Districts paid for hundreds of millions of permanent salaries with temporary funds in the pandemic aftermath.
Wisconsin had 49,078 FEWER students from 2020 to 2025 but 561 FEWER teachers and 2,702 MORE other staff.
How do I know?
I tracked every dollar districts budgeted for DPI approval from the last round of federal pandemic relief, ESSER III.
That is 17,830 line items and 1,492,737,119 dollars!
Add this to Act 10, which did NOT cause a staff shortage.
From 2011 to 2020, Wisconsin had 16,591 FEWER students but 2,176 MORE teachers and 8,632 MORE other staff.
Some urban/rural/special are short, but we are not in general.
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Empty Schools, Empty Wallets: How ESSER Pandemic Aid Led to More School Referenda:
The report draws on 17,830 school district allocations analyzed by IRG to find out how schools allocated the last round of federal COVID dollars. IRG tracked how districts planned to spend every last dollar: teachers, construction, and more.
Wisconsin districts added significant staff while losing more than 47,000 studentsand now face a difficult decision as fiscal cliffs loom: referenda or layoffs.
WHAT WE FOUND:
- Districts went on hiring sprees they now cannot afford.
- ESSER III dollars were intended as 1-time emergency relief, but districts allocated 41% of funds to permanent salaries, propping up staffing levels to all-time highs even as enrollment plummeted.
- Districts did not allocate funding fast enough.
- Despite needing to allocate funds in a brief 2-year window, districts had allocated only 34% of funding 6 months in and just 79% after 17 months, slowing transparency and, perhaps, recovery.
- Districts given more money could be less efficient with funding.
- Some districts with moderate poverty received $3,000 to $5,000 more per student than some districts with high poverty. Wild variations in funding meant some schools benefited far more than others.
- Districts sometimes made poor allocation decisions.
- Milwaukee—recipient of 34% of all ESSER III funds—allocated $193 million to construction projects, including athletics facilities and renovations at schools likely to close. At the same time, it failed to invest in essentials like classroom air conditioning, financial system updates, or lead remediation, leading to crises for students
- Districts recovered poorly from the pandemic.
- Despite unprecedented resources, Wisconsin saw disappointing recovery in academic performance. According to Harvard University, Wisconsin ranked 30th in reading recovery and 16th in math.
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Madison has long spent far more than most K-12 systems, now more than $26,000 per student. This, despite our long term, disastrous reading results.
Meanwhile, Chicago schools at low capacity utilization.