Tensions rise as vouchers pick up traction across Wisconsin
When Superintendent Sue Kaphingst moved to Chilton less than a year ago, she marveled at how the northeastern Wisconsin community rallied around its local school district.
Nestled to the east of Lake Winnebago about 75 miles north of Milwaukee, Chilton and its 3,900 residents felt cohesive. Football stars acted in the high school musical. Parents, students and school board members created a yarn art installation on the Chilton Middle School lawn to demonstrate that they were all connected. The high school theater was built with millions from a local family who owned pet supplies company Kaytee Products.
But there's a new development here and in other communities across Wisconsin that will test those ties: school vouchers. Four years after the GOP-led Legislature approved a statewide voucher program, the number of private schools registered to receive taxpayer-funded tuition subsidies has sharply increased. Together with the longstanding Milwaukee voucher program and the more recent Racine voucher program, close to 300 private, predominantly religious schools from Lake Superior to the Illinois border are poised to receive taxpayer funding for an estimated 33,750 students this fall, according to Gov. Scott Walker's proposed budget.
For the first time, the Chilton School District could face either an enrollment drop because children will use a voucher to attend the local Catholic school they couldn't otherwise afford, or more likely, the district will have to raise taxes to fund vouchers for children who already attend the private school.
Together, the state's voucher programs are expected to cost about $263 million in 2017-'18, according to Walker's budget proposal.
While President Donald Trump is pitching to boost federal spending on school choice programs by $1.4 billion — a down payment on his promise of $20 billion — Wisconsin is already demonstrating the complexities of expanding private-school choice to exurban America. Now that private schools outside of densely populated Milwaukee and Racine can tap into voucher funding, new tensions are bubbling up between religious conservatives eager to offer more students a religious-based education and district advocates who fear losing resources to private schools now competing for the same pot of public dollars.
"There's only so much money," said Kaphingst, the Chilton superintendent. "You're taking from one for the other."
Types of schools
Vouchers are taxpayer-funded tuition subsidies that help children attend private schools, the vast majority of which are religious. In Wisconsin, the annual voucher payments will rise to about $7,500 per K-8 pupil and around $8,000 per high school student this fall.
To qualify for a voucher in the statewide program, students have to come from families earning no more than 185% of the federal poverty level, or about $45,000 for a family of four or about $52,000 if the parents are married. The income limit for the Racine and Milwaukee programs is 300% of the federal poverty level.
Vouchers are different than charter schools, which are fully public schools that are privately operated, often by nonprofits. Charter schools receive freedom from some state rules and school district oversight in exchange for demonstrating higher-than-average student achievement, the terms of which are outlined in their charters, or contracts.
"School choice" refers to vouchers and charters and other options parents can choose outside their assigned neighborhood school. But vouchers are the most controversial because they usually support religious schools that don't have to follow all the same rules as public schools. Private schools that accept vouchers are not legally obligated to serve all children with special needs, and they do not have to disclose all the same data as public schools.
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Milwaukee hosts the country's longest-running urban school voucher program. For decades, Wisconsin's outstate city and school leaders watched from a distance the constant opening and shuttering of private schools in the 27-year-old Milwaukee Parental Choice Program — and the battles over funding and accountability.
It was an environment alien to their own communities. In some Wisconsin towns, there is an elementary, middle and high school, and maybe a single religious school — like Chilton Area Catholic School.
Then in 2011, the GOP-led Legislature approved replicating the Milwaukee voucher program in Racine.
Two years later, Gov. Scott Walker signed into law a statewide expansion and a separate special-needs voucher program. Suddenly, private schools all over the state were eligible for a public funding stream. But would vouchers change the culture of the schools? Would administrative costs for filing paperwork for the program, and being subject to state testing requirements for voucher students, negate the benefits?
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State law caps voucher-student enrollment at 2% of a district's population this year, a figure that is rising 1% each subsequent year of the program — unless lawmakers act to lift the cap more quickly.
Jim Bender, president of the advocacy group School Choice Wisconsin, said private schools are seeing that they can pretty much operate the way they did before vouchers. And some of them are seeing enrollment grow as a result.
"For small private schools, that's a new thing: enrollment growth," Bender said. "We're talking to dozens of schools that are waiting for the cap to rise to 3% or 4%, where it makes sense for them to get in. Only being able to enroll four or five kids barely covers auditing costs."
The Racine program is limited geographically, and the Milwaukee program is already saturated with schools. But the statewide program is just now getting traction. A total of 163 private schools statewide registered to join the program this fall, including 31 new participants.
That's where the tension comes in.
