Educators say the budget compromise reached last week by Gov. Tony Evers and Republican leaders — and their decision not to increase funding for general school aid — will shift more of the burden to local taxpayers.
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The U.S. Education Department directed its federal student loan servicers to restart interest accrual on Aug. 1 for participants in the Biden-era SAVE plan. (Catherine Lane/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Interest accrual on the debt of nearly 7.7 million student loan borrowers enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education plan will resume Aug. 1, the U.S. Education Department said Wednesday.
The Biden-era income-driven repayment plan better known as SAVE saw legal challenges from several GOP-led states beginning in 2024, creating uncertainty for borrowers who were placed in an interest-free forbearance amid that legal limbo.
The SAVE plan, created in 2023, aimed to provide lower monthly loan payments for borrowers and forgive remaining debt after a certain period of time.
In February, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court injunction that blocked the SAVE plan from going into effect. The department said Wednesday that it’s instructing its federal student loan servicers to start charging interest Aug. 1 to comply with court orders.
When the SAVE plan forbearance ends, “borrowers will be responsible for making monthly payments that include any accrued interest as well as their principal amounts,” the department said in a written announcement.
“For years, the Biden Administration used so-called ‘loan forgiveness’ promises to win votes, but federal courts repeatedly ruled that those actions were unlawful,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement alongside the announcement.
“Congress designed these programs to ensure that borrowers repay their loans, yet the Biden Administration tried to illegally force taxpayers to foot the bill instead,” she added.
McMahon said her department is urging borrowers under the SAVE plan to “quickly transition to a legally compliant repayment plan.”
“Borrowers in SAVE cannot access important loan benefits and cannot make progress toward loan discharge programs authorized by Congress,” she said.
Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, blasted the department’s decision in a statement Wednesday.
“Instead of fixing the broken student loan system, Secretary McMahon is choosing to drown millions of people in unnecessary interest charges and blaming unrelated court cases for her own mismanagement,” he said.
“Every day, we hear from borrowers waiting on hold with their servicer for hours, begging the government to let them out of this forbearance, and help them get back on track — instead, McMahon is choosing to jack up the cost of their student debt without giving them a way out.”
The agency has taken heat for its sweeping actions in the months since President Donald Trump took office as he and his administration look to dismantle the department.
The department is also mired in a legal challenge over some of its most significant efforts so far, including laying off more than 1,300 employees earlier this year as part of a reduction in force effort, an executive order calling on McMahon to facilitate the closure of her own agency and Trump’s proposal to transfer some services to other federal agencies. These actions have been temporarily halted in court.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump signed a massive tax and spending cut bill into law last week, part of which forces any borrower under the SAVE plan to opt in to a different repayment plan by July 1, 2028, or be automatically placed in a new, income-based repayment plan.
Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman said in a statement that the state’s universities have become dependent on tuition due to lagging state funding over many years, but the “turnaround” from proposed cuts to the state investing in the budget will help “preserve access and affordability” for students and families. Rothman and UW-Madison Jennifer Mnookin testify in front of the Legislative Audit Committee in April 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
University of Wisconsin system campuses will raise their undergraduate tuition by a maximum of 5% next year, under a plan UW President Jay Rothman announced Tuesday.
The announcement comes just days after the state Legislature passed and Gov. Tony Evers signed a state budget that includes increased investments in the system by over $200 million for operational costs and over $800 million for capital projects. While the increases took a different direction from Republican’s proposed cuts, they are nowhere near the $855 million operational budget increase initially requested by the system last year when Rothman warned that tuition increases would be on the table if there wasn’t significant investment.
Rothman said in a statement that the state’s universities have become dependent on tuition due to lagging state funding over many years, but the “turnaround” from proposed cuts to the state investing in the budget will help “preserve access and affordability” for students and families.
“Preserving quality while maintaining our ability to be a leader on tuition affordability in the Midwest is a top priority,” Rothman said. “After a decade of a tuition freeze and lagging state aid, we believe we have struck a balance for students and families with this proposal and the recent state investments in the UWs as part of the 2025-27 biennial budget.”
