Home to the state’s fifth largest public school district, Racine finds itself at the center of Wisconsin’s ongoing education funding debate. On April 1, voters will decide on a crucial $190 million referendum that could determine the future of Racine Unified School District.

“What we’re asking from our community is to allow us to hold the budget we have right now,” said Soren Gajewski, the superintendent of Racine Unified.

“The budget that I have this year, the staffing that I have this year, the programs that we have right now — we want to be able to maintain that,” he added.

That budget, staffing, and programming is all at risk if taxpayers vote no.

“It’s kind of scary to think about what it might be. Is it gonna be school nurses? Is it gonna be social workers? Counselors?,” asked Ryan Knudson, an eighth grade teacher and parent at Racine Unified. He said he’s voting yes on April 1.

“I think anybody would agree we want local workers, we want a good local economy, and I think it starts with the public school system,” Knudson said.

Three miles down the road from that K-8 public school is the private St. Catherine’s High School.

“I always talk to the kids about, ‘Remember why your mom and dad want you to come to the school and remember why it’s special,” said Gloria Schumacher, a principal at St. Catherine’s.

It’s one of 36 schools in the Racine Parental Choice Program, which allows parents to use taxpayer dollars as vouchers for private school education.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity for parents now across the state to have a choice in where they would like to send their child to school,” said Brenda White, who is the former president of Siena Catholic Schools of Racine, a system of seven private schools in the city that includes St. Catherine’s. In 2025, she serves on the School Choice Wisconsin board.

“Very key to why parents choose a private school is because we can determine what that curriculum instruction is going to look like,” White said.

Educational freedom is a main argument from supporters of school choice, but the program is a point of contention between supporters like White and critics concerned about its impact on public school funding.

“People choosing to have different types of education is a part of being in a free country, but we have tax dollars that our public is assuming is going to the public schools and being represented by the elected school board,” Gajewski said. “In the voucher situation, that’s not happening.”

Gajewski is referring to the way voucher schools are funded from the state’s total education coffers. For example, in the 2024-25 school year, the state’s general aid for Racine Unified public schools is more than $180 million. The estimated cost of the Racine Parental Choice Program for the same school year is more than $44 million. That leaves property taxpayers to backfill the funding siphoned to private schools through district referendums.

“I think it’s important to point out that the way the state funding works now is a separate issue from the referenda,” said White, who urges a solution that would separate public and voucher school funding in the state budget. Referred to as “decoupling,” public schools would be funded with property tax dollars and voucher schools with general purpose tax revenue. White claims this would protect public schools from losing funding to private schools.

“It’s a win-win to both the district, who would increase their state aids, and it would be a win for property tax payers who would have that burden lessened,” she said.

The Wisconsin Senate failed to pass a bill in 2024 that would have decoupled Racine schools before it made it to the floor. Critics like Knudson have concerns over further protecting choice programs in state law.

“I think that program is — it’s very damaging to public schools when we could be allocating resources to public schools to address the concerns of the community,” he said.

The debate in Racine reflects a broader statewide and national conversation about the role of public versus private education, but regardless of what conversations are happening in Madison, Gajewski faces a looming $24 million budget deficit if the referendum fails.

“This year, once again, referendums are showing up on the ballot across the state, including our neighbors to the south that had a referendum a few weeks back in February that did not pass,” he said.

Kenosha Unified School District, the neighbors to the south, failed to pass a $115 million ballot referendum.

“Eighty percent of our budget is staff, and that’s typically where the cuts and reductions are going to be, said Jeff Weiss, who is superintendent of the Kenosha schools, the only Wisconsin district to fail its referendum in the Feb. 18 election. This vote came months after districts like Kenosha ran out of the federal ESSER dollars meant to help schools with setbacks coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kenosha schools now face a $19 million deficit.

“The ESSER funding — the way that was set up, it was primed to have school districts have to go to referendum in order to continue to operate,” Weiss said.

Wisconsin received $1.5 billion in ESSER funding in 2021. At the time, the Republican-controlled state Legislature budgeted zero dollar increases in per-pupil state aid to schools, counting federal dollars as state funding. In the 2023-25 budget, per-pupil revenue did increase by $325, but the ESSER money ran out in September 2025, leaving the already stretched-thin public schools to cut costs.

“The biggest cut was in staff, about $10 million in staff last year,” Gajewski said.

“We reduced the number of buildings that we had in schools that we operated in by seven, and that saved us about $9 or $10 million,” said Weiss.

As April 1 approaches, the eyes of educators and policymakers across Wisconsin will be on Racine.

This funding gap is not a Racine Unified situation, it is a state of Wisconsin situation,” said Gajewski. “So it is there. It will be there next year and the year after and the year after. It has to be resolved.”