Hidden funding
Starting last year, state law called for districts to raise taxes to pay for local students using vouchers — whether they were already enrolled in a private school or not. The cost shows up on a homeowner's property tax bill as part of the public school levy. There's no separate line item telling taxpayers the cost of the voucher program in their district.
"We've been put in the unenviable position of middleman," said Colleen Timm, the superintendent of the Mishicot School District.
Mishicot's levy last year dropped to $9.22 per $1,000 of assessed property from $10.22. But Timm said it would have dropped lower if the district hadn't had to levy for students in the voucher program.
"If a separate tax bill came to people and said, this is what it's going to cost for vouchers, people might have more vocal thoughts about the program," Timm said. "But right now it's hidden and attributed to the public school portion of the tax bill."
Tonya Gubin, superintendent of the 2,000-student Waupun Area School District, said residents were taxed for 18 students using vouchers at nearby Central Wisconsin Christian School last year. She said 17 of them already attended the private school.
"If I was in their shoes, I'd totally take advantage of it," Gubin said. "Last year, it brought them around $148,000. You'd be dumb not to take advantage of the money coming in."
But she also worries about what might happen as vouchers continue to expand.
Some public school administrators worry about the future of their own resources as the cap on the number of local students who can use vouchers rises. They often make the argument that their schools serve more expensive and difficult students.
"I don't want public schools to be seen as the dumping ground as we get years down the road with vouchers," Gubin said. "Like, if you have special needs or mental health problems, you come here but all the elite kids get to go to the private school."
Many public-school leaders philosophically oppose the idea of taxpayers paying for religious education, especially without the same accountability.
Choice advocates point out that the cost of the traditional voucher isn't high enough to serve students with significant special needs, and that rates of students with disabilities in private schools appear lower because private schools aren't obligated to label the children in the same way as public schools.
More broadly, they say that parents want more choices, and that infusing competition into the education marketplace makes everyone work harder to keep kids and families happy. And, they say, public schools are still getting more money per pupil than voucher schools.
"It's a learning curve," said Bender, of School Choice Wisconsin. "This is the new normal, and we need to get out of that combative nature."
Tension in Watertown
Watertown, a mid-sized community halfway between Milwaukee and Madison, has 12 private, religious schools located around the local school district, which enrolls about 3,800 students.
Good Shepherd Lutheran School was considering joining the voucher program last year at this time when Kathy Wagner, a member of the church and also a former principal at Watertown Unified, organized a resistance effort.
"I don't believe in tax-supported private schools," Wagner said.
Good Shepherd has a scholarship program for children whose families wanted to attend but couldn't afford it, Wagner said. She believed it was the church's responsibility to raise those tuition funds independently.
Wagner's group hosted a meeting to share their concerns. The church hosted a community meeting with School Choice Wisconsin representatives. Then the church took the voucher option to the congregation for a vote.
It passed overwhelmingly.
Good Shepherd received approximately $70,000 in additional revenue last year for 11 children who qualified for the subsidies. All but three were already enrolled in the private school, said Principal Amy Gromowski.
"We never looked at it as a way to compete with the public school," Gromowski said. "I have a lot of admiration for their work. We pursued this option because it was one more way to minister to families."
This fall, two more Watertown private schools are poised to join the voucher program.
Joy, concern in Chilton
Liz Rollmann has been principal of Chilton Area Catholic School for more than a decade, during which student enrollment dropped from 140 to just 83 students.
"There is great support for Catholic education here," said Rollmann. "The problem is, a lot of families can't afford it."
When the priest of Good Shepherd Catholic Church announced in January that the school would join the voucher program this fall, parishioners applauded.
Jerry Mallmann, the owner of Chilton Furniture, was at the service. As a retailer, he thinks a little competition is good for the local schools.
"Most people don't know all the intricacies," he said. "If I go to the state teachers union, I hear negative things about vouchers. If I go to a Catholic school or conservative website, I hear good things about vouchers. It's hard to find a nonpartisan viewpoint. But who are we looking out for? The betterment of the kids? Or are there (teaching careers in public schools) we're trying to save?"
Kaphingst, Chilton's superintendent, is trying to balance the desires of the community and her role as the leader and chief advocate for the public system. Kaphingst attended Catholic schools as a child, but she still has reservations about the voucher program.
"I truly believe that parents should decide where to send their children to school," she said. "But I don't think it should fall on the backs of our taxpayers."
How children attend school in Wisconsin
In 2015-'16, Wisconsin was home to just over a million school-aged children. About 860,000 attended public schools. About 123,000 attended private schools: about 90,000 who paid tuition, and about 33,000 who used vouchers. About 20,000 children were home-schooled.
Source: Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction