School Inequities Escalating

WEAC seeks relief from the courts

Several laws and policy changes in recent years have increased educational opportunities for advantaged students while decreasing educational opportunities for low-income, disabled and special education students.

That was the message WEAC Legal Director Bruce Meredith delivered to the State Court of Appeals in August during oral arguments on a lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s school finance system. WEAC is an intervenor in the case brought by the Association for Equity in Funding, representing more than 150 school districts.

Meredith said school district revenue controls are “the most significant and invidious constitutional failing in the present system.”

Revenue controls basically freeze all inequities that existed when they took effect in 1993. From that point forward, allowable spending has been tied to enrollment. If a district spends $7,000 per student and loses 10 students, it must cut $70,000 from its budget. However, the loss of those 10 students does not allow the district to close any schools, reduce staff or cut maintenance costs.

Also, revenue controls do not account for the higher cost of educating students from low-income backgrounds or students with emotional or physical disabilities. As the state reduces “categorical aids” designed to help educate children with special needs, revenue controls prevent local school districts from raising money to compensate for those losses.

Revenue controls, he said, “are subtly programmed to punish districts that are in economic decline and that have higher concentrations of high-needs students — precisely the opposite effect necessary to produce more equal educational opportunity.”

Posted August 31, 1998