By Kellen Olshefski
Correspondent
The Elkhorn Area School District hosted a community information meeting regarding its upcoming operational referendum on the November ballot on Monday night at Elkhorn Area High School, offering community members an opportunity to learn more about the referendum and ask the school board and district administrators any questions they might have.
For those who missed the informational session, a recorded version of the event is available on YouTube at youtube.com/live/JtIOWswyTFo.
The evening began with a presentation from EASD District Administrator Jason Tadlock and EASD Business Manager Bill Trewyn on the operational referendum, the need and how the district came to the decision to go to referendum this November.
Trewyn began by sharing a short video created by the Wisconsin School Public Relations Association on how school finance works in Wisconsin.
According to that video, which can be found in full on the school district website’s page dedicated to the operational referendum at elkhorn.k12.wi.us/page/operational-referendum-2024, the majority of school funding comes from a combination of state aid and local property taxes known as the revenue limit, which acts as a cap per student that a school district can spend each year, even if district costs exceed that limit.
The video explained that from 1994 to 2009, the revenue caps were adjusted for inflation, allowing districts to keep up with ongoing needs, but districts have been falling farther and farther behind since 2010.
By the end of 2025, the video said the revenue limit will have fallen more than $3,300 behind inflation per student, equating to about a $9.57 million decrease in Elkhorn over its about 2,900 students.
When state funding falls below costs, the video said districts have to use money from their general funds to cover the gap, taking money away from other important needs, such as staffing, the largest part of a district’s staffing, as well as transportation, operations, technology and maintenance.
While many districts have worked hard to balance their budgets by deferring maintenance and cutting staff for example, the video said there is only so much that can be cut, and as such, districts are turning to their communities for help.
Since the arrival of revenue limits in 1993, the video said more than 80% of school districts have gone to an operational referendum, many multiple times.
Following the video, Trewyn explained that when revenue limits were introduced in 1993, school districts were locked in at what they were spending per student at that time and limited to annual increases based on the consumer price index. At that time, he said school district spending varied across the state and Elkhorn was one of the lower-spending districts at about $5,200 per student.
These increases kept up with CPI until the housing crisis of 2008, at which time he said the state pulled out from the annual increase for the first time.
Two years later came Act 10, which he said resulted in a significant reduction of about $525, and in the years that followed increases were determined in each state budget process rather than mirroring the CPI like they had prior to 2008.
Now in his 12th year with the district, Tadlock said EASD has been faced with an estimated shortfall typically between $700,000 to $1 million each year that it’s had to make up for and close the gap.
Part of that strategy, he said, has been efficiency in staffing through using attrition, noting the district eliminated six positions at the middle school in his first year. He also noted that in addition to cutting from the budget, the district has focused on growing the district’s revenue as well.
In meeting with legislators several years ago here in Elkhorn, Tadlock said he had asked when the state could get back to matching the school funding with the CPI, with the inflationary increases, because schools can live within their means, within a budget, never have to go to referendum, and had proven so from 1993 to 2008.
Tadlock said he was told it wasn’t going to happen but that the mechanism was there to close that gap, that mechanism being to go to referendum and putting the control of funding in the hands of the local community.
“It’s a paradigm shift that is a mechanism that was put in place all the way back when revenue limits were established in 1993, however it’s not a mechanism that was really widely used until the funding stopped matching with the consumer price index,” he said.
For the full story, please see the print edition of the Elkhorn Independent.
