State Superintendent Jill Underly with Madison La Follette High School Principal Mathew Thompson and Madison Public School District Superintendent Joe Gothard in the hallway at La Follette in September 2024. | Photo by Ruth Conniff

During her 2025 State of Education address in the Wisconsin Capitol rotunda, State Superintendent Jill Underly called the Trump administration the “biggest school-yard bully” that Wisconsin schools must overcome and said chronic underfunding at the state level continues to put pressure on districts to do more with less. 

Thursday’s address was Underly’s first during her second term in office. She won reelection in April this year. She used the address as an opportunity to call for the state to give more support to schools.

“Public education in Wisconsin is not just a system; it’s a living story written daily by the people who believe in its promise…  by students walking into classrooms filled with possibility, by the teachers who dedicate their lives to unlocking potential, by the families and the communities who support them,” Underly said. However, she warned that pride in the public education story “does not guarantee a happy ending.” 

“Pride alone can’t patch a leaking roof. Pride doesn’t shrink a class of 32. Pride will not put a counselor in every school, and pride does not replace sustainable funding. Pride doesn’t fix inequity,’ Underly said. “Pride must be paired with action.” 

The first several months of Underly’s term have been marked by federal upheaval as the Trump administration has abruptly paused and pulled federal funding that goes to education priorities and also by the completion of a state budget that fell short of public school advocates’ goals. 

Underly said the Trump administration is using funding as a bargaining chip by withholding it with little notice in order to demand schools comply with unclear and unlawful requests. 

Most recently, the Trump administration decided to withhold nearly $11 million in grants to support deafblind students and special education teachers. The explanation delivered to the state DPI was that the programs “reflect the prior administration’s priorities and policy preferences and conflict with those of the current administration.” 

Over the summer, schools across the nation were thrown into uncertainty after the Trump administration said it would be withholding Title program payments. The administration eventually reversed its decision. 

“Their efforts seek to sow confusion and create chaos and erode trust in an education system already under incredible pressure. We teach our students to stand up to bullies, but this year, the biggest school-yard bully in our public schools is our own federal government,” Underly said. “We will not allow politics or outside forces to rewrite the story of Wisconsin’s public schools. We will not stand by while the future of our children is at stake. We will fight, we will lead, and we will stand up for every student.”

Underly also said the state government is putting school districts in a situation where they must stretch their budgets and are left to solve their problems alone. 

“Decades of insufficient funding have forced a historic number of districts into an impossible situation, turning to referenda year after year just to survive, all while facing micromanaging from Madison and endless finger pointing from lawmakers who too often choose politics over partisanship,” Underly said. 

The state budget, which was passed by the Republican-led state Legislature and signed by Gov. Tony Evers, included a boost in special education funding from about 30% to 45%. But school districts have said that another aspect of the budget, which made no increase at all in state aid for both years of the biennium, left them in a tight spot. Underly said the budget was “not perfect” but “makes meaningful progress for our schools, especially in special education” and acts as a “starting point.” 

‘Pulling resources away from public schools to fund private ones’

“And here’s the truth: We are starving one system while funding another. We cannot afford to keep pulling resources away from public schools to fund private ones and expect both to thrive. That is not good stewardship, and that is not Wisconsin,” Underly said. 

Underly was referencing the state’s school voucher programs, which allow students to use public funds to attend participating private schools. Caps on the program, which limit the number of students who can participate, are scheduled to lift after the 2025-26 school year. 

The growth of the state’s school voucher programs coincides with public school districts’ increasing reliance on raising money through property tax hikes that local taxpayers have to decide whether to approve.

“This under-investment has created a growing sense in too many classrooms during too many school board meetings and around too many kitchen tables that our schools are being left to go it alone,” Underly said. 

Underly said the financial pressures are placing teachers and students under other types of stress as well. 

“Our schools are not failing. We are failing our schools, and we can’t afford to keep writing this chapter. If we truly believe in writing a better story for public education, then it’s long past time for our state to step up and deliver on its promise,” Underly said. “When we underfund, we burn out teachers. When we ignore, we lose talent.” 

Underly called attention to the mental health problems that many students are facing, saying that the political environment could be making things worse. She specifically noted the high rates of depression, anxiety and self-harm among LGBTQ+ students, especially transgender students. 

“The debates taking place in the public sphere, and right here in this Capitol building aren’t about sports,” Underly said, referencing bills that have been debated this year that would bar transgender girls from participating on girls’ sports teams. “They’re about something much deeper — whether kids are allowed to belong. It’s not just one group of kids, it’s every kid. It’s the kid who doesn’t know where their next meal is going to come from. It’s the kid growing up in a low-income neighborhood without access to the same opportunities just a few miles away. It’s the kids still learning English like so many generations of Americans before them, navigating a world that too often makes them feel invisible. It’s the rural kid who has big dreams but lacks access to broadband or after-school programs.” 

