Today, AEF’s Op-Ed on the financial background of the Mount Horeb school shooting was published in the Milwaukee Journal’s Ideas Lab. Nonmembers can click through to read the article for free.

“Where you live in Wisconsin shouldn’t determine your odds to survive school shootings | Opinion
Mount Horeb voters approved referendums that paid for school security improvements.”

The Mount Horeb Area School District’s financial story caught the attention of AEF. Most people don’t realize that the voters of Mount Horeb played a key role in protecting students, and that children across Wisconsin are not equally protected from harm.

For those who may not have followed the story closely, on May 1st, a student brought a weapon onto school grounds and is believed to have attempted to gain entry into the building. He was unable to do so. When the student pointed the weapon at responding officers, he was shot and killed by law enforcement.

Mt. Horeb Area School District Superintendent Dr. Steve Salerno was quoted in the May 7th Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Had it not been for our community stepping up to the plate to help support capital and operational referendums…this could have been a far worse tragedy.” Voters approved referendums in 2017 and 2022 that Dr. Salerno said enabled the district to install vestibules, security cameras, locked doors and a doorbell camera system. “Lives may have been saved thanks to safety features at the school.”

AEF has to ask a critical question: Since when have schools in Wisconsin needed to pass a referendum to ensure fundamental safety measures? The answer is that each year, for more than 30 years, Mount Horeb, like dozens of other districts across the state, has received thousands of dollars less per student than many other districts. This made it necessary for Mount Horeb voters to pass multiple referendums to fund their school safety goals. The decades-old “revenue limit” system used 1993 spending as a benchmark year to set funding levels. This resulted in wide discrepancies in available funding for schools that have persisted since then. Mount Horeb has been shortchanged by the funding system since the beginning. 

Financial services firm RW Baird recently collected and analyzed data to help AEF identify historical funding gaps for districts across the state. From the start of the unfair revenue limit system in 1993 to 2021, Mount Horeb was held well below the state average funding levels for other districts. According to Baird’s analysis, if Mt. Horeb’s revenues had been at the state average since 1993-94, they could have contributed an additional $46 million dollars to the education of their students. Ironically, the total amount of the 2017 and 2022 referendums was $43 million. AEF has seen this pattern over and over: Voters want a level playing field to fund priorities for their students. Where they can, they pass referendums to collect funds, allowing the district to get to the average spending of other districts. What’s particularly unfair is that the state funding system favors a lucky few districts that are allowed to raise a lot more revenue, thus spending significantly more. Local taxpayers foot the entire first-year cost before state aid payments begin to cover a portion of the costs, creating another loss for low-revenue districts. What’s so concerning for AEF is that many school districts, despite needs including critical safety infrastructure, can’t pass a referendum or won’t even consider making the attempt because of voter opposition. Thus the limited pool of state aid remains available for districts that don’t pass referendums, another loss.

A recent report from the WI Counties Association research arm, Forward Analytics, indicates that over the 30 years since revenue limits were implemented, low-revenue districts were less likely to attempt a referendum, and they were also less likely to get referenda passed. Over the entire period studied, 58% of all referendums passed. For low-revenue districts, less than half were approved. Further, 78 school districts during the revenue limit era have never even tried to use the referendum option.

Lawmakers and voters should know that the unequal system that allows some districts to be funded at significantly higher levels than others is now clearly creating safety risks for students in low revenue districts across the state.

The last biennial budget made major inroads to improving equity of our school funding system. AEF will be advocating for another state budget once again focused on improving equity in our system. If the legislature enacts the same improvements in the revenue limit system as they did in the 2023-25 biennial budget, 90% of districts will be funded within 10% of each other. After more than 30 years, now with a new understanding of how student safety is directly connected to school funding, our next state budget should have no question about priorities and focus.

Thank goodness for the generosity and foresight of the voters, School Board, and educators in Mount Horeb. It’s time for all students across Wisconsin to be as well cared for as they are in that community. 

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AEF is a membership organization made up of more than 60 public school districts, including the Mount Horeb Area School District, that in total educate about 100,000 students across the state. Over our 30 year history, we have advocated for a system of school funding that provides an equal opportunity for all students, regardless of what their school district spent in the benchmark year of 1993.