Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to expand Wisconsin’s school voucher program could cost nine different school districts more than $1 million each in state aid, according to a new Legislative Fiscal Bureau report released Monday.
The LFB’s analysis laid out several different scenarios in which approximately $8 million in state funding would be redistributed from the nine school districts to over 300 more if state lawmakers choose to enact Walker’s voucher expansion proposal. The proposal would expand private school vouchers, which give people another option other than attending failing public schools, to nine additional districts in the state.
Madison’s school district, for example, would lose more than $800,000 in funding from the state government, which accounts for about 1.4 percent of its current state aid, according to the report.
In developing its report, the LFB assumed 110 public school students in each of the nine districts would instead enroll in private schools using a state voucher.
Under Walker’s plan, districts with a total K-12 student body of at least 4,000 and two or more schools that the Department of Public Instruction rated as failing to meet state performance expectations in the same year would qualify for the voucher program.
Walker’s proposal would also cap the program’s expansion at 500 students for the 2013-’14 school year and 1,000 students the following year.
Walker announced the school voucher plan as part of his biennial budget proposal earlier this year. While most state Republicans support the expansion, several Republicans and all Democrats are opposed to the idea.
