The scale of the disparity has fueled intense debate. Some policymakers argue the gap is primarily the result of systemic racism or unequal school resources. But does the data back up this notion?  Recently, I to try and determine what factors are truly driving this gap in the Badger State. 

This new analysis of Wisconsin’s statewide Forward Exam indicates that a significant share of the gap is driven not by racism, but by factors strongly correlated with race: especially poverty, disability status and family stability. This may sound like a distinction without a difference, but in reality it is key for figuring out how best to address the problem.  

Common policy solutions often focus on skin color as the driver of disparities. For instance, when he was state superintendent, now Gov. Tony Evers that one cause of the racial achievement gap is that too many people who work in schools “look like me.” Current Superintendent Jill Underly that “culturally responsive teaching” and diversification of the education workforce are among the keys to addressing the achievement gap.  

But ����’s not clear those steps are the right approach. Using data from the 2022-23 edition of the state’s Forward Exam, I conducted what is known as a mediation analysis. Mediation analysis attempts to figure out how or why something causes an effect by identifying the middle step —the “go-between” factor — that explains the relationship. The results of one such mediation analysis with poverty as the go-between is shown below. 

The direct pathway shows that as the percentage of African American students in a school goes from 0 to 100 percent, the proficiency rate on the Forward Exam would be expected to decline by about 39%. However, there is the “behind the scenes” path to consider as well. A school with 100% African American students would be expected to have poverty rates 69% higher than a school with no African American students, and high poverty is in turn correlated with about a 41% reduction in proficiency rates. The analysis shows schools with higher percentages of African American students also tend to have far higher poverty rates, which then play a major role in academic outcomes.

Decades of research show that economic disadvantage strongly affects academic performance. Students growing up in poverty often face barriers that can hinder learning, from unstable housing and food insecurity to limited access to books, educational materials and early learning opportunities. In Wisconsin, poverty rates among African American families are particularly high. More than in the state live below the poverty line, placing Wisconsin among the highest in the nation on that measure.

Another factor influencing achievement gaps is disability identification. African American students are identified for special education services at higher rates than their white peers in both as a whole, particularly in categories that rely heavily on subjective judgment, such as emotional disturbance or intellectual disability. Students receiving special education services on average score lower on standardized tests and have lower graduation rates than students without disabilities.

 The Forward Exam analysis found that disability status explains a smaller but still measurable portion of the achievement gap. About 3.6% of the relationship between race and proficiency was mediated by differences in disability rates.

Some influences on student outcomes cannot be directly measured in the school-level data that we have access to. One of the most significant is family structure. Research that children raised in two-parent households tend to experience stronger academic outcomes and fewer behavioral challenges. Two parents simply have more time and resources to devote to a child’s development, from supervising homework to reading together at home.

In Wisconsin, however, the rate of married African American adults is the lowest in the country—, well below the national average of 31% for African Americans nationwide. Although the precise impact cannot be quantified in school testing data, decades of social science research suggest family stability plays a meaningful role in shaping educational outcomes.

Survey data from the in 2020 — the most recent year for which there was a large enough sample size for each group in Wisconsin — shows that African American families in Wisconsin are less likely to read regularly to young children than white or Hispanic families. About 55% of Black families report reading to young children fewer than four days per week, compared with 33% of white families. It is important to note that this factor is likely also correlated with poverty, but teasing out any independent effect between the two is not possible with existing data. 

Those early literacy experiences matter. Foundational reading skills built before kindergarten strongly influence later academic success across subjects.

Wisconsin’s disparities are real and deeply concerning. But the research indicates that race itself is not the primary driver of the state’s academic divide. Poverty, disability status, and family stability  together explain a large share of the gap.

Strategies focused narrowly on racial identity — such as diversity training or race-based programs — may miss the deeper issues shaping student outcomes. Other approaches, such as  focusing aggressively on early literacy, have shown progress in other states. Mississippi, as has been well-documented in The74, dramatically improved reading outcomes through policies aligned with the “science of reading,” which emphasize systematic instruction in phonics, vocabulary and comprehension.  A significant achievement gap still exists in Mississippi, but at 25 points it is significantly smaller than Wisconsin’s, even as proficiency levels rise in the state across the board. 

Closing the gap will likely require policies that address the broader social and economic realities affecting students’ lives: reducing poverty, strengthening families, improving early literacy and targeting support to disadvantaged students regardless of race. Reduction will also require a focus on what can work in large urban districts like Milwaukee, where about 44% of the state’s African American students attend school. This district has been plagued by decades of and across the racial spectrum.

If Wisconsin hopes to move up from the bottom of the nation’s achievement-gap rankings, solutions will need to look beyond race, and stop accepting the soft bigotry of low expectations. 

New of these schools, shared exclusively with ����Ӱ��, was published Thursday by Education Reimagined, a national nonprofit that helps schools implement . It’s an approach where young people have ownership of their education, learn in their communities and show their knowledge through multiple ways, not just tests, according to the nonprofit. 

Over the 2024-25 school year, Education Reimagined studied in St. Paul, Minnesota; in LaFayette, New York; and in Mukwonago, Wisconsin —  a mix of urban, suburban and rural communities that enrolled a total of 388 K-12 students. More than 45% had individualized education programs or 504 plans — documents that spell out how needs will be met under the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

“In all the sites we studied, the systems are designed to fit the learner and their needs, not the other way around,” said Khara Schonfeld, one of the organization’s researchers. “They’re seeing differences as the norm as opposed to the exception. That means learners are showing up.”

That included mindsets that shifted how staff understood learning differences and student potential; different organizational structures; and key daily practices for student support and success.

The approach has produced positive academic results. At Norris School District, students with IEPs increase reading performance by an average of 8 percentage points and math by 4 percentage points per trimester. Avalon students with IEPs consistently for students with IEPs on math and reading tests. 

In the LaFayette Central School District, the opening of LaFayette Big Picture in 2008 correlated with graduation rates for students with IEPs in the district rising from a range of 50% to 70% to a scale of 95% to 100%.

Students who enrolled in these schools also experienced a decline in behavioral incidents and became more engaged in their education, according to the research.

“A lot of the learners came with past trauma, including education trauma — they had a hard time in previous schools,” she said. “So it all really focused on this idea of healing and making sure that they felt safe and cared for. We had a couple of alumni say, ‘I went to the school. I can talk to anyone about anything that I want to get or find out because the school taught me how to do that.”

Schonfeld said common accommodations students with disabilities need in traditional classroom settings are provided to everyone — a key factor in the learner-centered system’s success.

In Minnesota’s Avalon School, staff begin each day with a session where students and their advisors connect in a sensory-friendly setting  — an environment that reduces stimuli like harsh lighting and loud noises. Norris School District’s single campus, where 75% of the students have IEPs, celebrates small accomplishments that might go unnoticed, such as a student’s ability to hold an entire conversation, the case study said.

Leadership structures are also different at these schools. Avalon, a charter school, has a teacher-majority board that allows educators to redesign schedules and positions. LaFayette Big Picture School pairs students with mentors, while Norris School District has staff meetings every day.

Some daily practices include offering internships onsite to ensure students don’t have to be “ready” to travel outside the building to experience career education. The schools also interpret disruptive behavior as communication about unmet needs rather than misconduct, according to the research. For example, Avalon School uses a strategy called relational repair, where educators ask reflective questions after a disruptive behavior to build trust with students. At Norris, students are taught to name feelings to help staff find the right support during a behavioral incident.

This learner-centered framework has a positive ripple effect with families and educators, Schonfeld said. Parents of students at all three schools have shared they no longer have to fight for their child’s special education accommodations. 

Teachers also feel more supported and satisfied with their jobs, the researchers found. Avalon School has maintained a 90% year-to-year retention rate over two decades, with current teachers averaging 10 years of experience. At LaFayette, more than half of the staff have been at the school for at least nine years.

A group of Wisconsin parents, students, teachers, school districts and education advocates are suing the Legislature over the current school funding formula, arguing that the system does not meet the state’s obligation to provide educational opportunities to all students as required by the state Constitution. 

The was filed Monday evening in Eau Claire County Circuit Court by Madison-based nonprofit Law Forward and the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union.

The plaintiffs in the suit are led by the Wisconsin Parent Teacher Association and include five school districts, including Adams-Friendship Area School District, School District of Beloit, Eau Claire Area School District, Green Bay Area Public School District, Necedah Area School District, the teachers union of each respective district, eight Wisconsinites including teachers, parents, students and community members, as well as the Wisconsin Public Education Network. 

The lawsuit names the state Legislature, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), and the Joint Finance Committee and its Republican and Democratic members. 

Jeff Mandell, co-founder of Law Forward, told reporters during a press call Tuesday that schools have been doing their best to fully prepare students to be productive and active members of society but that the current funding system is making it almost impossible. 

“These folks are not magicians. They are not Rumpelstiltskin. They cannot turn straw into gold, and we do not have what we need for our schools to thrive,” Mandell said. 

Mandell noted that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has previously considered the way schools are funded in the 2000 case Vincent v. Voight. 

The Supreme Court found in the Vincent v. Voight case, which was initiated by a group of Wisconsin students, parents, teachers, school districts, school board members, citizens and the WEAC president, that the state’s funding formula was constitutional. 

The majority opinion indicated that the Legislature had articulated that an equal opportunity for a sound basic education is “the opportunity for students to be proficient in mathematics, science, reading and writing, geography and history, and for them to receive instruction in the arts and music, vocational training, social sciences, health, physical education and foreign language, in accordance with their age and aptitude.” The opinion also concluded that as long as “the Legislature is providing sufficient resources so that school districts offer students the equal opportunity for a sound basic education as required by the constitution, the state school finance system will pass constitutional muster.”

Mandell said that in the 25 years since the ruling “things have gotten considerably worse, and we are at a point where, for many districts … they are on the verge of crisis.” 

The lawsuit lays out the difference between how Wisconsin schools were funded in the  1999-2000 school year versus the 2023-2024 school year. School funding 25 years ago was comprised of 53.7% state funds, 41.6% local funds and 4.7% federal funding; in 2023-24, the mix had changed to about 45% state, 43% local and 12% federal funding.

“The fault for this crisis lies not at the feet of students, parents, families, teachers, staff, administrators, school districts, or elected board members,” the lawsuit states. “The shortcomings of our public schools are directly traceable to the Legislature’s consistent failures to ensure adequate state funding of public schools and to legislate a rational school finance system that meets constitutional mandates.”

The lawsuit states that school districts across the state are “facing financial crisis” because of expiring federal funding and stagnating state dollars. 

The suit also details the state’s history of funding schools and the increasing reliance on property taxes through school referendums to try to keep up with costs. It also details the ways that the state’s school choice program, which was launched in the 1990s and has grown exponentially over the years, has reduced funding for public schools. 

Law Forward was at the helm of the 2024 lawsuit that ended with the Wisconsin Supreme Court declaring the state’s legislative maps an unconstitutional gerrymander and is in the process of the state’s Congressional maps. 

Mandell said the plaintiffs in the suit include a geographically diverse group to highlight how this is a statewide problem. He said it is possible that other districts will reach out about joining the case and they will “figure that out as we go.”

Joshua Miller, an Eau Claire Area School District parent, told reporters that “the dire need for adequate funding has been made clear to the lawmakers, but they have refused to hear our pleas” 

“The situation is sad, absurd, and ����’s infuriating,” he said. “Wisconsin’s current school finance system is broken and this lawsuit, which I am proud to join, would be a way for the courts to force legislators to make a new system that works and actually meets the needs of the students of Wisconsin.” 

Tanya Kotlowski, a plaintiff in the case and superintendent for the Necedah Area School District, said her district is going to referendum for a third time this spring to help fund its operations. In April, the school district plans to ask voters to approve a four-year operational referendum that would provide a total of $5.8 million in order to maintain the district’s current level of educational programming as well as operate and maintain the district. 

Kotolowski noted that she and other school leaders have spent a lot of time advocating on behalf of their schools to lawmakers for additional funding. During the recent state budget cycle, school funding was one of the top issues held by the budget committee.

“Despite all of those efforts, the funding system has not kept up with the needs of our children and the needs of our current realities,” she said. “Our local referendum, some would argue or could argue, has been 100% funding that mandated legal, constitutional obligation.”

According to the lawsuit, the Necedah Area School District has directed over $6.6 million — all of its operational referendum revenue — to its special education fund over the past eight years.

Kotlowski said her district has been underfunded by $13 million for special education costs over the last decade, and that if funding had kept pace with inflation, the district wouldn’t need to go to referendum this year.

Mandell said that referendum requests used to be fairly rare and used when a school district had large projects.

“What we’re seeing now is a system where school districts have no choice but to go to referendum regularly to try to fund basic operations to keep the lights on and to keep payroll flowing, and ����’s really a tremendous problem,” Mandell said. 

Referendum requests that allow schools to exceed state-imposed revenue caps through approval from voters became a part of Wisconsin’s school funding equation in the 1990s. Lawmakers implemented school revenue limit caps as part of an effort to control local property taxes. 

The revenue limits used to be tied to inflation, but that was ended in the 2009-11 state budget, leaving increases up to the decisions of state lawmakers and the governor, who have not provided predictable increases budget to budget.

The recent state budget did not invest any additional state dollars into school general aid, in part because lawmakers were upset with Evers’ 400-year partial veto in the prior state budget. The partial veto extended a $325 per pupil school revenue limit increase from two years to four centuries, giving, schools the authority to bring in additional dollars from state funds or property tax hikes. Without the state providing additional funding, many schools have turned to raising property taxes using the school revenue authority to help support their operational costs. 

“I understand there’s a big political debate about that veto, and about that mechanism, we don’t have a position on this. What we’re saying is that the school funding mechanism is not sufficient and is unconstitutional, even with that,” Mandell said.

The state budget did provide additional funding for special education reimbursement, but recent estimates show that the amount of funding will not be enough to provide reimbursement at the promised rates of 42% and 45%. Increasing special ed funding is part of ongoing negotiations between legislative leaders and Evers. 

The lawsuit comes as the legislative session is coming to a close. 

The state Assembly adjourned for the session last week and the Senate will wrap up next month, but the only bills with a chance of becoming law are those that have already passed the Assembly. 

Even if a deal arises out of the current negotiations on property taxes and school funding, Mandell said the problem identified in the lawsuit will still exist. He noted that a proposal from Evers included $450 million towards school general aids — an amount that is $2 billion less than what schools would get if inflationary increases had continued in 2009. Mandell said Evers is not named in the suit because it is the Legislature that is chiefly responsible for appropriating funds. 

“This is not a problem that arose overnight. It has developed over decades, and ����’s not a problem that will be solved overnight,” Mandell said. “Any deal that the Legislature and the governor might reach… is not going to solve the problem.”

Mandell said that the plaintiffs in the lawsuit  are not looking for the court to decide on a specific amount of money that the state should provide to schools, but instead want the court to “fully explain and delve into how the finance system works, what the needs are, and to make some of those decisions.”

The lawsuit asks the court for a judgement that declares the Legislature hasn’t fulfilled and cannot “shirk” its constitutional obligation to fund schools at a sufficiently high level to “ensure that every Wisconsin student has an equal opportunity to obtain a sound basic education that equips them for their roles as citizens and enables them to succeed economically and personally in a tuition free public school where the character of instruction is as uniform as practicable.” It calls for the current funding system to be ruled invalid. 

The lawsuit calls for relief that will “establish a schedule that will enable the Court — in the absence of a superseding state law, adopted by the Legislature and signed by the governor in a timely fashion — to adopt and implement a new school finance system that meets all relevant state constitutional guarantees.” 

Mandell said, however, that it likely won’t be up to the court to decide exactly how the state should fund schools. 

“There are almost an infinite number of options for how the Legislature could do this, but what we’re asking the court to do is to look at it and say to the Legislature, not good enough…. then we do expect that the Legislature and the governor will do their jobs,” Mandell said. 

Mandell said that ideally a ruling would give lawmakers the opportunity to make changes in the next budget cycle. The budget process will kick off again in January 2027, after the state’s fall elections which will determine the make-up of the Senate and Assembly as well as choosing a new governor. 

If the Legislature and the governor don’t fix the problem, Mandell said, the court should step in again.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.

In 2024 alone, more than 6,000 early childhood educators in Wisconsin exited the field, representing about a quarter of the state’s overall child care workforce, according to a from the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association (WECA), a nonprofit advocacy organization that supports early childhood educators and the children they serve. 

Without qualified teachers to fill classrooms, most center-based programs are not able to enroll as many children as they can accommodate. As of October 2025, more than three-quarters of programs were under-enrolled, with the average program operating at only about 75% of their licensed capacity, according to the WECA study, which analyzed monthly data over the past five years that early education providers submitted to the state’s Department of Children and Families. 

That translates to more than 33,000 licensed but unfilled child care slots across the state. To make those seats available, the state would need an estimated 4,000 additional educators.

Wisconsin’s high staff turnover and worsening shortages have strained its child care capacity, leaving the state with the space — but not the teachers — to meet the needs of families.

There’s clear data proving that this paradox is playing out in Wisconsin. There’s also ����’s other states. It’s not surprising, in a nation where the average wage for early childhood educators around $15 per hour, employer-provided benefits are rare, and nearly half the field some sort of public assistance. 

“We have a precarious workforce,” acknowledged Anne Hedgepeth, senior vice president of policy and research at Child Care Aware of America, a national organization that promotes high-quality, affordable child care. 

In Wisconsin, where the last pandemic-era relief payments are due to this June, that has perhaps never been more true.

“Staffing has always been a challenge, but it continues to get worse,” said Paula Drew, director of early care and education policy and research at WECA. “This business model is not focused on what it costs to provide high-quality care to children. It’s based on what parents can afford to pay. [Providers have to cover] rent, liability insurance, food. What’s left is what goes to staff.”

In Wisconsin, early childhood educators earn an average of just over , while the statewide median wage across occupations is close to $23 an hour. The result is a workforce that can barely make ends meet. 

Across the country, fast food restaurants, gas stations and retail stores have since the pandemic. Early care and education programs, in many instances, are no longer trying to compete with their prices — they simply can’t afford to. They’re relying, instead, on people who love young children so much that they are willing to forego financial stability. 

Drew pointed out that in the K-12 education sector, pay is modest, but public school employees often get rewarded with great benefits. 

“There isn’t something like that in early childhood,” Drew said. 

She added: “It’s great to watch a lesson in circle time play out, to see children use a lesson you just taught them. But when you worry about how you’re going to pay for groceries or get to your second job, there really isn’t something that helps you stay.”

In interviews, several providers in Wisconsin shared that they have lost exceptional teachers to jobs in unrelated fields, strictly because of compensation. 

Virginia Maus, co-owner of Joyful Beginnings Academy in Hortonville, said her program lost 18 teachers in 2025, out of a staff of 38. 

Every single one of them left for higher pay, she said, and 80% of them left early education altogether. (Maus has a day job as a data scientist, so naturally, she collects and analyzes the center’s data on staff turnover.) 

“They all came to me and said, ‘I got this offer,’ and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t match that,’” she explained.

One went to McDonald’s. Another, who Maus said was a “really, really great teacher who really connected with the children,” left for a job at a factory. 

“It’s really saddening, when they’re really talented people and the children adore them — to think she’s now standing in front of a machine,” Maus said. 

Julia Wilridge, who runs Lov ‘N Care Academy, a child care center nearly 150 miles away, in Kenosha, has also seen many teachers leave the industry for better-paying jobs elsewhere. The cost of living has gone up, she pointed out. Pay for unskilled jobs has gone up. But wages for early childhood educators? They’ve remained stubbornly low — at least in her program. 

“Young kids are getting jobs at McDonald’s and Taco Bell, getting $16 to $18 an hour,” she said, “and we’re still offering $12 and $13 an hour.”

Wilridge is in the process of increasing her base pay to staff, out of necessity. Assistant teachers without experience would start at $13 an hour, instead of $12, while lead teachers would start at $15 an hour, up from $14. 

Part of the challenge in Wisconsin, providers shared, is that the state’s child care quality rating system, YoungStar, when more teachers have advanced certificates and degrees, but these programs aren’t making enough money to pay degree-holding teachers what they want.

Wilridge, for example, needs to hire a new teacher to lead her 4-year-old classroom, but that teacher has to have an undergraduate degree. 

“I already know I’m going to run into an issue,” she said, noting that the last time she was hiring for a similar role, candidates all wanted at least $20 an hour. “None of our staff make $20 an hour. I’m going to run into a problem getting people to accept a job paying $16 or $17. I don’t blame them, but I know that’s going to be an issue.” 

Annette Larson, director of Coulee Children’s Center in La Crosse, said her program closed the toddler classroom she was teaching in after she stepped into the director position there three years ago. They haven’t been able to find a teacher to help reopen it, since that person needs to have a degree. 

“You don’t find a lot of four-year-degree people who want to work in child care due to what you get paid in child care,” Larson said bluntly. “That’s a lot of the issue.”

Her center is licensed for 125 children but currently only serves 70, in part due to staffing, she said. 

Child care programs can hire people without experience and education, but then they have to ensure those teachers obtain the required coursework. Even assistant teachers are required to take one or two classes — depending on the age group they teach. That’s a financial investment and time commitment for programs, which are already just scraping by. 

Hedgepeth, at Child Care Aware, described teachers as the “linchpin” of early care and education programs. “It’s critical to figure out what we need to do [to keep them] in our programs and fill vacancies when we have them,” she said. 

Drew, who led the WECA study and plans to continue to track statewide staffing data, emphasized the importance of this issue. 

“Workforce is everything. That is child care supply, child development, child care quality,” she said. “One of the items on the list to do to improve child care infrastructure is shoring up our workforce.”

Wisconsin lawmakers are exploring ways to make it easier for school districts to consolidate as they face declining enrollment and financial difficulties.

There are 421 school districts in the state of Wisconsin and about two-thirds are struggling with declining enrollment. According to from the Department of Public Instruction, enrollment for public school districts in the 2025-26 school year fell by about 13,600 students, representing a nearly 2% decrease from last year’s estimate. Total enrollment across school districts is about 759,800 this year.

Reps. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay), Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) and Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) said during an Assembly Education Committee public hearing Tuesday that declining enrollment is to blame for the financial troubles that schools are facing.

“The districts that are going to referendum all the time. It’s almost always because of declining enrollment. It just gets more expensive per student to educate those kids as the districts become smaller,” Kitchens said. “We’re not telling districts this is what you have to do or what you should do. We’re telling them this is an option for you to consider.”

Schools in Wisconsin have seen a drop of about 53,000 students over a decade, from the 2013-14 to 2022-23 school years. Kitchens pointed to estimates from the Wisconsin Department of Administration that the population in Wisconsin is projected to drop by 200,000 by 2050, noting it will be largely due to the state’s declining birth rate.

Wisconsin’s school funding system is based in part on per pupil numbers, meaning that if fewer students are enrolled schools receive decreased funding from the state, even if a district’s overall costs may not fall.

Kitchens said that having 421 school districts is not going to be sustainable in the long term in Wisconsin and questioned whether there is another state that “on a per capita basis has that many” school districts.

Kitchens said the issue shouldn’t be partisan. He noted that school consolidation is something that the on Wisconsin school funding supported through its recommendations.

“Many districts have used the referendum process to increase the property tax burden on the local residents to backfill the loss in state aid revenue,” Nedweski said. “Many others have seen them repeatedly fail as property taxpayers are unwilling to raise their taxes to increasingly fund empty schools.” She noted that a recent Marquette Law School Poll found that 57% of participants said they would vote against a referendum request. “There is no referendum that can be passed or law that can be signed to single-handedly reverse decades of birth rate declines to alleviate the stresses of declining enrollment in our schools. It’s clear that a more long-term solution is needed to address these demographic challenges because the status quo is not sustainable.”

Wisconsin has had a record number of school districts go to referendum to help meet costs. But beyond declining enrollment, public school advocates say the burden on local taxpayers asked to fund their schools through referendum has grown mostly due to the fact that state investments in public schools have not kept pace with inflation for almost two decades. In the most recent state budget, Wisconsin lawmakers provided additional special education funding, but opted not to provide any increase in general aid, leaving increased costs to fall on property taxpayers.

State Superintendent Tom McCarthy noted during the hearing that Wisconsin is currently spending the least, proportionally, in state revenue that it has ever spent on schools under the current funding formula. He noted that about 32.1% of state general purpose revenue goes to state general aid to schools, and that percentage used to be around 35%. He also said the conversation about declining enrollment and costs had to include the acknowledgement that school districts’ revenue limits have been frozen at different points over the last decade, prohibiting school districts from raising more funds unless they go to referendum to ask voters.

Nedweski said the bills would be useful tools and incentives for districts facing decisions about whether to consolidate.

“Buildings do not educate kids, teachers do,” Nedweski said. “By finding efficiencies through voluntary consolidation, districts will be able to reduce overhead and direct resources to the classrooms so that our students can continue to receive a quality education, while taxpayers receive relief on their property tax bills.”

The package of bills would take a number of steps to encourage districts to explore consolidation, including providing financial incentives.

School districts already receive additional aid when they consolidate. For the first five years after consolidation, a consolidated school district gets $150 per pupil. In the sixth year, the aid drops to 50% of what the school district received in the fifth year and in the seventh year, the aid drops to 25% of the fifth year.

would increase that additional state aid to schools that consolidate in 2026, 2027 and 2028 to $2,000 per pupil in the first year. The last six years would be the same as under current law.

Kitchens said that he thought most school districts would be able to decide within a year whether consolidation is something that they want to pursue.

“I’m very open in the future to extending that deadline, but I think to get it passed, we need to put a sunset on it, so we’re doing three years,” Kitchens said.

Dee Pattack, executive director of the Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance, noted that the inclusion of 2026 won’t really be useful for school districts since districts that want to consolidate have missed the opportunity to do so if they haven’t decided by now for next year. She also suggested that lawmakers look at spreading out the additional aid more gradually, saying that dropping aid from $2,000 to $150 per student creates a cliff.

Kitchens said he would look at amending the timeline included in the bill.

Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) noted that decisions about consolidation can be emotional and personal for communities.

“Public schools are the heart of our communities, oftentimes in rural communities, especially. They’re one of the largest employers. It’s where you have the most celebrations. There’s athletic events that are important to everyone in the communities and so this decision of consolidation is deeply complex. It’s personal for a lot of school districts,” Hong said.

Hong, who is running in the Democratic primary for governor, questioned whether lawmakers had considered just leaving the decisions on consolidation up to local communities altogether, noting that Wisconsin law favors local control of schools.

“That’s why ����’s voluntary. That’s why we’re offering these tools. It is not mandatory. We know ����’s going to be difficult,” Kitchens said, adding that Door County used to be full of one-room school houses until there was a consolidation in 1960. “When they consolidated that and formed Southern Door [County] School District, people were out there with pitchforks. It’s always going to be difficult, but we have to look at the future and what ����’s going to be.”

Kitchens noted that districts are not “clamoring” to consolidate and that the option exists as a last resort for most.

“There are a few that are, and you’ll hear from at least one of them today that really have reached that point where they know ����’s necessary,” Kitchens said. “We’re not hearing districts begging for this.”

Joe Green, district administrator and director of special education for the Greenwood School District, and Chris Lindner, district administrator for the Loyal School District, testified about the rural school districts’ journey of consolidation, which their school boards are focused on getting done by July 1, 2028. They said it has been an emotional journey as people are attached to their schools and communities, but that it could be the best option for them.

“It might be the thing that gets us over the hump to consolidation,” Green said of the new legislative proposal. “It might be the funding that our two districts need to put a good plan in front of our communities. It might allow us to do some small projects to make consolidation smoother. There may be small construction, or things that we need to do to retrofit buildings, if that’s the way that our facility studies go. There’s a million different scenarios out there on what consolidation can look like. But without that funding, I mean, honestly, with our two districts $150 bucks a kid is $100,000 — not gonna do much with that… ����’s just not going to do much.”

Green said the districts already share bus service and that 50% of their co–curricular activities are shared. They said that the schools began sharing students and staff due to their difficulty finding adequate staff to deliver instruction in rural Clark County in central Wisconsin.

Lindner said that consolidation could help open up more opportunities for students. “We do drama together. If we did not, we would have five to six students that would not be able to do drama because, you know, can’t do it with five or six kids,” he said.

Lindner said consolidation could also help save money.

“Our taxpayers are paying a lot of money for our operating referendums,” he said. “We tell communities if we do not start working together more, then we will be losing.”

would instruct DPI to provide grants of up to $25,000 to groups of two or more school district boards for the costs of a feasibility study for school district consolidation or whole grade sharing agreements.

Another bill,, would have DPI provide four-year grants of up to $500 per pupil enrolled in a single grade to school districts that enter into a whole-grade sharing agreement, agreeing to educate students at one location.

Felzkowski said that whole-grade sharing is a step before consolidation.

“It lets them test the waters if they ever want to move to full consolidation,” Felzkowski said, adding that middle and high schools may be able to provide more class offerings, including advanced coursework, to students with grade sharing.

AB 648 would help create new supplemental state aid for consolidated school districts to address differences in school districts’ levies when they merge. The measure is meant to address concerns of higher property taxes for residents of low-levy districts when a consolidation takes place.

AB 649 provides the funding for the bills, including $2.7 million for grants to schools that enter whole-grade sharing agreements, $3 million to provide state aid to offset levy limit differences and $250,000 for feasibility studies.

McCarthy of DPI noted at the hearing that there are already several legal and mechanical supports in place to encourage consolidation, and that even with those, the last major consolidation that took place was on July 1, 2018. Two K-8 districts merged to become the Holy Hill Area School District in Richfield.

McCarthy of DPI said the slate of bills being proposed are “largely building from past efforts to support and to incentivize consolidation” and that the agency doesn’t view them as “a brand new door that’s being opened up” to solve problems.

The final bill in the package, , would study what changes should be made to Wisconsin’s school districts. Under it, DPI would hire a contractor to conduct a study of Wisconsin’s school districts that looks at current school district boundaries, potential school district consolidations, existing school district facilities, staffing levels and salary scales, the population of school-age children in each school district, and revenue limits and current overall spending.

McCarthy said the agency is most excited about this final proposal. He said it is similar to what and addresses some of the factors that are important to consider when consolidating.

The study would culminate in recommendations for changes to school district boundaries, a survey on the conditions of school district facilities across the state, information on the current and 10-year projection of the population of school-age children in each district and recommendations for school district consolidations that promote efficiency, are geographically feasible and economically viable.

“We probably owe it to our school partners to take a long look at what are the right geographical boundaries here,” McCarthy said. “As we’re thinking about how to manage this stuff, it might be a good moment in time to slow down and think about how do we sync some of these things up to be a more effective patchwork of schools that are serving our communities?”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.

Through our work with school districts such as Madison, Wisconsin, and Syracuse, New York, and states including Indiana and Louisiana, and have had a front-row seat to the challenges and opportunities in assessment strategy. We’ve seen what works, what doesn’t and what it takes to design a system that serves students and teachers. Too few districts actually know what they are trying to accomplish with all the tests they administer. 

Districts should consider three issues in addressing assessment overload:

• Test volume: Especially in grades K-8, teachers spend too much time preparing for and administering tests, while students lose precious classroom hours — as many as 100 per year — taking redundant exams instead of engaging in meaningful learning. Excessive testing exhausts students and frustrates teachers without always giving them what they need most: insights they can use to improve learning.
  
• Usefulness of test reports: Most district-mandated assessments are off-the-shelf products that deliver results quickly but not necessarily usefully. Districts, teachers and families rely on these tests in good faith, only to receive data that compare students to one another (think percentiles) rather than to the grade-level standards they need to master.
  
• Incoherence: To boost student outcomes, districts often add tests without retiring others. Leaders of various central office departments — special education, literacy, multilingual learning and the like — procure their own exams, without coordinating to consider “two for one” opportunities. The result is a tangled mess of assessments that overlap, confuse and overwhelm. In some districts, we’ve seen as many as 15 assessments in play, with each serving a different purpose.��

Although the problem is layered, the solution is straightforward: Districts need fewer, more instructionally useful assessments. A strategic approach can transform how schools measure progress, decrease costs and stress, and help students and teachers focus on what matters: learning. 

In our organizations’ work helping states and school systems use more effective assessments, we’ve seen district leaders make great decisions that resulted in more streamlined exams. (Together, we’ve published a to guide other districts through a similar process.) We recommend that every district take these four actions:

Build a unified leadership team. Districts must bridge internal divisions among departments. A strong assessment redesign team should involve curriculum leaders, testing experts and specialists in multilingual and special education (at minimum) to establish the purpose and guiding principles for assessment planning, asking how exams contribute to and and help measure progress toward achieving the district’s broader vision for learning.

Audit and streamline tests. Districts must scrutinize every exam: What is its purpose? Does it deliver insights that educators can use to plan their next moves with students? Which truly help teachers teach, and which are just filling up time? By focusing on fewer but higher-quality assessments, districts can reclaim valuable instructional time and ensure that every test adds value for teachers and students. ANet’s assessment audit across Louisiana revealed that seventh-graders were losing up to 22 instructional days per year due to a bloated assessment system. Post-audit, 15 Louisiana districts reclaimed an average of five days of school per year.

Engage educators in the redesign. Teachers bring a critical perspective to assessment selection and use. Districts should bring educators into the process early and often, seeking their insights on which exams work, which don’t and how testing can be improved. In Syracuse, the district’s leadership team convened a committee of teachers and principals who reviewed the nearly 70 local assessments for K-8. With this educator input, the district eliminated many duplicative assessments and clarified the purpose and use of data from others.��

Communicate the new approach. If educators understand why certain tests were removed and which remain, they’ll get on board, and when teachers are invested, students benefit. We recommend first cultivating the support of a team of influential educators and community leaders. In our work with districts across multiple states, there was a clear trend: Districts that engaged parents and teachers early — explaining the “why” behind changes — saw higher buy-in and smoother implementation​. After a well-communicated assessment redesign process in Madison, 97% of school leaders supported the district’s vision for the role of assessments, up from 44%. 

Exams don’t have to be a burden. By committing to fewer, more purposeful assessments, districts can lighten the load on educators and sharpen their focus on student outcomes systemwide. We’ve seen districts successfully transform their approach to assessment and witnessed the pain points in districts that have not yet done this critical work. 

The solution isn’t more tests, ����’s the right tests. That’s how to give teachers the insights they need and students the learning they deserve. 

One in four Wisconsin child care providers could close their doors if the state’s ongoing support isn’t replaced after it ends in June, according to a state-commissioned report released Thursday.

More than one in three providers expect to reduce their capacity for children or the hours they operate, or both, according to the report, based on a survey of most of the state’s licensed child care providers.

The report was commissioned by the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) and produced by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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It was released by the office of Gov. Tony Evers to support $480 million for child care providers in his 2025-27 proposed budget — a successor to the state’s Child Care Counts program that was funded with federal pandemic relief money.��

“It underscores what those of us in the field have known for a long time — that is, the need for public investment in order to stave off closures and rate increases,” said Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association.

The association supports Evers’ $480 million budget proposal and is holding an advocacy day at the state Capitol on April 16, with plans to meet lawmakers.

In a statement announcing the survey findings, Evers underscored his proposal.

“The cost of child care is too darn high, wait lists are too long, and providers are already struggling to keep the lights on, their doors open, and meet demand for child care across our state,” Evers said.

“The results of this survey are crystal clear: if we don’t make needed investments to support our child care providers and industry, programs will close, wait lists will get even longer, providers will be forced to raise prices, and parents and loved ones who can’t afford for [their] costs to get any higher may have to leave our workforce.”

Child Care Counts has provided monthly payments to state child care providers since 2021. From November 2021 to January 2024, it was funded from Wisconsin’s share of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the federal pandemic relief legislation enacted in 2021. The program paid out more than $479 million to providers. After that money ran out, Evers directed another $170 million additional pandemic relief funds to carry the program through June 2025.

Child Care Counts paid out $20 million a month until mid-2023, when it was cut to $10 million a month, with providers getting half of what they had previously received.

The Republican majority in the state Legislature rejected Evers’ proposal to put up to in the 2023-25 budget to continue the subsidy program at its earlier monthly amount.

Providers have credited the Child Care Counts program with making it possible for them to increase pay for child care workers in the face of competition from other employers without being forced to raise the fees they charge parents.

About 80% of the state’s more than 4,500 child care providers received and took part in the survey, which was included in providers’ November application for Child Care Counts payments.

The survey included questions about providers’ experiences before and after the Child Care Counts reduction. It also asked about their expectations after the program ends in June, as well as the potential impact of a continued program.

Two-thirds of providers surveyed reported that after the payments were reduced, they raised fees.

Responding to questions about the impact of state support ending in June, 25% or more of providers in the survey said they would be somewhat or more likely to close. Fully 10% of providers said closing their program “was very or extremely likely,” the report found.

“That’s an incredibly concerning statistic,” said Schmidt. “That’s a lot of child care programs that could be pulling up stakes. It’s going to hit rural communities super hard, but across the state we’re going to see significant closures.”

More than one-third of providers — 37% — said they were “at least somewhat likely” to close some of their classrooms or reduce the number of children they serve. Almost that many, 36%, said they were likely to reduce the number of hours they provide care.

By 59%, providers also expect their waiting lists to grow without continued state support.

Providers also expect to have a harder time hiring and keeping employees, with 66% saying that it was “at least somewhat likely” they will have to cut compensation, including their own. Fully half of providers “said this was very or extremely likely,” the report states.

More than half of providers — 56% — said it was at least somewhat likely that more employees would quit, and 46% said staff cuts were somewhat or more likely.

Of providers in the survey, 69% said “that it was at least somewhat likely” they would have a harder time hiring qualified employees.

About half of providers surveyed — 51% — said they thought it would be “at least somewhat likely” that they would find it harder to provide high quality care.

Between one-fourth and nearly half of providers said they expected to have more trouble being able to meet some parents’ specific needs. Those include providing care earlier or later in the day, serving families in the state’s Wisconsin Shares subsidy child care program for low-income families, caring for infants and toddlers or caring for children with special needs.

“With families already struggling to afford child care, respondents repeatedly described how continued funding — whether at the original or at current levels—would help prevent further tuition rate increases,” the survey report notes. Some providers said it would allow them to hold rates at their current level or reduce them, while others said it would keep the rate of tuition increases down.

Corrine Hendrickson, a New Glarus child care provider and organizer of an advocacy group for providers and families, Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), said the survey points out “the disastrous results for children and families after the initial [Child Care Counts] funding wasn’t replaced in the state budget.”

Rural areas, where families are younger and have lower incomes, may be hit the most dramatically if the child care sector contracts, Hendrickson said.

Hendrickson said she is likely to have to raise the rates she charges for her family child care center, which has a capacity of eight children. A $30 increase “will put me out of reach for too many families,” Hendrickson said. “If I lose two children and can’t replace them within a month or two, I will have to close.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.

Head Start child care providers in Wisconsin and five other Midwestern states were stunned Tuesday to learn that the federal agency’s Chicago regional office was closed and their administrators were placed on leave — throwing new uncertainty into the operation of the 60-year-old child care and early education program.

“The Regional Office is a critical link to maintaining program services and safety for children and families,” said Jennie Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association, in a statement distributed to news organizations Tuesday afternoon.

The surprise shutdown of the federal agency’s Chicago office — and four others across the country — left Head Start program directors uncertain about where to turn, Mauer said.

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“We have received calls throughout the day from panicked Head Start programs worried about impacts to approving their current grants, fiscal issues, and applications to make their programs more responsive to their local communities,” Mauer said.

The regional offices are part of the Office of Head Start in the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

In an interview, Mauer said there had been no official word to Head Start providers about the Chicago office closing. Some program leaders learned of the closing from private contacts with people in the office.

“We have not seen official information come out” to local Head Start directors, who operate on the federal grants that fund the program, Mayer said. “It’s just really alarming. For an agency that is about serving families, I don’t understand how this can be.”

The National Head Start Association Tuesday expressing “deep concern” about the regional office closings.

“In order to avoid disrupting services for children and families, we urge the administration to reconsider these actions until a plan has been created and shared widely,” the association stated.

Katie Hamm, the deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development at HHS during the Biden administration, shortly before 12 noon Tuesday that she had learned of reduction-in-force (RIF) notices to employees in the Administration for Children and Families earlier in the day.

RIF notices appear to have gone to all employees of the Office of Head Start and the Office of Child Care in five regional offices, Hamm wrote, in Boston, New York, San Francisco and Seattle in addition to Chicago.

“Staff are on paid leave effective immediately and no longer have access to their files,” Hamm wrote. “There does not appear to be a transition plan so that Head Start grantees, States, and Tribes are assigned to a new office. For Head Start, it is unclear who will administer grants going forward.”

Hamm left HHS at the end of the Biden administration in January, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Mauer said regional office employees “are our key partners and colleagues,” and their departure has left Head Start operators “incredibly saddened and deeply concerned.”

Regional employees work with providers “to ensure the safety and quality of services and to meet the mission of providing care for the most vulnerable families in the country,” Mauer said.

The regional offices provide grant oversight, distribute funds, monitor Head Start programs and advise centers on complying with regulations, including for child safety, she said. They also provide training and technical assistance for local Head Start programs.

“The Regional Office is a critical link to maintaining program services and safety for children and families,” Mauer said. “These cuts will have a direct impact on programs, children, and families.”

In addition to Wisconsin, the Chicago regional office oversees programs in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota.

Head Start supervises about 284 grants across the six states in programs that�� enroll about 115,000 children, according to Mauer. There are 39 Head Start providers in Wisconsin enrolling about 16,000 children and employing about 4,000 staff.

The federal government created Head Start in the mid-1960s to provide early education for children living in low-income households. Head Start operators report that the vast majority of the families they serve rely on the program to provide child care.

The regional office closings came two months after a sudden halt in Head Start funding. Head Start operators get a federal reimbursement after they incur expenses, and program directors have been accustomed to being able to submit their expenses and receive reimbursement payments through an online portal.

Over about two weeks in late January and early February, program leaders in Wisconsin and across the country reported that they were or post their payment requests. The glitches persisted for some programs for several days, but were by Feb. 10.

Mauer told the Wisconsin Examiner on Tuesday that so far, there have not been new payment delays. But there has also been no communication with Head Start operators about what happens now with the unexpected regional office closings, she said.

“No plan for who will provide support has been shared, and the still-existing regional offices are already understaffed,” Mauer said. “I’m very nervous to see what happens. With no transition plan this will be a disaster.”

In her statement, Mauer said the regional office closing was “another example of the Federal Administration’s continuing assault on Head Start” following the earlier funding freeze and stalled reimbursements.

She said closing regional offices was undermining the program’s ability to function.

“We call on Congress to immediately investigate this blatant effort to hamper Head Start’s ability to provide services,” Mauer stated, “and to hold the Administration accountable for their actions.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.

For several weeks in February 2011, she was one of tens of thousands of demonstrators who packed the Wisconsin state capitol to protest against legislation that aimed to shut down collective bargaining for public employees. One night, caught amid a swell of activists belting the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome,” she suddenly noticed that she was standing a few feet from Jesse Jackson, who had traveled to Madison to spur resistance to the Republican-led bill.

To Bazan, a social studies teacher in the nearby town of Deerfield, it seemed that she was living through one of the historic scenes she often described to her high school students. Though the GOP had won in the previous fall’s elections, capturing both chambers of the state legislature and electing the ambitious conservative Scott Walker as governor, the fight wasn’t over. Marching in solidarity with progressive heavyweights like Jackson, and with the eyes of the labor movement on Wisconsin, she and her colleagues could still prevail in the struggle to keep their hard-won rights. 

“You could see the Democratic legislators waving to us from the windows of their offices,” she recalled. “We really believed that we weren’t alone anymore, that these people were in it with us, and that it might force the legislature to back down.”

But Walker and his allies didn’t fold. 

Instead, after another month of political theatrics, they enacted , better known to history as Act 10. Its passage was a staggering setback for labor, stripping public-sector unions— with notable exceptions, such as police officers and firefighters — of virtually all bargaining powers. 

Before the crowds dispersed, the bill had already started to reshape the K–12 landscape in Wisconsin, both by shoring up district finances and straitjacketing unions’ political sway. While Walker ultimately lost the governorship in 2018, his signature accomplishment stands as a model for conservative governance in a purple state.

After a major judicial ruling last year, however, it is unclear whether Act 10 will stand at all for much longer. In December, a state circuit judge the law’s constraints on collective bargaining, declaring the exemptions for first responders a violation of Wisconsin’s equal protection doctrine. Even with pending an eventual appeal to the state Supreme Court, some political observers are weighing the potential of a massive shift in state policy.

Fourteen years under the Act 10 regime have cast ripples across much of Wisconsin. Overall teacher compensation has fallen substantially, to cash-strapped districts. Academic research has found that the weakening of workplace rights freed up school systems to change the way they structure pay, rewarding the best instructors while simultaneously lifting student achievement higher.

But as top performers found new opportunities, new divisions opened up among districts and even genders, with male employees often receiving higher salaries than their female coworkers. Solidarity continued to dissolve as formerly mighty unions lost members and prestige. And a lingering hurt still hangs over many Wisconsin teachers, who feel that the Republican triumph was built on their misery. 

Disheartened by what she described as an increasingly hardline stance from her school board, Bazan soon moved to another district. “They have a union on paper, but it has no power,” she said.

The restoration of their power would be a cause for immense celebration, even as most experts agree that some of the changes to education spending and teacher influence likely cannot be altered. Alan Borsuk, a senior fellow in public policy at Marquette University Law School, said that while teachers had largely “learned to live with” the changes to their bottom line, the blow to their esteem remained.

“In some ways, the biggest impact of Act 10 was what it did, intangibly, to the teaching field,” he said. “So much hostility to teachers came out during that time, and the damage to teacher morale continues to this day. It just hasn’t been a cheerful profession for a lot of people.”

***

The shock delivered to teachers resulted primarily from a rollback of union strength that could only be called historic. As the first state to allow public employees to organize, bargain, and strike, a revolution in workers’ rights a half-century before Act 10; in its wake, that mass movement suffered its worst defeat in a half-century.

After the expiration of the collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) that were in effect when the law was signed, unions were forbidden to negotiate over fringe benefits or working conditions. Though they retained the right to negotiate salaries, they could not secure raises that outpaced inflation in a given year. Further, teachers would be required to make to their own pensions and benefits, overturning generous perks that had been won at the bargaining table years earlier. Finally, organizing itself was made harder by for unions to hold recertification votes each year to remain active. 

Kim Kohlhaas was then in her 15th year as an elementary educator in Superior,, a lakefront city near the border with Minnesota. She described the time she spent there before the adoption of Act 10 as a “dream job,” but the impact of the change made itself felt within months.

“Our contract was 28 pages long,” said Kohlhaas, who now serves as the head of the American Federation of Teachers’ Wisconsin affiliate. “It became one page, and that was just recognizing that we existed.”

No longer obliged to deal with unions like the AFT over regular salary increases, school districts were responding to their newfound freedom exactly as Walker had intended. Some kept their existing salary schedules more or less intact, with merit pay schemes that who attained additional professional credentials or earned high grades in the state’s teacher rating metric. 

The effects, detailed in a series of studies conducted by Yale economist Barbara Biasi, have largely been promising. 

In , Biasi compared Wisconsin districts that moved toward a flexible pay model with those that continued setting compensation on the basis of seniority, as had largely been the practice before Act 10. Collecting both statewide salary records and data on teacher value added (a measure of effectiveness that reflects students’ improvement in standardized test scores), she found that highly successful teachers in “seniority-pay” districts tended to find new positions in communities offering some form of merit pay, meaningfully increasing both average teacher quality and student scores in those places. 

According to Biasi’s estimates, the value-added of those job-movers was 60% higher than their counterparts who chose to leave their districts after the adoption of flexible pay structures. In addition, some proportion of relatively lower-performing teachers simply stopped teaching in public schools, whether to leave the profession entirely or to work in private institutions.

In circulated this spring, Biasi extended her findings up to 2016, five years after Republicans pushed the reform through. In the years prior to 2011, she found, seniority was practically the only factor determining teacher pay: A professional over 57 years old earned, on average, 88% more than one who was 24 years old. But after the pre-Act 10 contracts expired, those career veterans earned slightly less than they previously had, only making 73% more than their most junior colleagues.

As the gap between older and younger educators flattened, student achievement — especially for children from low-income families — saw a significant bump throughout the state, with standardized test scores climbing higher statewide each additional year after Act 10 was passed. 

Biasi observed that no district has switched to a fully pay-for-performance system, in part because superintendents and principals do not typically have access to value-added statistics themselves. Instead, they were taking advantage of the autonomy around pay to favor employees whom they saw as working harder and more capably to boost learning. 

“They’re just using this flexibility to retain teachers that they consider to be better, or at a higher risk of departing for a nearby district, or who are in positions that are particularly difficult to staff,” she said.

***

Academic improvements like those revealed in Biasi’s research would be welcome anywhere. But even among its Republican supporters, Act 10 was not principally sold as a policy to improve schools.

Instead, it was seen as a way of heading off fiscal calamity. Like many states during the Great Recession, Wisconsin faced a large revenue shortfall in early 2011. When he took office, Walker vowed to close the structural deficit, that local governments “don’t have anything to offer.” Either Act 10 would be approved by lawmakers, or thousands of state employees had to be laid off. 

Nearly a decade and a half later, the budgetary picture is much brighter, with the state . After a dip during the financial crisis, Wisconsin has finished in the black every year since, with its total debt recently falling to its lowest level since the Clinton presidency.

In particular, conservatives tout an employee pension fund that was fortified over the long term by the contribution requirements included in Act 10. According to from the nonprofit Equable Institute, the funding ratio for Wisconsin’s retirement programs exceeds 100%, ranking the sixth-best of any system in the country. The Pew Charitable Trusts has that the state effectively balances while also insulating retirees from inflation. 

Borsuk, a frequent critic of state Republicans who is married to a retired teacher, said the financial case for the law was “clear and compelling,” especially when contrasted with of neighboring Illinois, where state employee pension funds are ranked among the most over-extended in the nation. 

“It saves school districts a huge amount of money, and some of them were facing fairly dire circumstances in 2009 and 2010,” he argued. “Teachers had to pay more to support their benefits, but to be honest, they got used to that, and life went on.”

Yet many schools and districts aren’t as sanguine. Wisconsin’s annual spending per K–12 student, which was 11% higher than the national average when Act 10 was being debated, just a decade later. Between 2002 and 2020, the state’s K–12 spending grew at the third-slowest rate anywhere in the country. After adjusting for inflation, the median teacher’s take-home pay fell from $68,949 in 2011 to $59,250 in 2023, according to .

That trend resulted partially from an exodus of older teachers in the first few years after the law went into effect — that the exit rate rose from 5% to 9% in its immediate aftermath — and their replacement with lower-paid novices. Headcounts , but Kohlhaas described a period of heightened churn that saw schools’ relationships with families frayed as familiar and well-liked staffers left for other districts.

“The first couple of years after Act 10, the retirement parties were not celebrations,” she said. “The teachers, the secretaries, the nurses, the bus drivers, the paraprofessionals — usually the first faces that students see in the morning — were changing every year, or sometimes mid-year.”

***

In a job market that was quickly becoming much more fluid, union membership also began to lose its appeal. School staff were increasingly on the move between districts, and the benefits of belonging to an organization with a severely narrowed scope of action were not always clear.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the proportion of union members in Wisconsin’s workforce , from 14.2% to 7.4%, between 2010 and 2023 (since that figure includes workers from all sectors, the drop for government employees is likely much steeper). A from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a right-leaning think tank, showed that the total number of unions holding annual recertification votes across the state declined from 540 in 2014 to 369 in 2018. 

The largest teachers’ union in the state, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, experienced of manpower and organizing heft. A conducted by a pair of researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that WEAC was forced to restructure and cut its staffing by about two-thirds. The retrenchment was made necessary by a freefall in the collection of dues, the payment of which was made voluntary by Act 10.

The loss of paid organizers could be offset, in part, by the efforts of teacher volunteers. But the union had no ready replacement for the millions of dollars in government relations funds that had suddenly evaporated; WEAC went from being one of the biggest lobbying forces in Madison to a second-tier player virtually overnight. 

Spillovers into elections were inevitable. In , Yale’s Biasi studied the effect of Act 10 on political donations during gubernatorial races in 2012 and 2014. Across all Wisconsin school districts, she calculated that the reform depressed contributions to the Democratic Party by 33.1 per 1,000 people, and by over 50 per 1,000 teachers. Scott Walker’s vote share increased by about 2 percentage points as a result. 

Unions “essentially stopped donating money to Democratic political campaigns after the reform because there was a huge drop in revenues coming in.” Biasi said. “Membership went down, and so they just became increasingly less influential actors post-Act 10.”

Gender politics were inflamed as well. Once collective bargaining was invalidated, individual teachers were left to negotiate their salaries by themselves — typically at the start of their work in a new school. But while these interactions occurred at the individual level, a significant pattern made itself felt over the course of several years: Male teachers were making more than female colleagues of similar age, effectiveness, and experience.

that, two years after the expiration of CBAs that had been in effect when Act 10 was signed, salaries for male staff were .4% higher than those for comparable female staff, a gap that grew to 1% after another three years. That estimate would be the equivalent of $540 per year, mostly attributable to women being over pay . While hardly lavish, the disparity could be seen as adding insult to the injury already sustained by .

***

Whether those wounds will be mended anytime soon is difficult to say. 

After the ruling issued in December, the fate of Act 10 will not be decided until an appeal is heard by the state Supreme Court. In all likelihood, much of 2025 will pass before a final ruling is delivered — most likely not until in April. The court’s liberal faction holds a 4-3 majority after Democrats to flip a Republican-held seat in 2023. This spring’s contest is also drawing national attention, with White House advisor Elon Musk contributing $1 million to support the Republican candidate.

Foes of the law were hopeful even before conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn announced in January that from hearing the case (Hagedorn had previously defended Act 10 in his capacity as Gov. Walker’s counsel). But some believe that even the wholesale rejection of the law wouldn’t restore to labor the primacy it formerly enjoyed.

Borsuk remarked that, with the expiration of federal pandemic aid last fall, local districts would be hard-pressed to grant generous new contracts to reinvigorated unions. Cities and towns have already had to dig deep to finance increases in school spending, of property tax hikes last fall to keep up with expenses. 

“School districts in Wisconsin are under an enormous amount of financial pressure in every part of the state,” he said. “There’ll be some change, but it’s not like the golden era can return; there isn’t much gold.”

But to Bazan, the prospect of an overturned Act 10 is too promising to dismiss. More than simple financial rewards, she said, she looked forward to regaining “a voice outside the classroom.” 

“A world without Act 10 is one where teachers get back the respect that we lost 14 years ago,” she said. “When we lost that seat at the table, we lost a lot of that respect as well.”

More than half a dozen child care centers that serve low-income families through the federal Head Start program have been waiting for more than a week to be repaid for expenses they’ve already incurred for payroll, supplies and food for the children in their care.

Head Start and Early Head Start are federally funded programs that provide early education and child care to children from low-income families. Wisconsin has 39 Head Start child care providers serving 16,000 children across the state and employing about 4,500 staff, said Jenny Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association.

“The chaos and uncertainty have been deeply earth-shattering,” Mauer told the Wisconsin Examiner on Tuesday.

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Mauer said providers across the state who receive federal grant payments for Head Start have seen delays in receiving their payments. She has been in touch with all 39 and, as of Tuesday, there were seven providers serving about 3,000 children that haven’t been paid by the federal government for at least a week, she said.

“This is going to get really serious if this doesn’t get resolved soon,” Mauer said. “We’re not getting much in the way of answers. We’re not getting good explanations about anything. It’s incredibly frustrating.”

The Head Start payments stopped at the same time that a Trump administration memo announced a week ago that a broad array of federal grant and loan payments would be suspended. Two federal judges have ordered the White House to halt the suspension in payments, but there have been widespread reports of funds that have still not been released.

“People think the freeze is over,” said Rep. Andrew Hysell (D-Sun Prairie), whose district includes a child care provider affected and who posted a decrying the federal action. “Yet these [federal] agencies are not providing the funds.”

The National Head Start Association, a membership organization for Head Start child care providers, has reported similar problems across the country.

“We’re definitely not alone, that’s for sure,” Mauer said.

Reach Dane, a Madison child care agency that provides child care for about 1,000 children in Dane and Green counties, is waiting on $600,000 that the nonprofit is due from Head Start, said Jen Bailey, Reach Dane’s executive director. The organization had to tap into its bank line of credit after payments failed to come through in the last week.

The funds are needed to make payroll for Reach Dane’s staff of 250, including child care teachers, people in food service and bus drivers who pick up and drop off children in the program.

“We’re kind of flying blind in a chaos storm, trying to figure out what is happening and why,” said Bailey, who is also president of the Wisconsin Head Start Association board.

Federal payments to Head Start programs are reimbursements for expenses providers have already incurred. Providers are accustomed to logging into a federal portal, submitting the expense information and receiving a reimbursement in about 24 hours.

Reach Dane typically submits its requests for payment once a week or so, Bailey said. A week ago Monday, Reach Dane was unable to log in to the portal at all, however.

Late Tuesday, Jan. 28, the portal was once again accessible, and Reach Dane submitted a payment request. A second payment request was submitted on Friday, Jan. 31.

“We have not received either of those,” Bailey said Tuesday. “As of right now both still show as pending in the system.”

In addition to serving Head Start children through its own child care centers, Reach Dane also works with private child care providers who enroll children from low-income families.

One private partner is The Playing Field, a nonprofit that operates two child care centers in Madison, one of them on the city’s West Side where the enrollment includes Head Start children. Reach Dane pays The Playing Field monthly to cover its Head Start kids.

Participating in Head Start is part of The Playing Field’s mission, said Abbi Kruse, who founded The Playing Field a decade ago with the goal of creating “an early childhood education program that any family would choose for their child.” From the start the organization’s model was to enroll children “from really different socio-economic and racial backgrounds,” she said, overcoming segregation in all its forms.

At the West Side location, enrollment is about one-third children on scholarship, one-third children whose parents can afford the full cost, and one-third who are covered under Head Start or Early Head Start. “Without that funding, they could not attend our program,” Kruse said. “Without that funding, we definitely could not sustain our model.”

Kruse said that Reach Dane sends a Head Start payment once a month to The Playing Field, which received the February payment on Monday. But if Reach Dane can’t resume receiving its federal funds, “obviously that’s not sustainable for them to continue doing that,” she said.

Some of the children served by her organization are from families living in shelters, sleeping in cars or hotels for the unhoused, for example, Kruse said. They may rely on The Playing Field not just for child care but for meals and other support, such as parenting classes.

“There’s a lot of support for families in our model, and to rip that away from people is just cruel,” Kruse said.

Mauer said that providers unable to collect the federal funds they’re due are scrambling to meet the shortfall.

The federal government requires that recipients must disburse the money they get within three days after collecting it. “They’re not sitting on a set of federal reserves to pay people,” Mauer said. “This is money for service already rendered.”

Providers who are on the hook for funds “are doing everything they can to keep their doors open,” she said. “They’re talking to creditors, they’ve opened up lines of credit, they’re talking to community partners and moving things around.”

If Head Start providers don’t survive, the impact on employers could be severe.

“The majority of folks that come to Head Start are working families,” Mauer said. Without child care, “that would mean those parents would have to make tough choices. It’s a terrible situation.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.

Wisconsin School Nutrition Association President Kaitlin Tauriainen says her goal has always been to feed every student.

“It seemed impossible for years, and then COVID happened,” said Tauriainen, who has worked in school nutrition for about 14 years and is also part of the Wisconsin Healthy School Meals For All Coalition. During the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture implemented waivers that allowed schools across the country to serve free meals to all children. “Basically, we were forced into doing it, which was fantastic, and really proved that we were capable and that it was better — like we thought it was going to be.”

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Tauriainen, who works as the child nutrition coordinator for the Ashwaubenon School District in Brown County, said there were less behavioral issues for the district then. She had observed earlier in her career at another school district how improved behavior could be the result of ensuring kids have access to food. She recalled a student who was eating free breakfast and free lunch, but still reported being hungry. Attending a different school that gave him more flexible access to food helped improve his situation, she said.

“He was so hungry all the time that he was just angry and causing disruptions. When they moved him to the charter school that gave him a little more flexibility and freedom to go make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich whenever he was hungry, he turned into a completely different kid,” Tauriainen said. “That’s what some of the teachers were seeing during COVID as well.”

The federal universal school meals program expired in June 2022 after Congress decided not to extend it. Ashwaubenon School District now charges students who don’t qualify under current guidelines for lunches, but it is able to provide breakfast to all students.

Limiting behavioral problems is just one potential benefit of adopting universal school meals that Tauriainen and other advocates detailed to the Examiner. Other benefits include filling in gaps for students who may need the meals but don’t — or can’t — participate. Advocates say universal meals would level the playing field for students and ensure everyone has access to nutritious meals.

Last month, Department of Public Instruction Superintendent Jill Underly visited Kenosha Unified School District to propose that Wisconsin join to all students.

Under her proposal, Wisconsin would dedicate an additional $290 million per biennium so students, regardless of their families’ income, are eligible for free breakfast and lunch. Her proposal includes an additional $21 million to support other aspects of school nutrition. Those include funding to expand participation in the school breakfast program to independent charter schools, residential schools and residential childcare centers; creating a program to encourage school districts to buy directly from local farmers and producers; and funding for programs to support access to milk.

“Access to food is one of the most basic human needs, and yet many Wisconsin kids are telling us they don’t know when — or if — they will have their next meal,” Underly said in a statement. “When we make sure all our kids are properly nourished, we are nurturing the leaders of tomorrow.”

Hunger and grades

Across Wisconsin, 45.4% of enrolled public schools students — or 782,090 students — participate in the USDA Child Nutrition Programs and 52.1% of enrolled students at private schools participating in the USDA Child Nutrition Programs, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.

The current guidelines outline that students in a household of four, with income of $40,560 per year or less, qualify for free school meals. If a household’s yearly income is between $40,560.01 and $57,720, children can receive reduced-price meals. Families are also required to fill out an application annually in order to receive the benefit.

According to the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, one in four Wisconsin students reported experiencing hunger due to lack of food in the home and 2.6% reported going hungry “most of the time” or “always.” Students with low grades of D’s or F’s also reported going hungry at a higher rate — 10.3% of students — when compared their peers with higher grades of A’s or B’s — 2.3% of students.

Universal school meals would help fill in the gaps that the current system allows for, advocates said.

Kenosha Unified School District currently provides school meals to all kids free of charge.

“When we had to return to our traditional system of serving meals in the 2022-23 school year, we heard from families that they missed the simplicity and security of free meals for all,” KUSD Chief Communications Officer Tanya Ruder wrote in an email responding to questions from the Examiner.

This year every school in the district is able to provide lunch and breakfast to all students through the federal Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). The policy allows some high-poverty schools and districts to provide school meals to all students regardless of income and without having to fill out an application.

When meals were not universally free, the Kenosha district’s breakfast participation was 23.9%, and lunch participation was 43.8%, Ruder said. Since moving to CEP, those numbers have risen significantly, with breakfast participation now at 29%, and lunch at 55%.

Some families who qualified under the current system may find the application process an obstacle. “The application process is very daunting for some families,” Tauriainen said. “It’s a very simple form to fill out, but ����’s just another thing that families have to do to get food to their kids when they might already be struggling.”

Higher incomes, but still hungry

The income requirements also mean that some families that may be struggling financially may not qualify, Tauriainen said, because the application doesn’t consider other circumstances that families may be dealing with.

“It doesn’t take into account anything other than your gross wages, so whatever your income is before taxes, doesn’t take into account any medical bills you may have, or other issues that you might have going on financially at home,” Tauriainen said.

Jennifer Gaddis, an associate professor at UW-Madison who researches food systems in schools, said a gap still exists for some students. “There are actually a lot of children and families, who are food-insecure, but who don’t actually meet the federal threshold for eligibility for free or reduced school meals,” Gaddis said.

Gaddis and Tauriainen said providing school meals for free would benefit students in many ways.

“School meals are literally the only thing that is economically means tested,” Gaddis said. “Everything else kids participate in, regardless of their household income status — like math class, English class, busing — they’re not being charged a different amount or getting a different service necessarily that is tied to their household income status.”

Providing meals to all students would reduce the stigma that the current system can create, she added.

School meal debt has also become an issue again as schools have gone back to requiring students to pay for lunch unless they qualify for free food. In Wausau, a pastor to help pay off students’ unpaid meal debts. Madison Metropolitan School District in May stood at almost $230,000.

Ruder of Kenosha Unified said that providing meals free to all students would prevent them from being denied lunch or breakfast when their account funds run out.

Nutritional and academic benefits

Universal school meals could also allow many students to eat more nutritious food since school meals follow the federal dietary guidelines. Some have found that participation in school meals has been linked to healthier diets. 

“We get a bad rap, because people think of what school lunch used to be like back when they were in school, and things have changed so much since 2010,” Tauriainen said. “We’re offering whole grains, fruits and vegetables, multiple options every day, so that students pick something that they like to eat — low fat, low sodium, low sugar entrees.”

Tauriainen also noted that many school districts are trying to serve more food prepared from scratch and use more locally sourced foods for meals. Some school districts in the state serve food grown by the students, including Ashwaubenon School District, which has a 34-unit hydrophobic garden to grow lettuce.

Ensuring that kids are fed helps create a foundation for students to focus, study and be present in the classroom, producing stronger academic outcomes as well, Gaddis said.

Gaddis takes a historical and international comparative approach to studying school nutrition. Other countries with universal school meal programs, including Japan and Finland, have integrated school nutrition and home economics, she said, so students are “learning about, not only how to think about food and nutrition, but how to prepare things for yourself and how to do so in an economical way, and why you should also have respect for the people who are doing work in the food system.”

It’s an approach that addresses all students.

“It’s not seen as this anti-poverty program in those countries, ����’s seen as a really integral part of the school day and an opportunity for people to learn really important life skills,” Gaddis said.

The Wisconsin proposal is part of Underly’s larger budget request, which would invest an additional $4 billion in schools.

It could face a tough road to becoming a reality given Wisconsin’s split government, where Republican lawmakers, who remain in the majority in the Legislature, have said they oppose growing “the size of government” and want to use most of the state’s budget surplus to cut taxes.

Tauriainen said she hopes universal school meals can gather bipartisan support, however.

“Being hungry shouldn’t be something that’s on one side or the other of the aisle,” Tauriainen said. “I really hope that the Legislature can come together and realize that this is something we really need to do for our kids.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

A recent investigation found a Wisconsin school failed to comply with several seclusion and restraint policies, including ensuring sufficient training, properly documenting seclusion and restraint incidents, debriefing after incidents, notifying the student’s parent and removing a lock on the door of the seclusion room.

The investigation, conducted by Daniel Unertl, an attorney with Attoles Law, looked into the treatment in the fall of 2023 of a first-grade student at Weston Elementary School — a small school of about 140 in rural Cazenovia, Wisconsin. It was initiated by the school board after Candice Corey, the student’s mother, issued a complaint that her son was the victim of physical harm perpetrated by staff members and the district failed to properly document and communicate the instances of seclusion and restraint.

Corey said her son, whose name is being withheld for privacy reasons, has been traumatized by the experiences.

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“His whole demeanor is different,” Corey told the Wisconsin Examiner. “He used to want to go across town to his friend’s house. He doesn’t do that anymore. He used to take the dogs to the park or take the dogs for a walk. He doesn’t do that anymore.” Of her son’s change in personality, she said, “They dimmed a light that they didn’t need to.”

Seclusion — the forced confinement of a student in a room or area — and physical restraint — restraining a student’s body movements — are practices used in schools to respond to student behavior. State laws in Wisconsin require that the practices are only used when students present a “clear, present, and imminent risk to the physical safety” of themselves or others and when it is the least restrictive intervention possible. The law lays out other requirements if the practices are being used.

The practices are disproportionately used with elementary school students who have disabilities and have been highly criticized in the last few decades due to the physical and mental effects on children. Wisconsin adopted its laws regulating the practices  in 2010 and 2019 to help limit their use and mitigate the potential harm. Advocates against the use of the practices say problems remain when it comes to ensuring schools comply with the law.

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick, an attorney representing Corey and a long-time disability rights advocate, said the investigation’s findings and recommendations are notable. He said that often when schools conduct such investigations, they hire the same law firms that usually represent their schools, which is a conflict of interest. This happened in Corey’s case as well, but the investigator found several of the concerns and recommended discipline for the superintendent and the special education director.

“I have yet to see that for a so-called independent investigation conducted by a school district’s attorney in all my time,” Spitzer-Resnick said. “And I think ����’s a wake up call, hopefully, to other school districts to get serious when they do investigations of abuse by staff and school.”

Spitzer-Resnick said he also appreciates that the school didn’t go into “defense and denial mode” as many school districts do when there are accusations about seclusion and restraint. He added that the report helped ensure this.

Insufficient training

Corey’s son, who is autistic and deals with ADHD, had a relatively positive start to the 2023-24 school year, according to witnesses interviewed in the investigation. He had been attending Weston Elementary School since the 2020-2021 school year as a 4-year-old kindergarten student and then completed two years of kindergarten before entering the first grade.

In mid-October of 2023, however, his behavioral problems started to increase and as a result, he started receiving instruction mostly in a dedicated special education room. After this, staff began using seclusion and restraint more often to respond to his behavior.

Wisconsin state law lays out several requirements for when seclusion and restraint are used, including requirements that secluded students must be supervised; must have access to a bathroom, drinking water, necessary medication and scheduled meals; must be in a room that can’t be locked and is free of objects or fixtures that could injure them and may only be secluded for as long as necessary to resolve the risk. In the case of restraint, some of the policies in the statute include that the degree of force and duration should not exceed what is “reasonable and necessary” to resolve the risk and it should not constitute corporal punishment. It also includes requirements for steps the school must take after a seclusion or restraint occurs. Several of those requirements were not complied with in this case, according to the report.

Corey’s complaint alleged that her son was the victim of physical harm. Her son did come home with a scratch from three nails on his forearm caused by a paraprofessional, though the investigation found that it was an accident. He also had bruises consistent with being grabbed inappropriately.

The investigation did not reveal evidence of corporal punishment. However, it did find several other deficiencies and failures.

Training was one of the first issue areas.

State law requires at least one staff member in each school where restraint might be used to be trained, and that only trained staff members are supposed to conduct any seclusions unless there is an emergency and a trained individual isn’t available. The Department of Public Instruction within a school as ����’s helpful in a situation where restraint is used to “have more than one trained person available to ensure safety for students and staff alike.”

Before December 2023, Molly Kasten, the director of curriculum, instruction and special education for the district, was the only staff member with up-to-date training. She was also in charge of ensuring staff were trained. Multiple staff members who regularly interacted with the student, including two paraprofessionals, did not have up-to-date training, including when they engaged in the use of seclusion and restraint.

The investigation noted that, given prior experiences with the student, it wasn’t unforeseeable that there was the potential for seclusion and restraints, and “Kasten, as the administrator in charge of seclusion and restraint training, should have anticipated this need and ensured an adequate number of staff received proper training.”

Staff had, as a result, also received little to no training in how to fill out the reports — another area where failings were apparent.

Incomplete documentation, lack of notification

The investigator reviewed a total of 14 seclusion and restraint reports the district had on file. Three of the incidents happened on Nov. 8, 2023. Three other incidents occurred on Nov. 13, 2023. One happened on each of the following dates: Nov. 16, Nov. 17, Nov. 20, Nov. 21. Dec. 12 and three others on Dec. 14.

Only one of the 14 was properly documented.

“In sum, nearly all the reports examined by this reviewer were inadequate,” the investigation states. “The reports in some cases are so deficient that it is virtually impossible for a third party reviewer to ascertain whether the report was filled out for a restraint or a seclusion. Despite numerous witnesses indicating that restraint did in fact occur, not a single report explicitly indicates the use of restraint.”

When the incidents were occurring, the seclusion room was also out of compliance as a lock remained on the door. It wasn’t removed until after the investigation.

In addition, at least one incident was not documented at all during the student’s second year of kindergarten in 2022-23. Instances of the principal dragging him down the hallway, technically a restraint, were also not documented.

The school may have failed to report the instance in kindergarten to the Department of Public Instruction as zero instances of seclusion and restraint were reported in .

On at least two occasions, Superintendent Gary Syftestad dragged the student down the hallway at the school. He claimed the student saw it as “fun” as did other staff members who witnessed the dragging. In the second instance of this happening, Syftestad dragged him by the ankle.

The investigation admonished Syftestad for his actions.

“Regardless of a student’s perception of this type of incident, dragging a student down the hall, be it by a hand or by the foot, is incredibly inappropriate and unprofessional conduct from any staff member, much less from the superintendent,” the investigation stated. “As the District’s educational leader, Syftestad is held to the highest possible standard. … He is supposed to be the trusted leader who students can come to with any questions or concerns, and witnessing the superintendent drag one of your classmates down the hall of the school would negatively impact students’ ability to view Syftestad as a trusted adult.” Further, it stated that the dragging would “model negative behaviors that staff members should not be emulating and may cause staff to lose any trust or respect” that the staff have in Syftestad.

The investigation also said that those who witnessed the dragging, including the principal, “should have objected to any instance of Syftestad dragging a child, no matter the context, and doing so demonstrates a significant lapse in judgement.”

The investigation called the failures “concerning” given the clear guidance in state statute and school board policy and the serious nature of seclusion and restraint.

In addition to official documentation and reporting, within three days of an incident, parents are supposed to receive written reports from the school. Corey received inadequate notification, according to the investigation.

“Corey was only provided with the reports when she requested them. The reports arrived late and incomplete,” the report stated.

Corey said she wasn’t made aware of the complete extent of her son’s situation until December when she started asking questions. Those questions were prompted after her son came home with scratches on his forearm and she heard from some that he was being dragged down the hallway by the superintendent.

“[My son] had been telling me these things, but I didn’t — I didn’t believe it,” Corey said. “I would get a random call every now and then. Just ‘Oh, he had a rough day.’ But I was never informed they were putting him in a seclusion room or physically restraining him until December.”

In December, she pulled him out of the school.

School responds, student’s education in flux

Spitzer-Resnick said he suspects the Weston school district is not the only school district in the state with training, documentation and reporting issues. He noted that he had concerns when the laws were being created about staff being trained to prevent incidents and appropriately document them and whether there would be funding to support that. He said this case also brings up the question of whether schools are accurately reporting — an ongoing concern of his.

School districts in Wisconsin have been required to report data to the Department of Public Instruction each year since the 2020-21 school year and many show up as having zero instances of seclusion and restraint.

“When we see school districts with low numbers of seclusion and restraint, can we safely assume that that means they’re really not doing it very much, if at all? And the sad answer is no,” Spitzer-Resnick said. “We can’t, because there isn’t good auditing at DPI’s level.”

Spitzer-Resnick said he recognizes that DPI doesn’t have the resources to audit every school district in Wisconsin, but said even auditing 10 or 20 would send a message to other districts about ensuring they are reporting incidents and complying with state policy. There is nothing in statute guiding DPI on what to do with the data it receives from schools, and currently, DPI focuses on reaching out to districts that report high numbers of seclusions and restraints.

The investigation recommended several actions for the district, including training for several staff members and disciplinary action for Syftestad and Kasten. In a letter attached to the investigation report, the school board president Carrie Heiking detailed the actions that the school will be taking.

Those actions include reviewing and making necessary corrections to the school’s 2022-23 seclusion and restraint report, training and certifying essential staff in seclusion and restraint practices, bringing in an outside consultant to ensure the seclusion room is in compliance, developing a professional development training plan for all staff, training employees who may be involved in a seclusion and restraint situation in documentation and notification requirements, maintaining a training log, developing a best practice protocol for debriefing incidents and reviewing mandatory staff training requirements.

Heiking wrote that the board also reviewed the recommendations for staff discipline and would be taking “significant” actions, though the specific actions weren’t disclosed for confidentiality reasons.

“On behalf of the Board of Education, we hope that this message gives you the sense of closure we believe you deserve,” Heiking wrote in the letter attached to the report.

The Examiner contacted Heiking to ask about the investigation and the district’s ongoing response. In an email, Heiking said the district “does not comment on matters where the privacy of our students or staff members are concerned and protected by law.”

Heiking also referred the Examiner to administrative reports related to seclusion and restraint, which are presented to the board during open meetings.

A June report provided to the school board by Kasten about training noted that the goal is to have all staff trained in nonviolent crisis intervention, and that at one point the district had trained 85% of staff.

“At this point, special education staff, administration and some paraprofessionals are correctly certified and trained,” the report stated.

Meanwhile, Syftestad, who has worked in education for 30 years, is retiring and the school board is in the process of hiring a new superintendent. He said in a statement to the board that “the time has come for me to focus on my health and my family.”

Heiking said the board wishes him well in his retirement and is “very appreciative of his dedication and leadership over the last several years.”

Spitzer-Resnick emphasized that the seclusion and restraint has heavily affected  the student’s education, and his family is  still working to make up for that harm. The student has started attending a school outside of Madison — about an hour and a half drive away from his home.

“There [was] no education happening” for much of the school year for the student in his former school, Spitzer-Resnick said.

“And we’re still in a place after this, granted, this very small school district basically said, ‘OK, you know, I guess we have to send him somewhere else because… We don’t know what to do,’” he continued, paraphrasing the school’s reaction.

Corey, for now, remains reluctant to send her son back to the district even with the proposed actions from the district.

“The changes would be great if they’re actually going to follow through and do well, but I will not let him return up there until there’s a staff change,” Corey said. “This went on for almost three months of you restraining a special needs child down the hallway to throw him in a room by himself. Nobody thought they should probably report that to me.”

She added that she appreciates her tight-knit rural community and hopes her son can go back to school there one day.

“But at the same time, is this wound ever going to heal?” Corey said. “Even when we drive by there, he doesn’t — he doesn’t look at the school. He doesn’t talk about the school. If we see somebody from the school out in public, he runs.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

Gov. Tony Evers took the next step in starting additional audits of Milwaukee Public Schools on Monday, opening a request for services to conduct an independent operational audit of the district and starting a waiver to expedite the process of hiring an auditor to conduct an independent instructional audit.

The requests come as the state’s largest school district continues to deal with the fallout of being several months late in submitting required financial documents to DPI. Last week, the district and to work towards submitting the overdue financial documents and to address the factors that contributed to the delay.

Evers said last week that he would move forward with his plans to conduct operational and instructional audits in addition to the ongoing financial audit. He said in a statement on Monday that ����’s “exceedingly important” that the audits are started “quickly to fully identify the extent of the problems in order to work toward having future conversations about solutions.”

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Evers also said ����’s “critical” that Milwaukee Public Schools cooperates with the state Department of Public instruction during the financial audit in progress.

“I look forward to these audits getting underway so we can support kids, families, and educators in MPS, as well as the greater community,” Evers said in a statement.

According to the operational audit request, the audit would need to include a review of compliance and reporting functions, financial management and controls, an analysis of the district’s human resources processes and the identification of areas to improve effectiveness and efficiency of the district’s central office.

The Evers administration will take responses to the operational audit request through June 24.

The instructional audit would need to provide the state government, MPS and the public with analysis, guidance and recommendations on several issues including supporting positive learning environments for students; supporting educators, staff, and administrators and implementing curriculum and instruction best practices.

Milwaukee Board President Marva Herndon said in a statement that the board is appreciative of the Evers’ support.

“We, too, are committed to identifying root causes of district challenges so they can be addressed moving forward,” Herndon said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

With college costs rising and some students and families questioning the return on investment of a four-year degree, a few pioneering state universities are exploring programs that would grant certain bachelor’s degrees in three years.

The programs, which also are being tried at some private schools, would require 90 credits instead of the traditional 120 for a bachelor’s degree, and wouldn’t require summer classes or studying over breaks. In some cases, the degrees would be designed to fit industry needs.

Indiana recently enacted legislation calling for all state universities there to offer by next year at least one bachelor’s degree program that could be completed in three years, and to look into whether more could be implemented. The Utah System of Higher Education has tasked state universities with developing three-year programs under a new Bachelor of Applied Studies degree, which would still need approval by accreditation boards.

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More than a dozen public and private universities are participating in a pilot collaboration called the College-in-3 Exchange, to begin considering how they could offer three-year programs. The public universities include the College of New Jersey, Portland State University, Southern Utah University, the Universities of Minnesota at Rochester and at Morris, the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and Utah Tech University.

Proponents of the three-year degree programs say they save students money and set them on a faster track to their working life. But detractors, including some faculty, say they shortchange students, particularly if they later change their minds on what career path they want to follow.

The Utah Board of Higher Education in March approved the new three-year degree category. Various areas of study would be tied to specific industry needs, with fewer electives required. These degrees are broader than two-year associate degrees, but narrower than a full four-year bachelor’s.

“We told the institutions to start working on them now and developing the curriculum,” Geoff Landward, commissioner of the Utah System of Higher Education, said in an interview. “Also, we want them to find industry partners that would be willing to hire people with bachelor’s degrees of this type.”

He added: “We created a sandbox for our institutions to play in.”

Once created, individual programs would need both national accreditation and state Board of Higher Education approval.

Landward said he has taken note of criticism that the three-year programs might “cheapen” the bachelor’s degree by shortchanging students who wouldn’t receive a broad college education. But he said students could save on tuition, get a head start in the workforce and meet the needs of industries that are looking for certain skilled workers to address shortages in the state.

That includes nursing, he said, where requiring a four-year degree means taking lots of electives that have nothing to do with the career.

Utah State University’s current , for example, suggests several electives along with the required anatomy, math and biology courses as prerequisites during freshman and sophomore years.

“We think if we are partnering with industry and they help us develop it, I don’t think it cheapens the degree,” Landward said. “I think it creates a very specific degree.”

Robert Zemsky, a University of Pennsylvania professor and founding director of the university’s Institute for Research on Higher Education, began proselytizing for the three-year college movement about a dozen years ago.

He said the idea has gotten traction recently because “we are wading in the deep waters of righteous anger” at colleges and universities because of the perception that four-year degrees are not worth their high costs.

A Pew Research Center released last week found only 1 in 4 American adults said it is extremely or very important to have a four-year college degree as a means to getting a good-paying job. Only 22% of the respondents said the cost is worth getting a four-year degree even if the student or their family has to take out loans.

Zemsky suggested that a shorter time span also would lead to higher college completion rates. More than a third of students who began seeking a bachelor’s degree in fall 2014 at a four-year school failed to complete their education at the same institution in six years, the National Center for Education Statistics.

Zemsky said 27 colleges and universities have embarked on creating three-year pilot programs and predicted 100 would be doing so in another year.

Over the past 10 years, Zemsky said, schools have been ignoring the desires of students and instead creating their curricula around the preferences of faculty — which is where most of the opposition is coming from.

Last year, at a conference of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, a bargaining unit for professors, President Kenneth Mash said the overwhelming number of college faculty nationwide “have a visceral disdain for the idea.”

In an interview with Stateline, he said three-year programs would hurt students too, creating a “two-tiered” system under which wealthy students would get a full four-year education and lower-income students a cheapened three-year degree.

“If ����’s not going to be a four-year degree, they should name it something that indicates ����’s not a B.A.,” said Mash, who also is a political science at East Stroudsburg University. “We don’t know that employers will treat them the same.

“I’m on board, as most faculty are, with the notion that people want to increase their job opportunities. But that’s not all there is to a college degree,” he said. “Degrees prepare you to be a better citizen, a better parent, and on and on.”

And he said a broad education is what makes it possible for students to change jobs and careers many times during their working lives. “It’s really that baking in liberal arts … that makes it possible for people to do different things in their lifetimes.”

Indiana’s new law

Indiana enacted a in March that requires each public institution that offers bachelor’s degrees to review all the four-year degrees with an eye toward making some of them three years. And the law requires that by July 1, 2025, each state university offer at least one bachelor’s degree that can be completed in three years.

Indiana state Sen. Jean Leising, a Republican who sponsored the measure, pointed out that every extra year of college costs the students, their parents and the state.

But she noted that not all degrees lend themselves to compressed curricula. “If you’ve got a kid in pharmacy [studies], they are not going to be able to get through it in three years. Engineers aren’t going to be able to do it in three years. But some of the other kids will.”

Chris Lowery, Indiana’s commissioner for higher education, said the law will encourage schools to think about how to create 90-credit-hour bachelor’s degrees: “How feasible is this, would you still have the quality, would you still have the agency?”

Three-year degrees allow for choice, he added. His daughter, for example, had enough AP credits after high school to make a college degree feasible in three years, but opted to go to school for four, because she wanted to have enough time to study so that she could get “straight As” as well as to have time for extracurricular activities.

“But for a lot of students, the finances are tighter,” he acknowledged.

Credentialing requirements

At both public and private universities, the new three-year degree programs that require fewer credits would need national accreditation.

The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, a regional credentialing agency, several three-year bachelor’s degrees at two private schools, Brigham Young University-Idaho and Ensign College, last year. The degrees are in applied business management, family and human services, software development, applied health and professional studies.

Sonny Ramaswamy, the commission’s president, said in an interview that the three-year programs underwent two years of evaluation before being awarded accreditation.

He said the evaluation showed that competency in many professions could be attained in three years instead of four, and that graduate schools were willing to accept three-year bachelor’s as a credential for the pursuit of higher degrees. He noted that European college degrees often are completed in three years.

“We said, ‘We will approve you, but this is a pilot,’” Ramaswamy said. The schools will provide data to show their students have earned a good education, he added.

“My intuition is that it will head in the right direction,” he said. “The public is calling for innovation.”

Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a nonprofit organization that says its mission is promoting academic freedom, excellence and accountability at colleges and universities, said “fluff” courses strengthen the case against a 120-credit hour bachelor’s degree.

“Let people get a good foundation with a strong general education core, strong skills and some electives,” Poliakoff said in an interview. “That’s what a responsible university should be doing.”

The council does an annual of higher education institutions and grades them A through F on what the group calls “core curricula” — the proportion of courses dedicated to mathematics, literature, composition, economics, laboratory science, American history and government, and foreign languages.

Poliakoff said the amount of debt students are accumulating over four years is “sinful” and unnecessary. Colleges and universities must meet the concerns of students and their families, he said.

“A 90-credit baccalaureate degree is a pretty good way to tighten up the bolts,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on and .

A year after the state Legislature’s budget committee rebuffed demands for a major cash infusion to sustain Wisconsin’s child care sector, providers say they’re struggling to survive and child care resources remain stretched thin.

“We are hearing just an endless story about child care programs that cannot hire and cannot retain staff, more classroom closures, increased rates of pay for parents,” said Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood  Association (WECA).

None of those have improved in the last year, Schmidt added in an interview. “I would say it has gotten slightly worse” — and will get worse still, she contended, without a state budget that includes substantial child care support.

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On Monday, providers, parents and advocates gathered across the state to call attention to the continued challenges child care providers and families face. The events, part of a nationwide campaign called “A Day Without Child Care,” were held to rally support for expanding access and improving affordability for working families who need child care.

At one of those events, held in New Glarus, speakers emphasized that the early education trained child care workers provide helps children’s brains develop and helps them gain social and emotional skills that allow them to thrive throughout their school years.

“Kids who get high quality early care and educational opportunities, they do better in school, they’re more likely to graduate,” said Jeff Pertl, deputy secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families (DCF). “They earn more in their lifetime. They’re less involved in criminal activity. They need fewer special education supports and interventions. They grow and thrive because caring, stable adults are there to take care of them.”

Sarah Kazell, a child care worker and volunteer advocate, argued that early education is a public good that merits public investment along with K-12 education.

“This is the reality of a lack of public investment in early education,” Kazell said. “Women like me are earning a poverty wage to do it. And we are effectively subsidizing the ability for any middle class family to afford care at all. That’s the subsidy program that America has right now — ����’s exploitative labor of the people who provide the care.”

Child care workers should be “acknowledged and paid as professionals that they are, professionals who are providing an essential public good to their communities,” she added. “And I want to stop the trend of child care becoming exclusively available to affluent families — that’s wrong.”

The New Glarus event was organized by Corrine Hendrickson and Brooke Legler, who operate child care centers in the community. The pair founded Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), an advocacy group, to marshal support for providers and families.

Along with other advocates, they reminded their listeners that 2024 is an election year. They offered materials to help people contact their legislators and make an appeal for robust state support for child care.

“In November, we need to think about and research who we are voting for and make sure that they align with our own values,” Legler told the crowd.

A workforce necessity

Child care makes it possible for more people to enter the job market, advocates said. State Rep. Mike Bare (D-Verona), whose district included New Glarus until the legislative maps were redrawn this year, said in an interview that the community’s largest employers have cited housing for workers along with child care as their top concerns when it comes to hiring and keeping employees.

The same is true of Wisconsin’ teacher workforce, state schools Superintendent Jill Underly told the rally.

In a recent Department of Public Instruction (DPI) report, “teachers tell us that the lack of access to affordable, high quality child care is a barrier for them to return to the classroom after having kids of their own,” Underly said. “We cannot afford to continue to lose amazing teachers because they cannot afford child care. And of course these effects are similar for lots of other families across Wisconsin.”

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed and exacerbated challenges that providers faced for years. Keeping fees affordable for families kept providers from raising wages, which made hiring workers more difficult, according to advocates.

The number of regulated child care providers in Wisconsin has declined over the last decade. From 2014, when there were nearly 6,000, the number dropped by about 25% to less than 4,600 by February 2020, according to DCF, which maintains a child care data dashboard.

During the same period the number of licensed family care providers — who care for up to eight children in their homes — also fell by about 25%, from just under 2,000 to less than 1,600. The number of certified family providers — who care for three or fewer children and who are certified typically by counties rather than licensed — has fallen even more dramatically, from nearly 1,400 to just over 500 — a 60% drop.

The loss of family providers “really disadvantages rural populations in significant ways,” according to Schmidt, the WECA director, because those communities cannot support larger centers the way urban communities can.

Providers stabilize — but strain persists

With the pandemic, the strain increased. Providers lost workers due to illness or fear of illness. Some parents working at home decided to forgo the cost of care. Others, unable to get care, decided to cut back their jobs.

At the same time, though, because of the pandemic the state and federal governments offered greater support to providers. In Wisconsin that came in the form of Child Care Counts — a $20 million-per-month subsidy to child care providers funded by the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

Over the subsidy program’s nearly four-year span, some centers have opened and others closed, but the number of providers has held relatively steady, in the range of 4,600.

The capacity of those providers is about 177,500 children, according to DCF. That might overstate the actual number of openings, however. DCF’s child care dashboard lists capacity based on a provider’s license, according to the department’s communications director, Gina Paige.

If a provider can’t hire enough staff and limits enrollment below the licensed capacity as a result, that doesn’t show up in the state numbers. Schmidt of WECA said she doesn’t have concrete data, but based on her conversations with providers and others in the field, she believes as many as half of Wisconsin providers could be operating below their official capacity.

Gov. Tony Evers proposed continuing the Child Care Counts program with $340 million — first  in the 2023-25 state budget, and when the Legislature’s Republican majority declined, in a special session bill later in 2023 that also was rejected by the GOP majority.

The Evers administration has since been able to extend Child Care Counts, but at about half its original size, $170 million in ARPA funds that were not spent elsewhere. That has continued the program into mid-2025.