Rothman will ask the UW Board of Regents to approve a 4% increase at all campuses for the 2025-26 year.
Individual campuses would also have the option under his proposal of implementing an additional 1% increase. All universities except UW-Green Bay plan to adopt that. UW-River Falls is also seeking to increase its tuition even further by 5.8% to support “ student success initiatives.”
Under the proposal, nonresident undergraduate tuition at each campus would increase by the same percentage or dollar amount.
The system noted that most of the increases approved in the state budget are for specific purposes, including virtual mental health services, wage increases and addressing staff recruitment and retention.
State funding today makes up about a fifth of the UW’s total revenue. The UW system’s 2023-25 biennial budget was $13.7 billion with 58% of that coming from program revenue, 24% from the federal government and 18% from general purpose revenue.
In 1984-85, state general purpose revenue made up 41.8% of the UW System’s budget.
According to the UW system, the average increase when segregated fees and room and board costs are included would be 3.8%.
If approved, the increase will be the third consecutive year of tuition increases for UW since the end of a 10-year tuition freeze in 2023. The system said its tuition increased just 7.7% from 2015 to 2025, below the tuition increases for its peers in other states that had increases ranging from 21.7% to 28.8% over the 10 years.
The UW Board of Regents will consider the plan on July 10.
Here are the proposed resident undergraduate tuition costs for 2025-26 at each campus:
A student draws with chalk on an outdoor court at a New York City public school in 2022. If states don’t receive billions in congressionally approved funding for K-12 education that the Trump administration is withholding, officials say programs for migrants, English-language learners and kids in need of after-school care will be at risk. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
The U.S. Department of Education’s decision last week to hold back $6.8 billion in federal K-12 funds next year has triggered alarm among state education officials, school leaders and advocacy groups nationwide over how the lack of funds will affect their after-school, enrichment and language-learning services.
The Trump administration’s decision to freeze the funding has put states in “triage mode” as they scramble to decide what programs may be cut without that funding, said Mary Kusler, senior director for the Center for Advocacy at the National Education Association. The money was approved by Congress to support education for English language learners, migrants, low-income children and adults learning to read, among others.
As of July 1, school systems are unable to draw down funding, jeopardizing summer programs, hiring and early-year planning for the 2025–26 school year.
The funding freeze affects several core programs: Title II-A (educator training and recruitment), Title III-A (English learner support), Title IV-A (student enrichment and after-school), as well as migrant education and adult education and literacy grants. Trump has proposed eliminating all those programs in his proposed budget for next fiscal year, but that proposal hasn’t gone through Congress.
State superintendents sent out missives to school districts early this week and now are scrambling to make choices.
“This is not about political philosophy, this is about reliability and consistency,” Alabama state Superintendent Eric Mackey said to Politico. “None of us were worrying about this.”
The administration says it is reviewing the programs.
“The Department remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities,” the U.S. Department of Education wrote to states in its announcement June 30.
Historically, the department releases allocations by July 1 to ensure schools can budget and plan effectively for the coming school year. Withholding the money could result in canceled programs, hiring freezes and the loss of essential support for English learners, migrant children and other high-need populations, education and state officials told Stateline.
“America’s public school leaders run district budgets that are dependent on a complex partnership between federal, state, and local funding,” said David R. Schuler, executive director of the School Superintendents Association in a statement. “For decades, school districts have relied on timely confirmation of their federal allocations ahead of the July 1 start of the fiscal year — ensuring stability, allowing for responsible planning, and supporting uninterrupted educational services for students.”
The states facing the largest withheld amounts include California ($810.7 million), Texas ($660.9 million), and New York ($411.7 million), according to data from the NEA and the Learning Policy Institute, an education think tank.
For 17 states and territories, the freeze affects over 15% of their total federal K-12 allocations, according to the Learning Policy Institute. For smaller jurisdictions such as the District of Columbia and Vermont, the disruption hits even harder: More than 20% of their federal K-12 budgets remain inaccessible.
Colorado Education Commissioner Susan Córdova urged school districts to begin contingency planning in case funds are not released before the federal fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond hinted at possible legal action, which has become a trend as states fight the second Trump administration’s funding revocations or delays.
