State Senator Brad Pfaff recently posted in Facebook:

Property taxes are too high. It doesn't need to be this way.
Taxpayers are funding two school systems: public and voucher schools. While funding for private school vouchers continues to grow, funding for public schools has not kept pace with inflation or student needs, forcing districts to raise local property taxes or cut services.
Governor Tony Evers proposed a $1.2 billion increase in general school aid that could have frozen property tax hikes — but Republican lawmakers, who have been in control for the last 16 years, stripped it out of the final budget. As a result:
Most of the state’s 421 districts are seeing drops in state aid, while millions of dollars are diverted to voucher schools.
School districts have to make up the shortfall through local levies, which push property taxes up.
Local school districts are forced to hold referendums, increasing local property taxes, just to sustain their schools.
Strong public schools are the backbone of a strong state and strong economy. The legislature must fund our public schools not only to grow successful adults but also to alleviate the tax burden on hardworking homeowners!

There are many things wrong with the sentiment expressed here, and I want to address the constant attacks on the state voucher program.

First off, vouchers are not leeching money away from schools. Schools are funded at a per-pupil level by the state, which means that the more students a school district has, the more funding it gets. This also means that parents have a direct say on where they want to send their children, and can have the means to support their decision when they send their children to private schools. This rhetoric makes it appear that parents are stealing money from the schools that are rightfully theirs, when their children would not be supported with tax dollars to the school.

Secondly, the increasing costs of school are not because the state assembly is refusing to fund schools. We hear this all the time on the Wisconsin Association of School Boards that they're proud of being able to increase state funding to districts for the past ten years. This has been with a Republican Assembly and Senate. If anything, state funding has been well-rounded in recent years, except for when Governor Evers partially vetoed funds that were supposed to be a two-year COVID emergency revenue increase for schools, and turned it into a 400-year property tax increase. This has continued as school districts have used funds not for education, but for administrative roles that add to costs, while ignoring actual educational investments that could be made to add more very needed teacher aides to the classrooms.

Another reason property taxes are increasing is the prevalence of operating referendums throughout the state. The article Senator Pfaff comments on is right that 63% of school districts in the past three years have relied on referendums to receive funding from local property taxes, but the vast majority of these referendums are because schools need to downgrade with lower enrollment caused by lower birth rates for years, while also needing to upgrade facilities to accommodate the needs of a rapidly declining student body. These referendums increase property taxes a lot, and this is why it's important to encourage the making of families in our nation and to have a strong family policy in our nation.

It is very dishonest to blame the voucher program for increasing property taxes. We absolutely need them, and when I one day become a parent in the future, I want to be able to choose a school where I can be confident that my children can learn and grow. As a school board member in La Crosse I have always championed fiscal responsibility. I have at times voted no for adding more administrative roles that only deplete our funds, and I thought there were better options for the referendum that could've utilized local community investments than the referendum the previous board president forced down our throats.

Maybe we should be focusing on how to use the resources we have to make our school district more competitive in the region so that we can be a district of choice, and maybe politicians in Madison will finally leave parents alone who want to take extra care in their child's education.