Study by the Association for Equity and Funding Shows Gap in School Funding, Part 4
Friday, October 3rd, 2014 -- 11:30 AM
-The Association for Equity and Funding recently released information from a study they commissioned that looked at school funding for districts around the state for the past 10 years.John Gaier, District Administrator for Neillsville and Chair of the Association, said that now that they have this data, they want to put it in the hands of the lawmakers and raise awareness to the general public. He also talked about one of the key findings of this study.
John said, "Our real hope is that we can get this information in the hands of the right people. We're working on a number of press releases and we're trying to educate the public about it, but we also want to get this data into the hands of the lawmen, the lawmakers, which we have done, and let them see that now there is actual longitudinal data that shows that the gaps between the wealthiest schools and the poorest schools is growing."
"One of the key findings of this study was a much higher percentage of school districts in the state of Wisconsin are not even able to spend to the mean cost per student in the state. Which means, in 2004, there was a high percentage of schools that were able to spend fairly close to the mean. The percentage of schools that can do that has dropped dramatically just from 2004 to 2011."
"And what that shows is that the wealthiest schools in the state of Wisconsin have been able to spend more while the property poorer districts in the state of Wisconsin have had to spend less or at least not be able to grow their spending as much."
"That's also creating a disproportionate responsibility on tax papers especially in the low property value districts. Low property value districts are losing aid; are seeing a growing population of economically disadvantaged and a higher population of special needs students. And the funding isn't keep up."
Once again, the study looked at data for schools from 2004 to 2011 and focused on three key groups of students which were special education, economically disadvantaged and English language learners.
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