“California will continue to pursue all available legal remedies to the Trump Administration’s unlawful withholding of federal funds appropriated by Congress,” Thurmond said in a statement.
The NEA and the NAACP have filed for a preliminary injunction, calling the administration’s delay an illegal “impoundment” — a violation of the federal Impoundment Control Act, which bars the executive branch from withholding appropriated funds without congressional approval.
Education advocates warn the recent decision by the Trump administration to withhold funding reflects a broader pattern of federal disengagement from public education.
Community nonprofits said the withholding could devastate their programming too. The Boys and Girls Clubs of America could have to close more than 900 centers — bringing the loss of 5,900 jobs and affecting more than 220,000 children, said President and CEO Jim Clark in a statement.
The 1974 Impoundment Control Act lets the president propose canceling funds approved by Congress. Lawmakers have 45 days to approve the request; if they don’t, it’s denied. Meanwhile, agencies can be directed not to spend the funds during that time.
A White House statement shared with States Newsroom this week said “initial findings have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.”
“Kids, educators, and working families are the ones losing,” said Kusler, of the NEA. “We need governors and communities to step up — now.”
Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
The Mukwonago Area School District and the trans girl who sued must re-submit arguments in light of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.
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Child care providers and parents attend a Wisconsin State Capitol rally on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. Advocates have mixed opinions about child care provisions in the new state budget released Tuesday. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
The proposed Wisconsin state budget announced Tuesday offers child care advocates less than what they sought, and while some reacted with limited optimism, for others it adds up to little better than nothing.
The final deal will spend $110 million to extend direct payments to providers for another year. Starting in mid-2026 It will direct $65 million to providers who join a proposed “School Readiness Program” — similar to 4-year-old kindergarten (4K) but distinct from current 4K programs.
The deal also will add $123 million to increase the reimbursement for child care costs for low-income families under the Wisconsin Shares program.
The agreement was reached Monday in negotiations involving Gov. Tony Evers, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton).
Kids Forward labeled the child care provisions “significant, but not sufficient, wins for Wisconsin’s working families.” Kids Forward is a policy and advocacy organization for low-income families and families of color.
“This deal doesn’t address the long-term needs of families and providers, but we look forward to working with legislators and the Governor to ensure sustained investment,” said Daithi Wolfe, senior policy analyst for Kids Forward, in a statement Tuesday.
The $110 million in direct payments to providers over the next 12 months will serve as a “bridge” after the end of Child Care Counts, the subsidy program funded with federal pandemic relief money that runs out this month.
Originally paying out $20 million a month, Child Care Counts helped stabilize the child care sector according to research reviewing the program, helping providers increase wages without having to charge parents more.
The money was cut in half two years ago, and since then providers have reported having to raise fees and, in some cases, reduce their capacity because they lacked enough child care workers. A survey report earlier this year found that 25% of providers said they might close if state payments stop.
The new payment program is intended to enable providers to plan and budget between now and July 2026 for the loss of Child Care Counts. It will be funded with interest income on the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds the Evers administration received starting in early 2021.
“The disappointing part is it’s not permanent,” said Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association (WECA). WECA has campaigned all year for Gov. Tony Evers’ original proposal, which sought $480 million including for continuing monthly provider subsidies.
“This is not going to be the sort of panacea for child care,” Schmidt said. “We will still see child care programs needing to raise rates. We will likely still see closures throughout the year. But I think we will see them at much lower rates, and I think that’s a really good thing for child care.”
Schmidt praised Evers as a “champion for children” and also credited GOP leaders for being “willing to sit down” and negotiate. “I think bipartisanship has been at play in this,” she said.
The new Early School Readiness Program for 4-year-olds is a response to the impact that 4K expansion has had on child care providers. As 4K programs expanded in Wisconsin elementary schools, “that pulled a lot of 4-year-olds out of child care,” Schmidt said.
The new School Readiness Program will set curriculum standards and require child care workers who teach in it to have at least an associate degree. Schmidt said that for child care providers who participate, it will “ensure that child care has more opportunities to continue to serve 4-year-olds.”
