Charter Expansion Could Mean Less Money For Some Districts

Public school districts that aren’t included in Governor Scott Walker’s proposed voucher expansion would still lose money under his budget proposal to expand independent charters.

That’s according to Bambi Statz, executive director of the Association for Equity in Funding, who spoke at a Senate committee hearing Wednesday. She says the Legislative Fiscal Bureau recently found over 300 districts would receive more state aid due to the redistribution of funding from voucher districts, and that may have given some people a false impression.

“The dollars that districts would lose in state aid due to the independent charter program being expanded dollars far exceed the small dollars that they might gain through that redistribution due to the expansion of vouchers. We are going to have taxpayers paying high property taxes to probably have less services available to their own children.”

Two committee members, Sen. Dale Schultz (R-Richland Center) and Bob Jauch (D-Poplar), say Walker’s proposal to expand vouchers and charters should be removed from the state budget and debated separately.