Voters in a number of local school districts are going to hear a number of reasons why those districts have to go to referendum for additional operating revenue this spring. The primary reason that will be promoted is that “the state isn’t giving us enough money”. The second is that increased funding “isn’t keeping up with the rising costs of education”. But what will not be heard nearly as much is WHY school districts keep needing more and more money.
Before you jump to the conclusion that districts are reluctant to “right-size” their operations–which are based on a model established in the 1950’s and 60’s when Baby Boomers jammed classrooms anywhere they were built–to deal with a shrinking pool of students, and before you point to administrative bloat–which has produced positions like Director of Community Engagement and Student Belonging–you should know those are not the main drivers of school deficits. Unfortunately for school districts, the real reason they need more money would require a lot of very awkward conversations with the public about the students they have to serve, and the services they are required to provide.
No facet of school spending as grown as explosively this century as Special Education. And no facet of school spending is discussed less by administrators and school boards than Special Education.
In researching this My Two Cents, I ran into a familiar roadblock when it comes to education reporting: The state Department of Public Instruction, when reporting on things that could reflect negatively on schools, makes it as difficult as possible to find the information you are looking for. While the DPI website has a graph showing the trend of “funding shortfall” for Special Education in Wisconsin, it provides no database that I can find that shows the trend in Special Education spending and how many kids are being served by those programs.
Fortunately, our friends at the Legislative Fiscal Bureau prepared a table for lawmakers to consider as part of a measure to increase state funds for Special Ed. It finds that in the 2024-25 school year, $1.8-BILLION dollars was spent on Special Education by all Wisconsin schools in the 2024-25 school year. That money provided services to just more than 130,000 students. That equates to nearly $14,000 dollars per student in addition to the $14,822 per student that Wisconsin public schools spend per student overall. Our other friends at the Wisconsin Policy Forum–in one of the few studies looking at the growth in Special Education spending that I can find–reported that overall spending on Special Ed has increased by more than 100% since 2000–more than double the 42% rate of increase for public education spending as a whole.
Back to the LFB table, which finds Special Education enrollment has grown by about 10,000 students since 2015–or about 8%. That while overall student enrollment in Wisconsin public schools has fallen by 41,000–or about 8% over that same time frame. In short, Wisconsin schools are serving more kids–and more of those kids are in Special Education programs.
For those of you who are my age (53), Special Education meant the kids who rode the “short bus” to school–the kids with easily-recognizable physical or mental disabilities. Often, they went to a building different from the rest of us, and we hardly ever shared classrooms with them. But in 1990, Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act–which required public schools to integrate kids with disabilities into general education classrooms. No longer was “separate” considered to be “equal”.
While IDEA provides greater socialization opportunities for Special Education students, it also means that districts had to have staff and facilities to meet their needs in ALL buildings and classrooms–and not just those designed for that specific purpose in the past. It’s a large reason why nearly all of the new schools being built with referendum dollars now are sprawling, single-story complexes, meaning there is no need to install elevators or special ramps. But it also means more square feet of building to heat, cool, clean, and maintain–and more roof surface area to repair and replace–no to mention more emergency exits with security systems and alarms to install. Plus, new school projects built out instead of up means more land has to be purchased to accommodate the larger footprint–at an even higher cost.
While accommodation for the physically impaired can explain some of the rise in Special Education costs, it doesn’t explain the continual increase in the number of students requiring those services. And that is where the real challenge for districts comes in.
You may recall a few weeks ago I commented on a story in the New York Times about the increasing number of students at elite American universities that have “learning disabilities”. Professors talked about how many students at places like Harvard and Cal don’t have to do homework, get extra time to turn in their work, and need to take tests in “quiet rooms”, lest they be distracted by having other people around them. Well, if the number of those students are rising at the cream of educational settings, just imagine what it is like in your average public school classroom.
Kids are considered to be in a Special Education program if they have what is known as an Individualized Education Plan. IEP’s spell out conditions and services that will be provided to the student in what teachers, administrators, parents, and even the kids themselves decide will give them the best chance to learn. Evaluations to determine eligibility for IEP’s are usually paid for by the school–as are all of the resources that will be provided. The key element is that some expert has to affirm that the child has a condition that warrants educational resources beyond that provided regularly in the classroom. Enter “conditions”.
The rise in Special Education student numbers coincides with the sharp increase in autism diagnoses in the US. It also coincides with the increase in kids with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and dyslexia. And then there is the rise in kids with anxiety, depression, phobias, and a myriad of behavioral issues that in some cases literally make older kids threats to the physical safety of others, but under IDEA need to be in the general student population.
The foot soldiers of many IEPs are para-professionals. Those are in-classroom workers who are usually not licensed teachers, but act as physical chaperones for kids in need of physical aid to get through their day, or to provide one-on-one tutoring to understand course content, or just babysitting to make sure the kids don’t just fall asleep or wreak physical havoc in school. You may recall, para-professionals in Oshkosh came to the School Board during a public comment session a couple of years ago demanding better protections, as on-the-job injuries were piling up.
To put some of this into perspective, one of the school districts going to referendum this spring–Appleton–has nearly 18% of its entire student population with an IEP. That means nearly one out of every five kids is in a Special Education program. To his credit, Appleton School Board member Ed Ruffalo has pointed out in budget sessions that the 13-million dollar structural deficit that they will be asking voters to fill with additional property taxes would be wiped out if the state provided 100% reimbursement of Special Ed costs.
Which brings us back to the bill to increase state funding for Special Education. Unlike the general aids fund for public schools that sets a number for each enrolled student, Special Ed funding is a set amount each year–and then it is distributed fairly evenly among all districts. That rate had fallen to about 32-cents on the dollar in the old budget. The bill approved by the Legislature would have increased that to 42-cents on the dollar this year and 45-cents next year. But once the bills came in, it turned out that Special Ed spending had increased by even more than the Legislative Fiscal Bureau projected, and the actual reimbursement rate was 39-cents. And it’s a trend that is likely to continue.
So why then aren’t districts going to referendum making the Special Education funding gap their main talking point? As I mentioned before, those conversations get really awkward really quick.
I can’t imagine too many people would question special accommodation for kids that are in wheelchairs, or are blind, or that have cognitive disabilities. But what about the additional cost of accommodating that boy that “just can’t sit still”, or the girl that just feels “too anxious to come to school sometimes” and needs a special virtual learning option that may not be used every day? Or the child that can’t be expected to turn in homework because it takes away too much time from video games and Instagram–I mean, he “just can’t concentrate that long”.
It’s a business model that it just not sustainable: Fewer “clients” to generate revenue that at the same time cost you more to serve every year. You just have to hope that either parents stop expecting schools to raise their kids properly–or you have to hope that voters won’t ask exactly where all that extra money needs to go.
