Here & Now

The Politics of Funding Special Education in Wisconsin

Frederica Freyberg:

This reporting sparked questions so we asked Zac to help answer some of them. We spoke with him before the holiday. Hey, Zac, what an interesting story. Thanks for that.

Zac Schultz:

Thank you, Fred.

Frederica Freyberg:

So Star Academy sounds really great, but the situation with special education funding in public schools in Wisconsin, what kind of a values choice is this to underfund it to this extent year after year for generations of students?

Zac Schultz:

Well, the question comes down to who is responsible for it? From the legislature’s point of view, they are putting funding into it, and then the law says it’s up to the school district to figure out how to make it work. And they have options at their disposal, but you’ve never seen a referendum for special education in any district I’ve seen in Wisconsin, and so their choices are made on the ground about what they can do best for their students, and there are some districts that have been sued because people, the parents and the lawyers, say they are not doing enough, and there are other districts that go as far as they possibly can, but I think most are caught in the middle of making the best choice for all of their students.

Frederica Freyberg:

How did Wisconsin get to the place where it mandates the services, but only pays for half of it, including the federal funding?

Zac Schultz:

Well, I mean, the classic phrase of the unfunded mandate is in place here, and some of this goes back almost a half century to when the first laws were put in place that created the right for these services to be provided for special education students. According to Spitzer-Resnick, he says back then, the estimates were about half of all students that would be able to receive these services never came into schools in the first place. So when they made some of those early projections about what percent and what the dollar figures would look like, they were wrong because it turned out to be a lot more than half of those students never came to the schools, and when parents found out their students had a right to come to school and a right to these services, more of them showed up than they were prepared for. That meant they did not increase the dollars, so the percentage actually slid down to compensate for that, and they’ve never made it up in the meantime.

Frederica Freyberg:

So if schools have to rob Peter to pay Paul, take from general education, if they want to make up for special education funding, who gets the short end here? Both?

Zac Schultz:

Yeah. Just depends on the individual district. I mean, in some cases, the parents and the students themselves may not know the full extent of what they are eligible to receive. They work with the district. They come up with their IEP, the individualized education plan, and it tells them what services that they have a right to receive and the district does their best to provide them. And there’s a question of, should they do more? Could they do more? Some parents know their rights and will assertively fight for their children to get more services. Sometimes to the chagrin of the school having to find out how to pay for it, and sometimes it’s just the parents and the students say this is best we have, so this is what we’ll accept.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is there any expectation at all given the current political split anything will change to make special education funding whole?

Zac Schultz:

Well, if there was ever a time in our state’s history that we had the money to make the jump in services, it would have been in this last budget, and it did not happen. I mean, we saw $2 billion in tax cuts. We are sitting on nearly $2 billion in a surplus for the state. There’s a large rainy day fund, and it just didn’t happen. There was no political will to see a dramatic increase. Even Governor Evers’ increase that he proposed only would have brought it up to 50% funding. It still wouldn’t have reached the original amount the state promised when they created this law in the first place. Advocates like Spitzer-Resnick say and others say well, that would have been a good step, but it wouldn’t even be the full amount reached, and there was not the political will to do that. It happens to be with the individual districts whether the political power is there to find support for that, and we saw in this district, there was some money set aside, but even that wouldn’t be enough to compensate for what they have to fundraise privately.

Frederica Freyberg:

One quick last question, do urban districts fare better in this than rural ones?

Zac Schultz:

If there’s more money coming in, then there’s more money to pay for some of the overhead. If you have administrators and specialists, in theory, more money flows down to provide for people providing the services. Rural districts are obviously going to struggle more with providing those overhead costs and having money left over to provide all the services needed.

Frederica Freyberg:

Wow. Zac Schultz, thanks very much. Thanks for your reporting.

Zac Schultz:

Thanks, Fred.

Frederica Freyberg:

We talked with Zac before the holiday.