The issue is “worse because we’ve punted this can down the road,” said Colleston Morgan, executive director of the advocacy group, City Forward Collective, to the Badger Institute. “It’s going to require some boldness and some political courage frankly at a scale that we have not seen from this district up until this point in time.”
“This is a governing structure for the school system which has been unwilling to deal in reality for a very long time,” he said.
After a 2024 financial reporting scandal that cost the district’s superintendent his job, current superintendent Brenda Cassellius, hired in early 2025, has faced crisesinvolving the district’s finances and old lead paint in its buildings. Auditors concluded this winter that the district overspent its budget by $46 million last school year, a deficit that’s forcing spending cuts. Cassellius won the board’s approval to lay off some staff at the end of this school year, but the district now is bickering with its union about the layoffs and the timing of pay raises.
Meanwhile, a consultant recommended the district close five school buildings amid a long decline in enrollment, but Cassellius said she won’t recommend any closures for next fall, and both the school board and unions have balked.
The failure to right-size the district’s roster of schools, said a City Forward Collective policy brief, compounds the crisis, “draining resources that should go to classrooms.”