School referendum passage declines amid public school advocates’ high hopes for new state government

Wisconsin voters approved about 55% of school referendum requests across the state — a majority passage rate that still marked a significant decline from previous years. Of 79 referendum questions on ballots last week, 44 referendum were approved and 35 failed.

In April, 61% of referendum requests passed. According to the Wisconsin Policy Forum, in 2024, there was a 70% approval rate; in 2022, there was an 80% approval rate; and in 2020, there was a 85% approval rate.

Schools have come to depend on ballot measures asking local property taxpayers to meet their costs including paying electric bills, building maintenance and program offerings as well as  providing pay and benefits to teachers and staff.

Wisconsin Public Education Network Executive Director Heather DuBois Bourenane called the results a “mixed bag.” 

“Green Bay desperately needed that referendum. Dodgeville, you know, had to go to referenda four times in order to pass one, and I mean the referendum they passed still leaves them in a pretty precarious fiscal situation, but at least they aren’t facing the same kind of cuts and shortfalls that they would have otherwise,” DuBois Bourenane said. “Most of them did pass, but the ones that didn’t are just gutting.” 

Schools in districts where  referendum requests failed she said, will be considering cuts to services and staff or consolidating schools or even dissolving their districts.

The latter option became a reality for one school district in Wisconsin right after the elections. 

The State Board approved a dissolution request for Hustisford School District in Dodge County. The tiny district had struggled financially in part due to a lack of state funding and repeated failed referendum requests. After the fifth failed referendum in April, it started the dissolution process.

State Superintendent Jill Underly said in a statement that dissolution “is a casualty of decades of an antiquated, broken school funding formula that has failed to keep pace with the costs of educating our children.” 

State support for public schools has declined dramatically over the last 15 years. Ahead of the election, 62% of Wisconsin public schools received notice from the state Department of Public Instruction that they would receive less aid for 2026-27 school year than in the prior year. The current state budget did not provide any increase in funding for 2026 or 2027.

Underly said in a statement that following Tuesday’s elections she is hopeful that the state is in a position to make “meaningful change” to the way Wisconsin funds its schools. 

“While I am optimistic about what the outcomes of yesterday’s election mean for the future of public education in Wisconsin, that optimism does not undermine the reality that too many communities are forced to make an unfair decision,” Underly said. “The school funding formula is broken, and it has failed our children, our schools, and entire communities for decades. Wisconsin’s public schools cannot continue to rely on referenda to provide the educational opportunities all students deserve.”

Underly said she looks forward to working with Wisconsin’s elected leaders as Democratic Gov.-elect David Crowley and members of a Democratic-controlled state Assembly and Senate prepare to take office.

“There’s just like a lot of energy right now about the possibility of a more democratic co-governance that could be possible,” DuBois Bourenane said. The Democrats who will lead state government “seem truly committed to listening to people and to delivering a budget that reflects their needs,” she said. “That’s something we haven’t seen in this state in a really long time. We can fix school funding for real. We can actually get to the root of the problem and set this course straight and undo the damage that’s been done in previous administrations.” 

Among the actions DuBois Bourenane hopes to see from the new administration and Legislature are the repeal of Wisconsin’s union-busting law, Act 10, and making the cost of the state’s school voucher program public on property taxpayers’ bills. She said Crowley and lawmakers could also get to work on funding issues before the next state budget, suggesting  that a bill to provide 60% funding to special education could be among the first that Crowley signs. 

“The fact that about half of the referend this all didn’t pass means we’re going to see a ton of referenda in the spring again, and we shouldn’t have to wait for another budget to go into action to help the schools that are struggling now,” she said. 

It’s unclear how fast Democrats plan to move on education funding. 

Crowley campaigned on increasing funding to the state’s public schools, including moving the state toward reimbursing districts for 90% of the cost of special education, but he has said that he would want to bring together a blue ribbon commission to examine Wisconsin’s taxation system, including the role of property taxes in school funding. 

Crowley is not the only Democratic leader to suggest there could be additional study on changes to school funding. 

Senate Democratic Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton), who will likely become the next Senate majority leader, said in late September that Democrats will increase school funding in the next state budget, but added that though she said changing the state’s school funding formula could be a “multi-year” process.

“We’re also looking at a long-term goal of seeing what other states are doing and how they are funding their public schools,” she said. “But that’s going to take probably a multi-year task to try to figure that all out and talking to our friends in Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois.”

Crowley also said he supports repealing Act 10, but he wants his administration to look at the impact on taxes.

“We’re going to couple all of this with a blue ribbon commission bringing Democrats, Republicans, tax experts, local units of government, business leaders, as well as labor unions to the table to focus on that long-term fix,”  Crowley recently told WISN-12. “We know that there are going to be a lot of people who continue to attack our workers across the state of Wisconsin, but our job is to make sure that this is a place they can see a future that they can afford.” 

DuBois Bourenane was not enthusiastic about the idea of another blue ribbon commission on school funding, saying it is the “last thing” Wisconsin needs. 

“We know exactly what the problem is. There is no mystery here. There is no need for additional research. There is no need to study this problem further, we have been studying and documenting what the problem is for decades,” DuBois Bourenane said, noting that Crowley was in the Legislature during the last blue ribbon commission. 

The last bipartisan blue ribbon commission on school funding was conducted nearly 10 years ago and took two years to complete its work. It provided a slate of recommendations to address the issues in the school funding system including indexing per pupil funding to inflation. Many of the recommendations went unaddressed by the Republican-led state Legislature. 

“Those recommendations sit unfulfilled on a dusty shelf, and he could just blow the dust off of that and put those into action if he wants. Those are still good recommendations,” DuBois Bourenane said. “We need to do a lot more than piecemeal solutions. We need to really overhaul the school finding formula, and we know how to do that.”