An empty high school classroom. (Dan Forer | Getty Images)

Wisconsin lawmakers are exploring ways to make it easier for school districts to consolidate as they face  declining enrollment and financial difficulties.

There are 421 school districts in the state of Wisconsin and about two-thirds are struggling with declining enrollment. According to preliminary numbers from the Department of Public Instruction, enrollment for public school districts in the 2025-26 school year fell by about 13,600 students, representing a nearly 2% decrease from last year’s estimate. Total enrollment across school districts is about 759,800 this year. 

Reps. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay), Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) and Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) said during an Assembly Education Committee public hearing Tuesday that declining enrollment is to blame for the financial troubles that schools are facing.

“The districts that are going to referendum all the time. It’s almost always because of declining enrollment. It just gets more expensive per student to educate those kids as the districts become smaller,” Kitchens said. “We’re not telling districts this is what you have to do or what you should do. We’re telling them this is an option for you to consider.” 

Schools in Wisconsin have seen a drop of about 53,000 students over a decade, from the 2013-14 to 2022-23 school years. Kitchens pointed to estimates from the Wisconsin Department of Administration that the population in Wisconsin is projected to drop by 200,000 by 2050, noting it will be largely due to the state’s declining birth rate.

Wisconsin’s school funding system is based in part on per pupil numbers, meaning that if fewer students are enrolled schools receive decreased funding from the state, even if a district’s overall costs may not fall. 

Kitchens said that having 421 school districts is not going to be sustainable in the long term in Wisconsin and questioned whether there is another state that “on a per capita basis has that many” school districts. 

Kitchens said the issue shouldn’t be partisan. He noted that school consolidation is something that the 2019 Blue Ribbon Commission on Wisconsin school funding supported through its  recommendations.

“Many districts have used the referendum process to increase the property tax burden on the local residents to backfill the loss in state aid revenue,” Nedweski said. “Many others have seen them repeatedly fail as property taxpayers are unwilling to raise their taxes to increasingly fund empty schools.” She noted that a recent Marquette Law School Poll found that 57% of participants said they would vote against a referendum request. “There is no referendum that can be passed or law that can be signed to single-handedly reverse decades of birth rate declines to alleviate the stresses of declining enrollment in our schools. It’s clear that a more long-term solution is needed to address these demographic challenges because the status quo is not sustainable.” 

Wisconsin has had a record number of school districts go to referendum to help meet costs. But beyond declining enrollment, public school advocates say the burden on local taxpayers asked to fund their schools through referendum has grown mostly due to the fact that state investments in public schools have not kept pace with inflation for almost two decades. In the most recent state budget, Wisconsin lawmakers provided additional special education funding, but opted not to provide any increase in general aid, leaving increased costs to fall on property taxpayers.

State Superintendent Tom McCarthy noted during the hearing that Wisconsin is currently spending the least, proportionally, in state revenue that it has ever spent on schools under the current funding formula. He noted that about 32.1% of state general purpose revenue goes to state general aid to schools, and that percentage used to be around 35%. He also said the conversation about declining enrollment and costs had to include the acknowledgement that school districts’ revenue limits have been frozen at different points over the last decade, prohibiting school districts from raising more funds unless they go to referendum to ask voters.

Nedweski said the bills would be useful tools and incentives for districts facing decisions about whether to consolidate.

“Buildings do not educate kids, teachers do,” Nedweski said. “By finding efficiencies through voluntary consolidation, districts will be able to reduce overhead and direct resources to the classrooms so that our students can continue to receive a quality education, while taxpayers receive relief on their property tax bills.”

The package of bills would take a number of steps to encourage districts to explore consolidation, including providing financial incentives.

School districts already receive additional aid when they consolidate. For the first five years after consolidation, a consolidated school district gets $150 per pupil. In the sixth year, the aid drops to 50% of what the school district received in the fifth year and in the seventh year, the aid drops to 25% of the fifth year. 

AB 644 would increase that additional state aid to schools that consolidate in 2026, 2027 and 2028 to $2,000 per pupil in the first year. The last six years would be the same as under current law. 

Kitchens said that he thought most school districts would be able to decide within a year whether consolidation is something that they want to pursue. 

“I’m very open in the future to extending that deadline, but I think to get it passed, we need to put a sunset on it, so we’re doing three years,” Kitchens said. 

Dee Pattack, executive director of the Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance, noted that the inclusion of 2026 won’t really be useful for school districts since districts that want to consolidate have missed the opportunity to do so if they haven’t decided by now for next year. She also suggested that lawmakers look at spreading out  the additional aid more gradually, saying that dropping aid from $2,000 to $150 per student creates a cliff.

Kitchens said he would look at amending the timeline included in the bill. 

Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) noted that decisions about consolidation can be emotional and personal for communities. 

