it is for students who require higher levels of support including specialty services or therapies or individual and small group instruction all day long.

While voucher schools and some of the original charters in the Milwaukee area receive 90-100% of their special education costs covered by the state, regular districts like Prescott are left to pay the rest out of the general education budget! What this translates to is that as the needs of our special education students increase, more and more funding ends up being routed from general education to special education. I can verify first hand that the needs and intensity of our students only continues to increase and without a modification to the funding formula, our districts will go bankrupt.

The Department of Public Instruction and State Legislature will tell you there are options for high cost aid; however, the threshold for that aid is quite high and is only reimbursed after the fact. In any case, the model is broken. We need a new formula to fund public education that will address ALL students’ needs and alleviate the burden on local taxpayers.

Sandy Strand

Prescott