Child care providers who take part will for the first time receive direct payments from state funds.
“Child care as an industry has long been very interested in finding out how to continue to do the services that they know are so important for 4-year-olds in their programs, and I think this is a mechanism that will allow for that,” Schmidt said. “This is a net gain of $65 million in state general purpose revenue into child care. That’s a big thing.”
For some child care providers, however, the details of the budget deal fall short of what they contend their sector needs.
The $110 million bridge program “is less than we’re getting right now, and we can’t keep teachers and we can’t keep prices down the way it is,” said Corrine Hendrickson, a New Glarus child care provider. She doesn’t expect it to achieve its stated goal of increasing the number of teachers along with accessibility and affordability in child care.
Brooke Legler, another New Glarus provider, said the $480 million that Evers had originally sought translated to keeping child care workers’ wages at $13 an hour on average. “This doesn’t even do that,” she said of the bridge program.
Hendrickson and Legler are cofounders of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), a coalition of parents and providers that also campaigned actively for the original Evers proposal.
Hendrickson said she’s concerned that the School Readiness Program will be perceived by parents as “less academic, less school, less quality than the free option at the public school.”
Legler questions whether the new program as structured will succeed in drawing more families of 4-year-olds who would otherwise send their children to 4K. School districts have expanded their 4K programs to all day schedules in part because of a lack of child care, she said.
“I think that’s such a disservice that we have … closed door negotiations and that we’re not including the people at the table that need to be at the table, especially if we want to have effective and efficient policies that work for Wisconsin,” Legler said.
Both Legler and Hendrickson said they’re also concerned about a provision creating a “large family center” category with up to 12 children. Currently there are family centers with up to eight children and group centers with nine or more children.
Another provision would lower the minimum age for entry-level child care workers to 16. Both the age change and the large family provision were in bills that Republicans introduced in the 2023-24 legislative session and that providers mostly opposed.
“That’s not an answer. That doesn’t do anything financially” to help providers, Legler said.
“We have people making life-altering decisions for many people in Wisconsin, yet they have no experience or expertise on the matter,” she said. “This method does not work.”
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As part of the Green Team at Chippewa Falls High School, students pick a two-year passion project related to sustainability. This year’s students chose to make Camp Nawakwa in Cornell more sustainable.
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Last school year, enrollment dropped to about 10,500 students. District officials predict enrollment will continue to decline based on birth trends.
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President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after signing executive orders in the Oval Office on April 23, 2025. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon look on. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has put on hold $6.8 billion in federal funds for K-12 schools, according to an Education Department notice obtained by States Newsroom.
The agency informed states on Monday that it would be withholding funding for several programs, including before- and after-school programs, migrant education and English-language learning, among other initiatives.
But the agency notified states just a day ahead of July 1 — the date these funds are typically sent out as educators plan for the coming school year.
“The Department remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities,” the Education Department wrote to states.
The notice, which did not provide any timeline, said the funds are under review and “decisions have not yet been made concerning submissions and awards for this upcoming academic year.”
The affected programs, according to the Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, include:
States have been on the lookout for these funds. For instance, just last week, Oklahoma’s Department of Education reported that it had yet to get money from the federal government for migrant education, English language acquisition and other programs, according to Oklahoma Voice.
Adding fuel to the fire, Trump is looking to eliminate all these programs as part of his fiscal 2026 budget request. That wish list, according to a department summary, calls for $12 billion in total spending cuts at the agency.
That proposed $12 billion cut “reflects an agency that is responsibly winding down,” the document notes.
Meanwhile, a coalition of 16 states is also suing the Trump administration over the cancellation earlier this year of roughly $1 billion in school mental health grants — a different piece of school funding — to try to restore that money.
The lawsuit was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle. The states include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin.
In a Tuesday statement, Washington state U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate spending panel, urged the Trump administration to immediately release the frozen funds.
“President Trump himself signed this funding into law — but that isn’t stopping him from choking off resources to support before and after school programs, help students learn, support teachers in the classroom, and a lot more,” Murray said. “The uncertainty he has created has already forced districts to delay hiring and other initiatives to help students. The only question left now is how much more damage this administration wants to inflict on our public schools.”
