MADISON – Senator Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) and Representative Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia) released the following statement after the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau (LAB) released Report 25-24, revealing shortcomings in how the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) collects, processes, and addresses annual financial reports for school districts across Wisconsin:
“Even as it distributes the state’s largest general appropriation of more than $14 billion to schools, DPI shockingly lacks necessary policy for real oversight,” Senator Wimberger stated. “The agency’s attempts to correct problems are unacceptably late every year, with a whopping 43% of school districts having material weaknesses in their audits. Deficiencies are chronic and perennial, and I’m not confident the Legislature has anywhere near a clear idea how tax dollars are spent on K-12 in Wisconsin. I suspect neither does DPI.”
“Instead of serving Wisconsin’s students, DPI has allowed deficiencies in hundreds of school districts to remain unaddressed for years. These problems only grow when DPI lacks the policies to help districts resolve them, and doesn’t even look at many of its reports until more than two months after it receives them. Superintendent Underly and her staff need to do their jobs and resolve these issues instead of hiding them from the public,” said Representative Wittke.
Report 25-24 found DPI lacks necessary written policies for reviewing school financial data, ensuring school districts submit their financial statements on time, and contacting districts that submit their statements past DPI’s established annual reporting deadline. By law, Wisconsin school districts are required to submit audited financial information to DPI.
In analyzing the statements, auditors issued at least one financial reporting deficiency for 370 of the 421 school districts. DPI policies require schools to submit plans describing actions they will take to address each deficiency. However, 281 districts had at least one repeat deficiency from the previous year’s reporting, while 262 of those districts’ repeat deficiencies were identified in at least four consecutive years of reporting. LAB found that DPI lacked formal internal policies to contact and work with school districts to address these repeat deficiencies.
LAB reported that 96 of Wisconsin’s 421 public school districts submitted Fiscal Year 2022-23 financial statements late. However, auditors found that the Department did not even begin to review reports for an average of 74.7 days after its established December 15 reporting deadline, and failed to track how the team tasked with reviewing the documents spent its time.
The audit which produced Report 25-24 was ordered by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee in August 2024 after it was announced that Milwaukee Public Schools would be losing millions in state aid due to its repeated late financial reports. DPI failed to disclose this withholding of funds until after Milwaukee voters approved a $252 referendum, leaving many taxpayers feeling deceived by state and local officials. Similar financial management concerns have been seen in the Monona Grove School District, which operated at a budget deficit for three consecutive years and nearly depleted its fund balance, and the Wauwatosa School District, which incurred a $4 million budget shortfall due to miscalculations.
