Almost two-thirds of Wisconsin’s 424 school districts will receive less general state aid in the 2012-’13 school year than they did last year, while some suburban Milwaukee school districts will get a sizable aid boost, according to preliminary state estimates released Friday by the Department of Public Instruction.
In all, the state will provide $4.29 billion in general aid to schools in the second year of Gov. Scott Walker’s biennial budget, a small increase over what the state budget set for aid last year – $4.26 billion, according to the DPI.
That’s far below what schools received in general aid before Walker and the Republican-controlled Legislature dramatically cut funding for schools and limited districts’ ability to make up those funds by raising local taxes – changes that were passed as part of the biennial 2011-’13 state budget.
“It’s a bigger balance from last year, but if you compare this to what school districts had two and three years ago, it’s a reduction,” said Patrick Gasper, spokesman for the DPI.
Madison fared quite a bit better in this year’s redistributed state tax dollar program.