“Local school districts can’t afford to wait out lengthy court proceedings to get the federal funding they’re owed — nor can they make up the shortfall, especially not at the drop of a pin,” Murray added.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, blasted the administration’s actions, saying this is “another illegal usurpation of the authority of the Congress” and “directly harms the children in our nation.”
“K-12 public school leaders across the country who should have been able to start planning months ago for the summer and the upcoming school year are instead left mired in financial uncertainty,” added Weingarten, who leads one of the largest teachers unions in the country.
Carissa Moffat Miller, CEO of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said “the administration must make the full extent of title funding available in a timely manner,” in a statement shared with States Newsroom on Tuesday.
“These funds were approved by Congress and signed into law by President Trump in March,” Miller said. “Schools need these funds to hire key staff and educate students this summer and in the upcoming school year.”
In response to a request for comment on the frozen funds, the Education Department referred States Newsroom to the Office of Management and Budget, which is responsible for administering the federal budget and overseeing the performance of departments throughout the federal government.
In a statement shared with States Newsroom on Wednesday, a spokesperson for OMB said “this is an ongoing programmatic review of education funding” and “no decisions have been made yet.”
The spokesperson noted that “initial findings have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.”
The reasons for the abrupt departures range from political infighting to inexperienced board members.
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The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee's Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee Chair Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., talks with ranking Democrat Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin on June 3, 2025 before Education Secretary Linda McMahon testified to the panel about President Donald Trump's budget request for the Education Department. The proposal includes a reduction in the maximum Pell Grant award. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump wants to cut nearly $1,700 from the maximum Pell Grant award as part of his fiscal 2026 budget request — a move that would leave the subsidy for low-income students at its lowest level in more than a decade.
The proposal would have a devastating effect on college affordability and drive up costs for states because they’d have to fill in the missing federal dollars, education advocates and experts say.
The request — part of the president’s wish list for appropriations in fiscal 2026 — faces steep odds in Congress, where key members of both parties responded to the proposal with alarm.
“I don’t want to cut the Pell Grant,” U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican and chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, told States Newsroom.
“I’m concerned about that — I’m hoping that we’ll get that resolved,” she said.
Opposition from Capito, whose panel writes the annual bill to fund the Education Department, makes Trump’s wish unlikely to make its way into the upcoming legislation.
The Pell Grant is a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college and is the foundation of federal student aid in the United States.
Catherine Brown, senior policy and advocacy director at the National College Attainment Network, said the cut would be “absolutely devastating,” noting that “college is already out of reach for millions upon millions of low-income students.”
The Pell Grant program is seeing a projected budget shortfall of $2.7 billion heading into the next fiscal year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The administration has cited the shortfall as a reason to decrease the maximum award.
The request calls for reducing the maximum Pell Grant for the 2026-2027 award year from $7,395 to $5,710. The last time the maximum award stood below this level was during the 2013-2014 award year, at $5,645.
Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget request includes $12 billion in total cuts to the Education Department as he and his administration seek to dismantle the agency and dramatically reshape the federal role in education.
Democrats have raised strong opposition, while even the Republican chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees Education Department funding was noncommittal about pursuing Pell Grant cuts.
“We want to make sure that (Pell Grants are) serving the people they need to,” Rep. Robert Aderholt of Alabama said when asked about any concerns he has on the proposed cut.
Aderholt said he’s hearing “a lot” from his constituents about the proposed reduction, and that it’s “certainly something we’re going to look at.”
Meanwhile, the leading Democrats on the House and Senate education spending panels were quick to blast the proposed cut.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the full House Appropriations Committee and the education spending subcommittee, called the nearly $1,700 reduction “crazy.”
“People are not going to be able to do it, and that’s the tragedy of what they’re doing here is dismantling all of the constructs that are there to provide people particularly with public education and a pathway to success,” the Connecticut Democrat said.
“You take away Federal Work-Study, you lower the Pell Grant, that says to me, you want to destroy public education,” DeLauro said.
