Wisconsin’s public schools are losing students faster than districts are downsizing their staff
Statewide, the number of students enrolled in a traditional district-run public school fell to about 791,956 in the 2024-25 school year. The number has been in steady decline since a slight bump in 2013-14 to over 873,500 students, as figure 1 shows. The rate of decline increased after the 2019-20 school year, with a drop of more than 25,000 students
Over nearly the same period, the number of teachers employed in the state has hovered between about 60,000 and 63,000. As figure 2 shows, district-run schools employed 61,652 teachers statewide in 2009-10. That fell by more than 1,600 teachers to 60,003 in 2011-12, but the number then steadily ticked upward to a second peak of 62,398 in 2021-22. For the 2023-24 school year, the latest for which teacher all staff reports are available, there were 61,514 teachers in Wisconsin’s district-run public schools.
