Tracking Wisconsin's Recent Public School Budget Scandals

Wisconsin’s public schools are proving just how little taxpayers can trust them to be good stewards of their money.

Four districts in particular have been in the hot seat for financial mismanagement. Their blunders have included repeatedly missing financial reporting deadlines, miscalculating revenues and expenses, and failing to track outgoing funds. The impact to the classroom has been so severe that, shockingly, many of the officials responsible for this mismanagement have faced actual consequences. Here is the rundown of what’s been exposed so far.

Milwaukee

Over the past year, Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) proved beyond any doubt just how irresponsible its been with its taxpayer funds. Late last year, MPS missed four deadlines in a row for filing financial reports with the state. As a penalty, MPS lost $81 million in state aid. District administrators kept this a secret from the school board for months. Word finally leaked out to the public in June when DPI withheld the first $16.6 million from MPS, which was for special education. The outrage was universal. Even Gov. Evers was forced to admit there was a problem. In July, he ordered two external audits of the school district. The superintendent Keith Posley resigned on June 30^th. The missing reports are now all due to DPI in September 2024. MPS has a $1.5 billion budget for the 2024-25 school year, which includes $140 million from a referendum approved in April.

Wauwatosa

Some of the Wauwatosa School District’s money problems shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone. After all, the board approved a $95.9 million budget last October with a built-in $7.1 million deficit. Apparently, that’s grown to $8 million, according to the new finance director, due to overspending. There’s another $4.2 million “error” that no one can explain, though the district is sure that nothing illicit is involved. That means, the district is currently over $12 million in the red. Meanwhile, it’s asking voters to approve two referendums this fall: one is a $16 million non-recurring operational referendum and the other is for $60 million in capital improvements.

Glendale-River Hills School District

The Glendale-River Hills School District is also struggling with bookkeeping. In the spring, it announced that it made an accounting error in its budget, and it turned out the district was $3.6 million in the red. The business manager resigned in January after attempting to explain to the board how she made those mistakes. The superintendent resigned a month later.

Two years ago, the district had a fund balance of $4.3 million. That’s all gone now. Five years ago, voters approved a $7.9 million non-recurring referendum that generated $1.58 million a year in operating revenue. That expires after this year. Now, the district is asking voters to approve a two-year $9 million non-recurring referendum that will generate $4.5 million annually starting this year.

Monona Grove School District

The Monona Grove School District has apparently had a budget deficit for the past three years that no one noticed until this past summer. Administrators were mindlessly writing out checks, while unknowingly eating into the district’s fund balance. Now, there’s not enough cash left to pay the bills. The district finally had to come clean to the public last month. It’s too late to get a referendum on the ballot, the board voted to borrow $7 million to pay the bills. It currently plans to pay that back out of the operating budget.

As districts take emergency action to salvage some goodwill with the public, they’re attempting to shift the blame onto Republicans for not giving them enough money. The MacIver Institute has reported repeatedly, the legislature has provided historic funding increases to public schools for the last several budgets. As the upcoming budget cycle plays out, MacIver will continue to investigate those claims of poverty while holding public schools accountable for how well or poorly they manage the funds taxpayers have entrusted to them.