Sun Prairie finance director warns of ‘‘fiscal cliff’’ as state funding lags and ESSER aid ends

Phil Fry, director of business and finance for the Sun Prairie Area School District, said in a screencast for the school board that a combination of state policy changes and the end of one-time federal COVID relief will leave the district facing a ‘‘fiscal cliff.’’ He said the district is roughly $3,300 per student behind where it would be under the old inflation-linked revenue-cap formula, which multiplies out to about $27–28 million for Sun Prairie’s roughly 8,400 students.

Fry traced the change to revenue limits first adopted in 1993, which were originally tied to inflation, and a 2009 legislative change that removed the inflationary index and replaced it with annual per‑pupil increases set by the legislature. “Revenue caps were tied to increases to inflation,” Fry said, and after the 2009 change “there’s been a dramatic variance between what inflationary increases would have been and what the actual per‑pupil increase has been.”

He pointed to statewide trends he said underscore the local impact: Fry said Wisconsin’s share of general purpose revenue spent on public education…