Wisconsin’s top education official is calling for an overhaul of the state’s school-funding formula as voters prepare to decide more than 70 local referendum questions seeking roughly $1.6 billion. State Superintendent Jill Underly used her sixth State of Education address Thursday to argue that the formula no longer matches student needs, pushing a long-running fiscal dispute into the final weeks before the Nov. 3 election.

Underly said the system places too much weight on enrollment, district spending and property values rather than the actual cost of educating students. Her remarks, reported by the Wisconsin Examiner, did not arrive with a complete replacement formula. The Department of Public Instruction has submitted the first portion of its 2027–29 budget request, covering agency operations, libraries, schools for deaf and blind students, cybersecurity and educator-misconduct investigations. DPI says the portion addressing categorical aids and other major school supports will come in November.

Local ballots show why the statewide question is urgent. More than 70 fall school referenda seek about $1.6 billion, including operating requests that would let districts exceed state-set revenue limits. A referendum review found 17 questions for one-time building costs, eight for permanent recurring operating support and the rest for temporary operating authority. Eight districts are returning to voters after spring proposals failed.

The broader pattern is not simply that districts want more money. The nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum found in a recent analysis that voters approved 46 of 75 school referenda in April, a 61.3% passage rate. It also found that 84% of those spring questions funded operations rather than construction. The Forum said the gap between districts at the 90th and 10th percentiles of per-pupil revenue limits widened from 24.6% in 2005 to 37.6% in 2025. It linked repeated referendum use to revenue limits lagging inflation, higher post-pandemic costs, expiring federal relief and declining enrollment.

Wisconsin’s mechanism combines state school aid and local property taxes under a revenue limit. An approved operating referendum raises that district’s limit, which gives local voters control but can widen differences between communities that pass requests and those that do not. DPI’s finance portal publishes tax-levy, referendum, debt and shared-cost data used to track those differences.

Any formula rewrite would require agreement among the governor and Legislature through the next biennial budget. The election will determine who holds those offices, while the delayed second phase of DPI’s request means voters will not see the agency’s complete school-aid proposal beforehand. No unilateral announcement by the superintendent can change the statutory formula. That timing leaves two decisions moving on separate tracks: communities must vote on immediate local financing, and state leaders elected in November will decide whether Wisconsin changes the rules that have made referenda a recurring part of school budgets.