SOUTH WAYNE — The state’s small, sparsely populated school districts are sharing $25 million in aid payments that can be used to offset any costs the district incurs in educating its students.
Sparsity aid was paid on the third Monday in September.
The School District of Black Hawk received an additional $44,000 in sparsity aid for the year. Superintendent Willy Chambers said the added funding doesn’t specifically help one area of operation, but the additional revenue to the general fund is useful to the district in a number of ways.
“Of course it helps,” Chambers said. “Any bit of money is beneficial.”
The program was first created as part of the 2007-09 biennial budget, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. It is meant to provide aid to districts with small economies and sparse enrollment.
Area districts which received sparsity aid include Albany, Argyle, Black Hawk, Juda, Monticello and Pecatonica.
The amount of aid per student increased from $300 to $400 for the 2018-19 year.
Schools are eligible for the aid if the previous year’s enrollment was 745 students or less and if the number divided by the square mileage of the district is less than 10. Juda has 247 eligible members within the district over 57 miles, which equates to just over 4.3 students per square mile.
With 399 enrolled students across nearly 134 square miles, Black Hawk has almost three students per square mile. As a result, the district took in about $160,000, a jump from roughly $116,000 last year.
Chambers said the district hired a new elementary school teacher to adjust to enrollment numbers and that the sparsity aid has helped to partially offset the cost of hiring another instructor.
“If that went away, it’d be a significant hit to the district,” he said.
Pecatonica Area School District was given almost $139,000 for the 2017-18 school year. Recently, its sparsity aid was increased to $190,000. Albany saw a bump from nearly $126,000 to $167,000, despite a decrease of seven students. In Argyle, while the total number of members dropped by eight according to numbers from the state DPI, sparsity aid increased from over $92,000 to more than $121,000 in the 2018-19 school year. Monticello, despite a decrease of 28 eligible members within the district, took in an additional $30,000 with a total disbursement of $145,000.
Juda Superintendent Traci Davis said the district feels “grateful, as usual” for the aid. The district took in just under $99,000 for the school year. Last year, it was just over $74,000.
Stopgap measures have been put in place for two districts within the state which lost eligibility for sparsity aid because student membership exceeded 745 but remained under 10 students per square mile of the district.
According to a release from the state Department of Public Instruction, the 145 districts receiving aid have a total membership of 63,701 students, which is about 7 percent of statewide membership for the 2017-18 school year. The department is currently looking to revise its 2019-21 budget for the program to include any district with fewer than 10 members per square mile even if the total of enrolled students exceeds 745.
Based on projections, approximately 85 school districts would be eligible for the second-tier sparsity payment. It would be $100 per member, not $400. The budget request would require an additional $9.79 million in each year of the biennium for a total allocation of $70 million for sparsity aid.