The budget request proposes slashing $980 million of Federal Work-Study funding and requiring employers to pay 75% of students’ hourly wages, with the government contributing 25%.
The program gives part-time employment to students with financial need in order to help cover the cost of college.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, ranking member of the Senate subcommittee, said she “strongly” opposes the proposed reduction.
The Wisconsin Democrat said she also recognizes that “there’s a looming shortfall in Pell funding that we need to address.”
“I am hopeful that we’ll be able to work together to do that,” Baldwin said.
Higher education advocates and experts are also sounding the alarm on the proposed reduction, both over the harm to low-income students’ access to higher education and the impact on states and colleges.
“This would just much further exacerbate that gap and drive millions of students out of pursuing post-secondary education or set them on a different path,” Brown, with the National College Attainment Network, said.
Katharine Meyer, a governance studies fellow at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, described the proposed decline as “truly unprecedented.”
She added that when the Pell Grant is smaller, states have to spend more on higher education, creating a challenge for state officials potentially grappling with other cuts in federal support in the budget reconciliation package Republicans are scrambling to pass.
“States don’t necessarily have the flexibility to spend more money when they have budgets that they need to balance, and they’re facing other federal constraints, including potentially having to take on additional health care costs depending on what happens with health care negotiations in budget reconciliation,” she said.
Capito also said she thought a reduction to Pell Grants would ripple out to the state level.
At the institutional level, Meyer pointed out that if a state has a smaller bucket to allocate for higher education but wants to prioritize financial aid, it would “come at the cost of” the money appropriated to universities.
“Then institutions are not going to be able to spend as much on their operating funds,” she said. “They’re not going to be able to do capital improvement campaigns, which are often very necessary.”
House Republicans have also proposed major changes to Pell Grant eligibility as part of GOP lawmakers’ separate “big, beautiful bill.” The legislative package would slash billions of dollars in federal programs to offset the cost of other parts of Trump’s agenda, including extending the 2017 tax cuts and boosting border security funding.
GOP lawmakers are using the complex reconciliation process to move a package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber and avoid the Senate’s 60-vote threshold that generally requires bipartisanship.
The House narrowly passed its version of the reconciliation package in late May. That measure included a provision that would raise the minimum number of credit hours to qualify for the maximum Pell Grant award from 12 per semester to 15. The move would save $7.1 billion in federal spending over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office estimated.
That new eligibility requirement is not included in the draft proposal for the reconciliation package that Republicans on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions released in June.
Several teams of painters, movers and cleaners are working to remove lead hazards at over 40 schools in Milwaukee this summer.
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The Department of Public Instruction will not receive $50 million to implement a reading bill passed in 2023, the Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Wednesday.
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During the 2022–23 school year, book bans occurred in 153 districts across 33 states, according to a PEN America report. (Getty Images)
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that Gov. Tony Evers overstepped his partial veto power by exercising it on a bill to implement new literacy programs in the state. Evers scolded the decision, while lawmakers said it upheld the balance of power and that they plan to release the funds now.
The decision reverses a lower court, which ruled Evers hadn’t overstepped his power but held that the court did not have the power to compel the Legislature to release the funds.
The case, Wisconsin State Legislature v. Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, involves 2023 Wisconsin Act 100 — one part of a series of measures meant to support the creation of new literacy programs in Wisconsin.
In the 2023-25 budget, lawmakers and Evers approved $50 million for new literacy programs but the funding went into a supplemental fund, meaning it required the Republican-led Joint Finance Committee to approve its release to the Department of Public Instruction before it could be used.
2023 Wisconsin Act 20 created an Office of Literacy within the Department of Public Instruction, which would be responsible for establishing an early literacy coaching program and awarding grants to schools. Act 100 was a separate law to create a way for the agency to expend the money transferred by the Joint Committee on Finance.