Undery said that despite the challenges, there is hope for the future of Wisconsin schools. 

“Throughout history, Wisconsin has led the way,” Underly said, noting that the state had the first kindergarten program in the country and created one of the first statewide public library systems. 

“That courage, that commitment to progress, that’s in Wisconsin’s DNA,” Underly said. “Now, we stand at a defining moment. In this next chapter, you re-elected me to lead that work not to maintain the status quo, but to drive real change to lead to act to set a clear path forward, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.” 

She listed priorities including hands-on learning, embracing new technologies, creating personalized learning experiences and recruiting and retaining teachers. She also said DPI is also working to modernize to be a “stronger and more effective partner” to schools and educators.

“The future isn’t red. The future isn’t blue. The future, Wisconsin, is sitting in our classrooms right now, and this is our wake-up call. This is the mirror we must face,” Underly said. “Will we be the generation that looked away as our schools crumbled? Or will we be the ones who stood up, kept our promise, and chose to write a different story?”

Wisconsin has joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration's action to withhold $6.8 billion for education progams supporting English language learners, migrants, low-income children, adult learners and others. (Photo by Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images)

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul joined 23 states and the District of Columbia Monday in suing the Trump administration for withholding $6.8 billion meant for six U.S. Department of Education programs, which help support English language learners, migrants, low-income children, adult learners and others. 

The funds, approved in the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act 2025 and signed into law on March 15, are typically distributed to states by July 1. However, the Department of Education notified the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction as well as other state education agencies on June 30 that they would be withholding the funds. 

“Depriving our schools of critical resources is bad for our schools, bad for students, and bad for Wisconsin,” Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a statement. “This unlawful funding freeze should be stopped.”

The Wisconsin DPI said in a statement that the federal agency gave no specific explanation for the action. Instead, the U.S. Department of Education said that “decisions have not yet been made concerning submissions and awards for this upcoming academic year” and “accordingly, the Department will not be issuing Grant Award Notifications obligating funds for these programs on July 1 prior to completing that review. The Department remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities.” 

The withholding of funds comes as the Trump administration continues to pursue closing the Department of Education with a plan to lay off more than 1,000 agency employees and resume drastically cutting the agency after getting the greenlight from the U.S. Supreme Court Monday. The Trump administration has also withheld other funds this year, including for grants for mental health in schools. A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement about the review of education funding that “initial findings have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.” 

The multi-state lawsuit argues that the freeze of the $6.8 billion violates federal laws and regulations that authorize and fund the programs, federal laws, including the Antideficiency Act and Impoundment Control Act, that govern the federal budgeting process and the constitutional separation of powers doctrine and the Presentment Clause. 

The coalition of states is requesting that the court provide declaratory relief by finding the freeze is unlawful and offer injunctive relief by requiring the release of the funds. 

Over $72 million is being withheld from Wisconsin. Without the funding, school districts face funding shortfalls for programs that have already been planned, DPI may have to lay off 20 employees and programs at Wisconsin’s technical colleges are in trouble with $7.5 million in adult education grants being withheld.

State Superintendent Jill Underly said in a statement that Wisconsin schools depend on the federal funding distributed through an array of programs to support students. There are five programs affected: Title I-C, which supports migrant education, Title II-A, which goes towards teacher training and retention, Title III-A, which supports education of English language learners, Title IV-A, which is for student enrichment and after-school programs and Title IV-B, which supports community learning centers.

“Make no mistake, stopping this money has had and will continue to harm our families and communities,” Underly said. 

Wisconsin schools have received funding through these federal programs for decades to help carry out related programs. According to DPI, federal funding makes up about 8% of funding for Wisconsin schools with nearly $850 million coming into the state. 

Sen. Tammy Baldwin alongside 31 other U.S. senators penned a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and Education Secretary Linda McMahon, calling on them to release the money. 

“This delay not only undermines effective state and local planning for using these funds to address student needs consistent with federal education law, which often takes place months before these funds become available, but also flies in the face of the nation’s education laws which confers state and local educational agency discretion on permissible uses of federal formula grant funds,” the senators wrote. “We are shocked by the continued lack of respect for states and local schools evidenced by this latest action by the administration.”

“It is unacceptable that the administration is picking and choosing what parts of the appropriations law to follow, and you must immediately implement the entire law as Congress intended and as the oaths you swore require you to do,” the lawmakers said. 

The lawmakers also said the “review” being undertaken by the administration appears to be intentional to delay the funding and will result in budget cuts for schools. They said it is happening “with no public information about what the review entails, what data the administration is examining or a timeline for such review.”