RIVER FALLS — After the state increased special education reimbursement funding for schools, many celebrated what would come as a relief for districts in Wisconsin. That relief has begun to turn into anxiety after the early estimates have not lived up to the lofty increase promised.

River Falls School District Director of Finance and Facilities Lynette Coy shared crucial budgetary information with the River Falls Board of Education last week.

“When the 2025-27 biennium budget was passed, a lot of us in the room and organizations that we are affiliated with were really promoting and encouraging the legislature to increase special education funding,” Coy said. “Although it was not passed at a percentage that some of us may have thought it should be, we were still celebrating what the expectation was.”

Coy said when the budget passed, schools were told special education reimbursement would be 42% for 2025-26, moving to 45% in 2026-27. Special education reimbursement is the process of school districts receiving a percentage of their spending from the prior year as part of the following year’s aid.

Special education spending has increased over time, but reimbursement has not followed, coming down from its 70% peak in the 1960s and 1970s.

The percentages were never a guarantee, as the reimbursement operates as a pool of funding that is distributed until it runs out, not until the percentage is reached at every school. Reimbursement came in at 30.64% in 2024-25. Coy said finance directors were not expecting the full 42% because the state had budgeted 33.3% reimbursement and came in nearly three percentage points lower back in 2024-25. This year, the estimated reimbursement was 42%, and the first early estimate from the Department of Public Instruction came in at 35%.

“They always use a conservative estimate because districts are still reporting their data, and they don’t want to claw back money from districts,” Coy said. “We do think that it will end up slightly higher than that, but this is something we need to keep our eyes on and plan for, because if it does come in at 35%, the way that that impacts the budget that we were using and planning on is about $250,000.”

Cell Phone Policy

Superintendent David Bell spoke about a new state law that requires districts to create policies that prohibit the use of certain “wireless communication devices” during instructional time by July 1.

“Do we have a policy now? No, we don’t. We do have handbook expectations. We do have general school expectations that communicate to our students and families what our expectations for use of wireless communication devices are, but it’s not specifically addressed in a policy,” Bell said.

Bell recommended the policy go through committee as well as first and second readings through the board like any other policy to land on the right one for the district. During the meeting, Bell outlined what the state law was, and how it will shape the district policy. The law defines a wireless communication device as “a portable wireless device that has the capability to provide voice, messaging, or other data communication between 2 or more parties.” It lists cell phones, tablet computers, laptop computers and gaming devices as examples. Bell said some other devices including certain smart watches would also meet the definition. The school district would need to either define instructional time or restrict device usage at any time that “could even arguably be considered ‘instructional time.’”

Devices to manage pupil health included in individualized education programs or that are authorized by a teacher for educational use during instructional time cannot be restricted. Students would also have the ability to use devices in an emergency situation.

“What became abundantly clear was it wasn’t working,” Bell said. “It was a huge stressor on teachers to navigate. It was confusing for students because there is different expectations from first block to second block to third block.”

District Report Card

The school received its district report card, scoring a four-star, exceeds expectations rating overall.

River Falls saw a decrease in achievement from 83.4% to 81.6% (meaning achievement was higher or the same as 81.6% of districts in the state), but increases from 65.3% to 70.3% in growth, 58.6% to 63.2% in target group outcomes and 52.4% to 63.4% in on-track to graduation. River Falls placed third of eight Big Rivers Conference schools in achievement, third in math achievement and third in English language arts achievement.

Private school vouchers

The board provided Board Member Alison Page with voting information for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards Delegate Assembly. Bell said the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and the Legacy Independent Charters are state funded, meaning they are “uncoupled” from public school aid. The state budget has separate line items for those schools and public schools.

As for the Racine Statewide Program, Special Needs Program and New Independent Charters are funded through state aid reductions to public school districts.

The vote is to gauge whether or not school districts would like to see the uncoupling of these programs from public school state aid. The WASB vote would not alter the current law either way, instead deciding how WASB advocates in the future.

“If a student participates in one of these programs from our school district, our aid goes down, and it goes to that other program,” Bell said. “Decoupling proposes that all choice programs and independent charter payments would be exclusively state funded.”

Bell gave pros and cons from the River Falls district’s perspective. He said if decoupling goes down as the state not decreasing state aid to their district, he could see it as a good thing. On the flip side, Bell said there is no “direct line of sight” from how much aid would be siphoned to the programs from public schools.

“It might not be realistic to assume that decoupling means all state aid is going to stay with public schools, and at least with the current process, there’s clarity for the taxpayers to know how much their local levy supports private voucher programs,” Bell said.

Bell said the choice best for the district will come down to how much faith the district has in state support for public schools weighed against support for voucher programs. Rather than giving Page a voting decision, the board voted to empower Page to vote in the best interest of the district, as new information can come to the floor on the day of the vote.

Other business

• Approved a plan to increase the community service fund balance to 15-20% over the course of three years.
• Awarded a Wildcat Pride Award to River Falls Sports Broadcasting for keeping many in the community knowledgeable and aware of local sports and giving some access from afar.
• Heard a presentation on early childhood special education in the community.