Evers exercised a partial veto when signing Act 100 into law to expand it from covering a “literacy coaching program” to covering a “literacy program.” The action led to lawmakers withholding the funding, saying he didn’t have the authority to change the law’s purpose, the argument at the center of their subsequent lawsuit. Evers’ administration had argued the bill was an appropriation, and therefore it was within the governor’s powers to partially veto it, and that the Legislature was not within its right to withhold the money.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled the Legislature had not been improperly withholding the funding from DPI and that Act 100 was not an appropriation, so Evers overstepped the boundaries of the veto power given to him in the Wisconsin State Constitution. The decision overturns part of the ruling of a Dane County judge.
The state constitution gives the governor the power to sign or veto bills in full, and a 1930 amendment gave the governor the power to partially veto “appropriation bills.” Wisconsin’s executive partial veto power is one of the strongest in the country, though it has been limited over the last several decades by constitutional amendments and through Court rulings.
The state Supreme Court’s 7-0 ruling Wednesday reigns in Evers’ partial veto power.
Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote in the majority opinion that the bills “did not set aside public funds for a public purpose” but rather “created accounts into which money could be transferred to fund the programs established under Act 19 [the state budget] and Act 20, and it changed other aspects of the ‘literacy coaching program.’”
“The bill, however, does not set aside any public funds; in fact, it expressly states that “$0” was appropriated,” Bradley wrote.
Bradley said it was within the Legislature’s authority to pass the bills in the way that it did, and the Constitution only gives the governor power to “veto in part only appropriation bills — not bills that are closely related to appropriation bills.”
“Although the executive branch may be frustrated by constitutional limits on the governor’s power to veto non-appropriation bills, the judiciary must respect the People’s choice to impose them,” Bradley wrote. “This court has no authority to interfere with the Legislature’s choices to structure legislation in a manner designed to insulate non-appropriation bills from the governor’s exercise of the partial veto power.”
Under the ruling, the law will revert to what it was when the Legislature passed it.
Another recent state Supreme Court ruling upheld another of Evers’ partial vetoes that extended school revenue increases for 400 years, though that decision was split. In that ruling, the Supreme Court said lawmakers could avoid the partial veto power by drafting bills separate from appropriation bills. Republican lawmakers have been considering for years ways to limit Evers’ veto power, and it remains an issue of controversy in the current budget process as lawmakers pass bills without funding attached.
Evers called the Supreme Court decision “unconscionable” and urged lawmakers to release the nearly $50 million.
“Twelve lawmakers should not be able to obstruct resources that were already approved by the full Legislature and the governor to help get our kids up to speed and ensure they have the skills they need to be successful,” Evers said in a statement. “It is unconscionable that the Wisconsin Supreme Court is allowing the Legislature’s indefinite obstruction to go unchecked.”
Evers said he would accept the Court’s decision.
“A basic but fundamental responsibility of governors and executives is to dutifully comply with decisions of a court and the judiciary, even if — and, perhaps most importantly, when — we disagree,” Evers said.
Evers said lawmakers failing to release the funds would be “reckless” and “irresponsible.”
“Stop messing around with our kids and their futures and get it done,” Evers said.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said in a joint statement that the ruling is a “rebuke of the Governor’s attempt to break apart a bipartisan literacy-funding bill and JFC’s constitutional authority to give supplemental funding to agencies.”
“While the Governor wanted to play politics with money earmarked for kids’ reading programs, it is encouraging to see the Court put an end to this game,” Vos and LeMahieu said. “Wisconsin families are the real winners here.”
The end of the state’s fiscal year and deadline for getting the next state budget done is June 30, and if the money isn’t released, it will lapse back into the general fund going back to the state’s $4 billion budget surplus.
Co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) and Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said in a joint statement they plan to release the funds now that the Supreme Court has ruled on the issue
“The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision confirmed what we already knew: the Governor’s partial veto of Act 100 was unconstitutional. We are happy to see that the court ruled in favor of the Legislature as a co-equal branch of government and provided us much needed guidance,” the lawmakers said. “Now that there is clarity, we look forward to releasing the $50 million set aside to support kids struggling to read and help implement these important, bipartisan reforms. It is unfortunate that the Governor’s unconstitutional veto has delayed this funding needed by kids and families across the state.”
At a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee called for lawmakers to meet before Monday to release the funds.