“Public schools are the heart of our communities, oftentimes in rural communities, especially. They’re one of the largest employers. It’s where you have the most celebrations. There’s athletic events that are important to everyone in the communities and so this decision of consolidation is deeply complex. It’s personal for a lot of school districts,” Hong said. 

Hong, who is running in the Democratic primary for governor, questioned whether lawmakers had considered just leaving the decisions on consolidation up to local communities altogether, noting that Wisconsin law favors local control of schools. 

“That’s why it’s voluntary. That’s why we’re offering these tools. It is not mandatory. We know it’s going to be difficult,” Kitchens said, adding that Door County used to be full of one-room school houses until there was a consolidation in 1960. “When they consolidated that and formed Southern Door [County] School District, people were out there with pitchforks. It’s always going to be difficult, but we have to look at the future and what it’s going to be.” 

Kitchens noted that districts are not “clamoring” to consolidate and that the option exists as a last resort for most. 

“There are a few that are, and you’ll hear from at least one of them today that really have reached that point where they know it’s necessary,” Kitchens said. “We’re not hearing districts begging for this.” 

Joe Green, district administrator and director of special education for the Greenwood School District, and Chris Lindner, district administrator for the Loyal School District, testified about the rural school districts’ journey of consolidation, which their school boards are focused on getting done by July 1, 2028. They said it has been an emotional journey as people are attached to their schools and communities, but that it could be the best option for them. 

“It might be the thing that gets us over the hump to consolidation,” Green said of the new legislative proposal. “It might be the funding that our two districts need to put a good plan in front of our communities. It might allow us to do some small projects to make consolidation smoother. There may be small construction, or things that we need to do to retrofit buildings, if that’s the way that our facility studies go. There’s a million different scenarios out there on what consolidation can look like. But without that funding, I mean, honestly, with our two districts $150 bucks a kid is $100,000 — not gonna do much with that… it’s just not going to do much.”

Green said the districts already share bus service and that 50% of their co–curricular activities are shared. They said that the schools began sharing students and staff due to their difficulty finding adequate staff to deliver instruction in rural Clark County in central Wisconsin. 

Lindner said that consolidation could help open up more opportunities for students. “We do drama together. If we did not, we would have five to six students that would not be able to do drama because, you know, can’t do it with five or six kids,” he said. 

Lindner said consolidation could also help save money.

“Our taxpayers are paying a lot of money for our operating referendums,” he said. “We tell communities if we do not start working together more, then we will be losing.”

AB 645 would instruct DPI to provide grants of up to $25,000 to groups of two or more school district boards for the costs of a feasibility study for school district consolidation or whole grade sharing agreements. 

Another bill, AB 647, would have DPI provide four-year grants of up to $500 per pupil enrolled in a single grade to school districts that enter into a whole-grade sharing agreement, agreeing to educate students at one location. 

Felzkowski said that whole-grade sharing is a step before consolidation.

“It lets them test the waters if they ever want to move to full consolidation,” Felzkowski said, adding that middle and high schools may be able to provide more class offerings, including advanced coursework, to students with grade sharing.

AB 648 would help create new supplemental state aid for consolidated school districts to  address differences in school districts’ levies when they merge. The measure is meant to address concerns of higher property taxes for residents of low-levy districts when a consolidation takes place.

AB 649 provides the funding for the bills, including $2.7 million for grants to schools that enter whole-grade sharing agreements, $3 million to provide state aid to offset levy limit differences and $250,000 for feasibility studies. 

McCarthy of DPI noted at the hearing that there are already several legal and mechanical supports in place to encourage consolidation, and that even with those, the last major consolidation that took place was on July 1, 2018. Two K-8 districts merged to become the Holy Hill Area School District in Richfield. 

McCarthy of DPI said the slate of bills being proposed are “largely building from past efforts to support and to incentivize consolidation” and that the agency doesn’t view them as “a brand new door that’s being opened up” to solve problems.

The final bill in the package, AB 646, would study what changes should be made to Wisconsin’s school districts. Under it, DPI would hire a contractor to conduct a study of Wisconsin’s school districts that looks at current school district boundaries, potential school district consolidations, existing school district facilities, staffing levels and salary scales, the population of school-age children in each school district, and revenue limits and current overall spending. 

McCarthy said the agency is most excited about this final proposal.  He said it is similar to what Vermont has done and addresses some of the factors that are important to consider when consolidating. 

The study would culminate in recommendations for changes to school district boundaries, a survey on the conditions of school district facilities across the state, information on the current and 10-year projection of the population of school-age children in each district and recommendations for school district consolidations that promote efficiency, are geographically feasible and economically viable. 

“We probably owe it to our school partners to take a long look at what are the right geographical boundaries here,” McCarthy said. “As we’re thinking about how to manage this stuff, it might be a good moment in time to slow down and think about how do we sync some of these things up to be a more effective patchwork of schools that are serving our communities?”

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