The Prescott School District, like nearly all school districts in Minnesota and Wisconsin, is currently struggling with the constant back and forth of school funding tied to lower enrollment numbers dropping across the area.
Prescott School Superintendent Jim Reif said the school enrollment is currently at approximately 1,146, which is down from the three-year average. Reif said there is significant housing development coming to Prescott that may help draw families into the area.
“The way things are calculated, like a lot of school districts in Wisconsin, we have declining enrollment. So when we actually punch it into with the three year average, we get a number of 1,219. I am excited to hear that there’s some possibilities of a great river development moving a little bit faster, and hopefully in the next four to five years, we’ll be adding about 242 houses to the southeast side of town, and hopefully in the summer of 2027, a 102 unit apartment complex actually right up in about a block away from the high school.
Reif said there are currently a lot of discussions with state legislators about more special education funds from the state.
“One thing we’re challenging here with Madison is, the state of Wisconsin just released that over this biennium, so this year and next year, they’re going to collect $2.6 billion more than they thought they were going to collect. That’s billion with a B. So one thing we’re really pushing is when they did school funding last time, they made a very fast budget deal to get in under a federal limit that passed, they promised us 42-45% of special education costs would be covered. And then about four months later, in the middle of the fall, we found out that, no, it’s really only going to be 35%. So we are lobbying hard to all of our state representatives and state senators and saying, hey, you found $2.6 billion more could take about $200 million to make every single school in the state of Wisconsin hit that 42% mark, and that’s only 200 million you’d still have 2.4 billion left to play with. But that, even that little bit would really, really help every school district in Wisconsin.
Reif was featured on In Depth on KDWA, tune in this week or find it online at KDWA.com.