THE EQUAL ACT

EQUAL Act — Equitable Quality for Underfunded And Local Schools

Fix the School Funding Formula — Appleton Shouldn't Be Punished for Being Efficient

Wisconsin's public school funding formula is broken — and Fox Valley students are paying the price.

The current formula is rooted in a snapshot from 1993. Districts that spent heavily back then were essentially rewarded with a higher funding baseline that has compounded ever since. Districts like Appleton, which managed their resources wisely, were locked into a lower baseline — and have never caught up. Today, some Wisconsin districts receive more than $5,000 more per student in state funding than Appleton simply because of decisions made over thirty years ago.

That's not equity. That's a penalty for fiscal responsibility.

Reive's proposal is simple: scrap the outdated formula and replace it with a straightforward, transparent base per-student reimbursement — the same dollar amount for every student, in every district, across Wisconsin. From there, additional factors like special education needs, poverty levels, or rural transportation costs can be layered in fairly and transparently.

Every child deserves the same foundation. Every district that spends taxpayer dollars wisely deserves to be rewarded — not punished — for doing so.