“Unless the Joint Finance Committee acts before Monday, those kids and those school districts will not see another dime. Wisconsinites are tired of Republicans playing politics with our public schools,” Rep. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay) said. She noted that Evers had requested an additional $80 million for literacy in his budget proposal, but lawmakers have so far not included that.
Republican lawmakers have approved the K-12 portion of the state budget, which includes an increase for the state’s special education reimbursement rate from about 32% to 37.5% and a 90% rate for high cost special education in the second year of the budget, along with funding for other priorities. Democrats and education advocates have been critical, saying that the budgeted amounts are not enough to ease the financial burdens public schools are facing.
Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said Democrats haven’t heard from Republican lawmakers about working on the budget.
“We are ready to work,” Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said. “We would like to see immediately some action on the funding that is going to disappear if it’s not spent by June 30th, particularly the literacy funding. The Joint Finance Committee has also refused to release other funds, including $125 million to combat PFAS and $15 million to support Chippewa Valley hospitals.
Roys said it was “great to hear” that the co-chairs said they would release the funds and that she hopes he “stands by his word.”
State Superintendent Jill Underly also urged the release of the funds, saying part of the compromise struck by Evers and lawmakers was “to provide districts with funding to implement new strategies and change practices” and districts have been working to implement the literacy changes but have yet to see funding.
“It is devastating that despite bipartisan agreement on how to proceed, we have been stuck in neutral,” Underly said.
Peggy Wirtz-Olsen, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), the state’s largest teachers’ union, said in a statement that Republican lawmakers are “bent on using schools as pawns for political payback” and are giving “lip service to literacy, while leaving educators without funding to do our job.”
“On the cusp of another state budget, these same politicians again threaten to underfund public schools instead of working across the aisle for the good of students,” Wirtz-Olsen said, adding that WEAC will continue to advocate for funding from the state.
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AUBREY, Texas – Durham School Services and the Aubrey Independent School District have extended their partnership for another five years through 2030. This extension signals the school district’s strong, continued trust and confidence in Durham’s transportation services.
Durham began providing transportation services to the school district over twenty years ago and currently runs 37 routes for the school. Over the last 20+ years, the team has fully integrated itself and became part of the community by participating in and supporting various community outreach events as part of its Partners Beyond the Bus community outreach program. These community outreach efforts include donating to the Aubrey Education Foundation, participating in community parades, and more.
“Aubrey ISD is excited about the expanded partnership with Durham School Services, which brings significant enhancements to student transportation through innovative tracking technology and improved scheduling,” said Eric Hough, Assistant Superintendent, Aubrey Independent School District. “The district is particularly pleased with the new three-tier system, which reduces student wait times, and the addition of RFID tracking that keeps parents informed about their children’s bus activities. With these comprehensive improvements—including enhanced field trip coordination and new activity buses—the district looks forward to providing the smoothest school start possible while continuing to elevate transportation services throughout the contract period.”
“Being able to serve Aubrey ISD the last 20+ years has been honor and we are looking forward to the next five years,” said Regional Manager Brian Gibson, Durham School Services. “The Aubrey team is an exceptional team that always strives to exceed expectations and improve their service to their students and the community. The school district also has the same sentiments and as a result of that, has continued to put their trust and the safety of their students in our hands for over two decades and counting. We truly cherish and are grateful for their unfaltering support and confidence in our team and will continue to provide the safe, reliable service they have trusted and expect.”
About Durham School Services: As an industry-leading student transportation provider, Durham School Services is dedicated to the safety of our students and People. For more than 100 years, we have been committed to Excellence and upholding our mission of getting students to school safely, on time, and ready to learn. Through this mission and a grassroots approach to our operations, Durham School Services has earned recognition as a trusted transportation provider among our Customers and the Communities we serve.
The post Aubrey Independent School District Extends 20+ Year Partnership with Durham School Services for Another Five Years appeared first on School Transportation News.
Tribal colleges in Wisconsin stand to lose significant federal support following proposed cuts under the Trump administration, including changes to Pell Grant eligibility and an 83 percent cut to certain Bureau of Indian Education funds.
The post Wisconsin tribal colleges are threatened by federal cuts appeared first on WPR.
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