Can Wisconsin thrive with fewer students and fewer schools?
Welcome to Quinton’s K-12 Corner, a series discussing the biggest education issues in a simple way. Wisconsin’s children deserve the best schools in America. This series provides solutions to the major problems facing parents, taxpayers, superintendents, and new state leadership. If you have suggestions, comments, or questions, email QK@ReformingGovernment.org.
Where We Are
The world’s population will fall in 2050. It took a plague to slow us down 700 years ago. This time, people simply are not mingling, meeting, and marrying. We could face economic stagnation as a result. This often twists into cultural decline; avert your eyes from Canada and the United Kingdom.
Schools confront these challenges earliest. 68 of 72 Wisconsin counties lost public-school enrollment last year. This might be the first year in Wisconsin history in which every county declines. Wisconsin will educate ~100,000 fewer students in 2036, the fewest since the 1950s.
Yesterday, Wisconsin officially counted how many students we have. It will shock many unrealistic districts. Janesville predicts losing -734 students over 15 years but lost -237 just last year. Stevens Point predicts losing -477 students over 15 years but lost -148 just last year. Milwaukee lost -2,100 students this year, drastically missing expectations
Public and private schools are shuttering. The entire Hustisford district closed. Without smart solutions, many more will follow. Our communities need tools to thrive.
Where We Could Go
Foremost, Wisconsin must get honest about where we stand. Currently, individual districts purchase expensive, optimistic projections to help them plan budgets and buildings. This is a statewide crisis. A statewide study of students, schools, and housing could help parents, policymakers, and principals get on the same page.
School districts could share services to futureproof themselves. Many places in Wisconsin share municipal services like fire and police to ensure affordable, comprehensive coverage. Wisconsin could entice school districts to do the same with instruction. Many have done so in the trades, like sharing access to an automotive shop with nearby districts.
Wisconsin should move forward, not backward, on choice. Believe it or not, private schools are a smaller piece of the enrollment pie than they were in 2000. (Public lost a little. It is home school that has grown.) Even with the modern variety of publicly funded options – district, charter, and voucher – Wisconsin is funding the fewest students since 1995. So, focus on variety. Removing options makes a community less likely to attract new families.
Wisconsin could discuss how to keep our current 421-district state viable or, for all of its benefits, if it closes too many schools, creates too much administration, and provides too many districts with unfair funding. Bring in other states to inform us: leader Massachusetts could explain how to perfect the small-district system we both share, and Louisiana could make the case their coherent vision enabled by county-based districts led to America’s 2nd-best schools.
Whatever Wisconsin decides, it must act now. Hustisford’s superintendent acknowledged as much in his heartbreaking message to the state. “The state, the lawmakers, those in control, have to start getting ahead of this and helping districts plan to merge, increase more aid for that to be done, look at larger districts, countywide districts, I don’t know. There’s different ways to do this, but if we’re just going to be reactive – which we are – that’s not going to benefit kids. This is just the beginning. We’re on the cutting edge of something we don’t want to be on the cutting edge of.”
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The Institute for Reforming Government is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization that seeks to simplify government at every level by offering policy solutions to thought leaders in American government in the areas of tax reform, government inefficiency, and burdensome regulations.
