The state’s $0 increase in each district’s per-pupil spending limit coupled with the district’s unprecedented 3.7% drop in enrollment during the 2020-21 school year could have a long-term negative effect on Madison’s budget, MacPherson said.
A district’s enrollment affects how much money it receives in state aid. Madison could have lost more state funding for next year because of declining enrollment — about 1,000 students, or 3.7% of its student population last year — but it is benefiting from two stopgap exemptions that limit how much aid a district can lose each year.
The district anticipated the first stopgap exemption being only a one-year fix in the 2021-22 budget and going away next year, as well as an anticipated continued decline in enrollment but, “what we didn’t expect was $0 per pupil surviving in the state budget,” MacPherson said in his report.
The Madison School District is set to receive $70.6 million over the course of three ESSER payment installments. The district’s first installment, ESSER I, was approximately $9.2 million and had already been exhausted by the end of the 2020-21 school year. District planning for the use of funds from ESSER II and III had been put on hold as finance officials awaited the outcome of the state budget battle.
The article fails to include total taxpayer spending, (> $20k per student) much less annual growth, in light of declining enrollment.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration