Green Bay school district faces at least $10M budget deficit in 2026-27. What comes next?

Yahoo

11-03-2025

Three years after announcing a $36 million budget deficit, the Green Bay school district is still facing a fiscal cliff.
Despite school consolidations and other cost-cutting moves, the district is now facing at least a $10 million to $12 million budget shortfall in 2026-27, superintendent Vicki Bayer told the board at its Monday meeting.
As it prepares, Green Bay is also waiting on a state budget that administrators worry may not be set by the start of the school year. Political back-and-forth has meant it's not clear whether districts will be seeing Gov. Tony Evers' proposed $325 education funding increase per student, and Bayer expressed concern that lawmakers wouldn't be able to agree on a budget in time for the district to make difficult financial decisions.
"The word escapes me to address the situation we've been put in by the way schools are funded in the state of Wisconsin,' Bayer said Monday night.
Green Bay is staring down the barrel of another multimillion-dollar deficit within the next two years. It's not the only one — districts across Wisconsin are facing financial struggles as inflation squeezes set district revenue limits.
'Our goal is, when we're reducing our budget, to have the least amount of negative impact on our children. At some point, the state of Wisconsin has to realize we can't keep cutting without hurting our children,' Bayer said.
It currently projects a $10 million to $12 million deficit, although that's including Evers' proposed $325 per pupil, despite it being tied up in courts — without it, that projection goes up by around $6 million.
The district's been forecasting budget deficits since June 2022, when it initially projected a $36 million deficit for the 2024-25 school year. By May 2024, it had closed that gap by downsizing staff, reducing costs and consolidating schools, among other cuts. It also relied on federal pandemic relief funding, or ESSER funds, that expired last September to bridge the gap.
But the core issues driving the original deficit still exist. Bayer and Angie Roble, the district's chief financial officer, pointed to the district's low revenue ceiling, meaning it can only bring in so much per pupil, and low special education funding reimbursement rates, which mean the district has to reassign general funds to meet students' needs.
In addition, the district's $16.5 million operating referendum ends the same year, 2026-27. It'll likely have to turn to voters for additional operating dollars.
With all that in mind, the district is planning with no idea what the state budget will look like. Administrators need to know how much they'll be receiving from the state before they can start deciding how much they'll need to ask for in a new operating referendum.
Right now, Green Bay is considering a variety of options to address the projected deficit. Most would affect teacher pay and benefits: on the table are things like putting a hold on base wage negotiations until the state budget is passed, freezing annual salary 'step' increases for a year or replacing Green Bay's income protection plan, the district-sponsored short-term disability plan, for a voluntary employee-paid version.
The district is also considering reducing or closing Katherine Johnson Academy of Enriched Virtual Learning, its online-only option. When the board was initially considering school consolidations in November 2023, it debated closing KJ Academy.
Online enrollment numbers show the school had 66 students as of September; however, parents, teachers and board members emphasized the transitional nature of the school, meaning students come and go. One teacher stated enrollment at one point this year included 119 unique students.
If the district doesn't ultimately receive the extra $325 per pupil, those changes could quickly get more drastic.
'Our recommendation at that point would probably be taking a look at class sizes and layoffs,' Bayer said.
Green Bay isn't the only Wisconsin district facing financial difficulties, but it's in a particularly difficult situation because of how state school funding works out.
In the 1990s, the state put a ceiling on how much funding school districts could bring in per pupil, and districts who spent more conservatively at the time, like Green Bay, were stuck at that low level. That cap initially increased slightly with inflation each year, but that changed in 2009.
'School districts never got caught up,' Bayer said. 'We've never received the funding to make up for the stop in that inflationary increase.'
Districts have also had to deal with factors like declining enrollment, which led to Green Bay's school consolidations.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Green Bay school district faces at least $10M budget deficit in 2026-27