Forest County has long struggled with getting funding to provide services.
Between the Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest and two Tribal reservations, only about 15% of the land in the county is taxable.
In recent years, referendums to raise taxes to cover costs have failed at both the county level and with the School District of Crandon.
Crandon District Administrator Jason Bertrand says while it makes budgeting difficult, he understands.
“We know that about 60% of our families here are part of some type of state or federal program where they're getting funding, whether it's a food share program or [other assistance],” said Bertrand. “It's just our county is not wealthy, so to be able to ask them for to be taxed even more than what they already are, it's just a very difficult thing to do.”
Bertrand says on top of the failed referendum, the state’s new biennial budget for education has remained the same as the last one, despite the rising costs.
He says its especially frustrating to see urban districts like Milwaukee get a 17% increase in state general aid from last school year to this one, while rural ones like Crandon get about 13% less.
“It's us rural schools that are kind of raising our hands saying, ‘what about us?’” said Bertrand.
There are a couple federally funded programs that help support districts like Crandon’s.
One is the Secure Rural Schools program.
As WXPR previously reported, the program provides any where from $80,000 to $400,000 to the district in lieu of timber harvest payments from Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest.
But that program hasn’t been reauthorized since it expired in 2023, despite strong bi-partisan support for it.
While Bertrand was in Washington D.C. with students urging lawmakers to renew the program, he learned an even larger federal funding source for the district was at-risk. He got an email from the state Department of Public Instruction that they may not see Impact Aid funding.
“Which would be a massive blow to our school because that is close to 10% of our budget,” said Bertrand.
About 20 school districts in Wisconsin receive Impact Aid funding including Crandon, Laona, Wabeno, Lac du Flambeau, and Lakeland Union.
Started in the 1950s, Impact Aid is the oldest K-12 education program within the federal government.
It provides direct federal support for public school districts that lack state and local tax base due to federal ownership of that land.
This can be for districts that serve military bases, have families that live or work on federal property, ones that live in low rent public housing, or, in the case of Northwoods districts, have Native American students living on tribal land held in federal trust.
“It's a formula-based program, and so depending on need and all these other formulas that entails to calculate their exact payment. But it differs every year,” said Cherise Imai, the Executive Director for the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools.
There are two issues affecting Impact Aid right now.
One is the government shutdown itself. Imai says its not a forwarded funded program, so there needs to be a budget to fund it.
But the bigger concern for Imai is that the vast majority of staff in Department of Education’s Office of Impact Aid were fired as part of the department’s recent reduction in force.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said on Oct. 15 that future funding won’t be affected by the reduction-in-force effort.
While a judge has temporarily halted that layoff plan, Imai says there’s still a lot of uncertainty.
“We're worried about delayed payments. There's no technical assistance for school districts that are applying for the program this current year,” said Imai. “So even if there is money that comes down, currently, there's no staff there to monitor program, assist states, assist districts, or process the funding so it can be sent to the districts.”
Imai says she’s heard from some districts across the country that are already feeling the impact with delayed payments.
“It's going to have significant disruptions to their operations if they have to reduce staff or cut essential programs,” said Imai. “Several of the districts have already reported that they're only doing spending that is necessary at the moment, but they really cut back, or are using the reserves or borrowing money to meet payroll.”
Bertrand tried to visit the Department of Education while he was in Washington D.C., but no one was in the office due to the government shutdown.
He says the School District of Crandon is okay for this school year, but the school board did recently vote to borrow up to a million dollars if necessary.
Without both impact aid and the Secure Rural Schools funding, Bertrand says the district would be out of its reserve funding within two years.
“We get over a million dollars from them a year, so to have that cut from us would be devastating,” said Bertrand.
Bertrand is still hopeful that once the government reopens, Impact Aid will resume quickly.
