Wisconsin’s education leaders have blasted a Republican plan to spend considerably less on public schools than proposed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, and they have demanded the GOP reconsider, according to a report by the Associated Press.
Evers has proposed giving K–12 schools $1.6 billion over the next two years, but Republicans on the Legislature’s budget committee instead allocated just $128 million to schools. That was about $400 million less than they needed to allocate to ensure that the state’s schools would receive about $2.3 billion in federal pandemic relief aid.
The budget committee tried to address that problem by cutting schools’ and technical colleges’ share of local property taxes $647 million and backfilling the lost revenue with state aid, which would ensure that state is spending enough on schools to qualify for the federal aid. Democrats called the move a shell game and challenged the GOP to devote more of the state’s record $4.4 billion surplus to funding public schools.
Republicans also included a $3.3 billion tax cut into their spending plan. The GOP-controlled Legislature could pass the entire state budget, which would run from this July through mid-2023, as early as next week.