At the New Glarus rally, Kazell criticized the lawmakers who ignored those proposals despite a vigorous campaign by child care providers and families.

“When we meet with them and ask for state investments to stabilize our workforce — because we are the workforce behind the broader workforce — we are told that we should just be doing it for the children, not for the money,” Kazell said. “And we are treated as though the broken child care market is our fault for running our businesses badly, instead of the natural consequence of letting a public good languish in the private market.”

Advocates now are focusing on a federal proposal for a $16 billion, Hendrickson told the New Glarus audience. At the same time, they’re starting to prepare for the 2025-27 budget.

Pertl, the DCF deputy secretary, told the rally that the current Child Care Counts extension would “give us one more chance to go back to the Legislature and build a sustainable future for child care.”

Schmidt told the Wisconsin Examiner that she expects Evers to include “a big ticket item for child care” in his proposal for next year’s budget.

“The state did some really cool, wonderful, great work to help stand up child care during this time,” Schmidt said of the last three years. “And it was still hard for families to find. And it was still hard for families to pay for. And so when you roll back the growth and the benefits of what we’ve done in the past couple of years with all this investment of our funds — I don’t know how we think we’re going to retain a workforce in child care.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

As the director of  in Milwaukee, Franz Meyer has students asking him about driver’s education opportunities almost daily.

He said students want to learn to drive, but options are limited and often unaffordable.

“I’d tell them you can go to this place, but they only have so many slots, or you can go here, but it costs $350,” Meyer said. “But it clearly wasn’t enough. Some young people just take the risk and drive anyway.”

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He said the cost of driver’s education courses range from  $100 to $400.

Help may soon be available. The , or WisDOT, is expected to roll out a free program that would provide driver’s education for Wisconsin high school students in need.

Wisconsin Act 86, which was signed by Gov. Tony Evers in early December, 

According to the, from 10,000 to 13,300 students will be eligible to receive driver’s education grants under the program.

Common Ground launches campaign

The grants are a result of  three-year campaign, which started after a listening session the group held in 2021.

Common Ground is a nonpartisan organization that allows residents to identify problems in the community and then find solutions.

Jennifer O’Hear, the lead organizer and executive director of Common Ground, said funds are expected to be available by July.

Officials from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation declined to comment on when the funds will be available and how students and their families can access them for driver’s education. They said the program is in the “development stage.”

Listening to community concerns

O’Hear said Common Ground heard 982 people say reckless driving was their No. 1 concern.

“We’ve had many incidents around this area (Milwaukee’s Sherman Park) where young people are getting in cars not knowing how to drive and causing accidents,” said Frank Finch, a Common Ground leader involved in the campaign.

As the conversation evolved from hearing residents’ concerns to creating solutions, Common Ground leaders pointed to driver’s education as a tool to address reckless driving.

According to O’Hear, Wisconsin funded driver’s education from 1961 until 2004.

However, the state still requires youths under 18 to enroll in a school or commercial driving program in order to get a learner’s permit and probationary license.

“We learned that there is a whole generation of kids out there that don’t know how to drive because they never had access to driver’s education,” Finch said.

Pathways High’s Meyer, who has been in his position for six years, participated in the campaign along with several of his students.

One of his students, Shankayla Caldwell, said the cost of driver’s ed created challenges for her.

“I have been struggling to find access to driver’s ed, and ����’s been kind of hard because of the prices,” she said. “Like I really, really wanted to drive, and I know I can’t go without my license, so ����’s been just a lot of waiting.”

According to a 2016 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute study, the most recent data available, only 30% of 18-year-olds in Milwaukee have a driver’s license compared to 66% of 18-year-olds statewide.

Additionally, only 30% of African American and Hispanic 18-year-olds hold a driver’s license compared to 75% of white 18-year-olds.

Through the community listening sessions, Common Ground leaders identified the need for long-term funding for driver’s education for students as a way to combat reckless driving.

O’Hear and Finch said the campaign got rolling when they met Andy Franken, the president of  the Wisconsin Insurance Alliance. The group, which represents the property and casualty insurance industry, advocates and advances policy for those groups.

“Once I saw the specific stories and studies about Milwaukee and statewide, I knew this was a cause worth being involved in,” Franken said.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Gov. Tony Evers signed education-related legislation Friday, including a measure to tighten protections for students against strip searches and sexual misconduct.

One measure, Senate Bill 111, , was introduced in reaction to a 2022 incident in which a Suring School District employee, who was searching for vaping devices, allegedly ordered six teenage girls to undress down to their underwear. Neither the students’ parents or law enforcement were informed about or present at the time of the strip search.

The law redefines the meaning of “strip search” and “private area” to include undergarments in order to protect students from any official, employee or agent of any school or school district conducting strip searches.

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Rep. David Steffen (R-Green Bay), who coauthored the legislation, said in a statement that “being treated with dignity and basic privacy is something that every student should expect when they enter our schools.

“The event at Suring revealed a statutory loophole that needed to be closed,” Steffen said. “This bill will protect our students from experiencing such intrusive searches in the future.”

Another measure, Senate Bill 333, , seeks to better protect students by making sexual misconduct against a student by any school staff member or volunteer a Class I felony. It also adds more violations to the offenses where the state superintendent would be required to revoke a license�� without a hearing, and prohibits a licensee from ever having their license reinstated by the state superintendent if they are convicted of a crime against a child that is a Class H felony or higher or a felony invasion of privacy or sexual misconduct by a school staff person or volunteer.

Other education-related legislation includes:

SB 447, , which allows schools and school districts to get prescriptions for glucagon — a treatment for people with known Type 1 diabetes. It also allows schools to authorize school personnel to administer the glucagon to someone at school if the student’s prescribed glucagon isn’t available and grants civil liability immunity to a school and its school personnel.��AB 223, , which provides civil immunity for schools and school personnel for administering an opioid antagonist in a school setting.��AB 914, , which allows schools to adopt a plan for management of students who have asthma to administer a short-acting bronchodilator, for the prescription for a short-acting bronchodilator to be issued in the name of a school and grants immunity from civil liability.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

“There’s a good amount of research looking at associations between the neighborhood environment and various health outcomes,” says Julia G. Carter, lead author on the study, , published in JAMA Obstetrics and Gynecology. “When I was reviewing the literature, I saw a lack of research on the mother’s subjective experience, which is what our study looks at.”

Because individuals who live in the same community can encounter the same environment in radically different ways, Carter says the research team from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine wanted to go beyond the data about exposure to crime and other adverse conditions to look at how the mother’s view of her personal safety affected her and her infant’s well-being.

The researchers took their data from the (PRAMS), a project of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which, along with state, territorial and local health departments, collects targeted, population-based attitudes on maternal attitudes and experiences surrounding pregnancy. The survey asked set questions of respondents in the participating 46 U.S. states, territories, District of Columbia and New York City, which creates data on 81 percent of all live births in the U.S. Individual states have the option of selecting additional questions to deepen their understanding of their own populations.

For their study, the Northwestern researchers analyzed responses PRAMS had gathered from 2016 to 2020 from the states that had asked respondents how they perceived their neighborhood safety.

Eight states — Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and Wisconsin�� — asked respondents, “During the 12 months before your new baby was born, how often did you feel unsafe in the neighborhood where you lived?” Answers were then categorized as always or often unsafe, sometimes unsafe, rarely unsafe and never unsafe. To assess interpersonal physical and emotional abuse, one item asked whether respondents had been pushed, hit, slapped or physically hurt by another individual in the 12 months before they got pregnant. After 1829 exclusions, 29 987 respondents were included in the Northwestern study. Most of the respondents (78 percent) reported that they never felt unsafe. At the other end of the scale, 3 percent said they always or often felt unsafe.

The researchers then analyzed respondents’ birth outcomes including low birth weight, self-reported depression during pregnancy or postpartum, attending more than eight prenatal care visits, attending a postpartum visit, and breastfeeding for at least eight weeks.

After controlling for maternal age, race and ethnicity, and other sociodemographic factors to test the independent significance of perceived neighborhood safety, the researchers found that, compared with respondents who never felt unsafe in their neighborhoods, those reporting that they always or often felt unsafe had nearly 25 percent higher odds of having a low birthweight baby and 100 percent higher odds of perinatal depressive symptoms. The group that felt unsafe had 10 percent lower odds of attending more than eight prenatal care visits.

Although the Northwestern researchers’ cross-sectional study didn’t assess the factors that could determine why a pregnant person might choose not to seek prenatal care, their study cited an in-depth Canadian published in the BMC Journal of Pregnancy and Childbirth that analyzed the motivators associated with inadequate prenatal care among eight inner-city Winnipeg, Manitoba, neighborhoods. Researchers from the University of Manitoba found that, although the women in their study lived in the same group of disadvantaged neighborhoods, psychosocial, attitudinal, economic and structural barriers and a variety of motivators, separated those women who received adequate prenatal care from those who did not. The study highlights the diversity among inner-city women with respect to their experiences with prenatal care and their perceptions of factors that help or hinder them in accessing this care.

Psychosocial issues that increased the mothers’ likelihood of not receiving adequate care included feeling stressed, having family problems, being depressed and worrying that child welfare officials might take the baby. Being abused by their husband or boyfriend also prevented several of the women from obtaining adequate prenatal care. Structural barriers included not knowing where to get prenatal care or having a long wait to get an appointment. Problems with transportation or child care were mentioned by nearly half the women who didn’t receive adequate prenatal care.

The good news, Carter says, is that these factors have policy implications, which means they can be addressed. Solutions are more likely to be found in such initiatives as providing access to social workers who can help with scheduling and follow up, providing mental health resources, or addressing systemic issues such as the lack of bus stops near clinics.

A reverse image of the neighborhood perception study can be found in the paper, “,” published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, which looks at the relationship between favorable social and environmental neighborhood conditions and perinatal outcomes.

Researchers from the University of Albany looked at nearly 300 mother-infant pairs in small cities, suburban regions and rural areas in upstate New York. The neighborhoods were analyzed according to the (COI), a multidimensional indicator of a neighborhood’s favorable social, environmental and educational community attributes. The study, the first to analyze the COI in association with pregnancy health and birth size, demonstrated that positive neighborhood attributes cumulatively contributed to healthy pregnancies and favorable birth outcomes.

While the idea that better neighborhoods make for better health may seem like a foregone conclusion, the contrast among the studies underscores an important point. The factors that give one neighborhood a high COI score and make other neighborhoods a source of fear and concern for mother and child, are all malleable and subject to change.

In their neighborhood perception paper, the Northwestern researchers point out that social and economic interventions that combat neighborhood and domestic violence may be more beneficial in reducing adverse pregnancy outcomes than biomedical interventions. Reducing expensive, often counterproductive police crime-prevention initiatives and mass incarceration in favor of resources that strengthen low-income communities may go further to create a sense of safety not only for pregnant people, but for the entire community.

“The main question,” Carter says, “is what are we going to do about it? That is outside the scope of our study, but assessing the situation is the first step in having this conversation. There are still a lot of steps to make improvements and develop solutions.

“With these social determinants of maternal health, the truth is, there’s no quick fix. But to have the data and the commitment to collectively do something about it makes a big difference.”

Further Reading

��Children from neighborhoods perceived as unsafe by parents engaged in one less day per week in physical activity. Children from neighborhoods perceived as unsafe were less likely to use recreational facilities compared with children from neighborhoods perceived as safe, and children from less affluent families across rural and urban areas had half the odds of using recreational facilities compared with children from the wealthiest families living in urban areas.

Neighborhoods can be a potential source of psychosocial stressors associated with childhood asthma. Parents who perceive their neighborhoods as sometimes or never safe reported asthma at higher rates than those living in neighborhoods parents perceived to be always safe.

Legislation that would require school districts with 4-year-old kindergarten to collaborate with community child care providers got a mixed response at a Senate hearing Tuesday.

Child care providers testified in favor of the proposal, /. It’s the only one of 10 child care bills Republicans have offered this session that has won broad support from people who work in the child care field.

Witnesses from the Department of Children and Family Services (DCF) — the state agency that oversees licensed child care providers in Wisconsin — spoke favorably about the proposal’s objective while raising questions about some of its details. DCF’s testimony was for information, not an endorsement or in opposition, said Deputy Secretary Jeff Pertl.

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The Department of Public Instruction (DPI), which on its website , testified against the legislation. Tom McCarthy, DPI’s deputy state superintendent, said that “from a value perspective DPI does not oppose using the community approach to grow [child care] opportunities across the state,” but that the bill presented problems as written.

The legislation, , aims to shore up child care providers by bringing back 4-year-olds, which many providers lost when school districts took on 4K kindergarten programs.

The age group is more economical for providers to care for. Under state regulations, children who are 4 to 5 years old require a ratio of one teacher for up to 13 children. For younger ages, fewer children are allowed per teacher, with the lowest ratio for children age 2 or younger: one teacher for every four children.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Wisconsin school districts began expanding their 4K offerings, Pertl testified Tuesday at the Senate Education Committee hearing. An Assembly hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.

Wisconsin allows schools to contract with licensed child care providers to carry out their 4K programming, known as 4K community collaboration or “mixed delivery.” That has diminished considerably as more districts take on the programs themselves.

Pertl said about one out of four Wisconsin school districts that offer 4K are collaborating with child care providers.

Rep. Karen Hurd (R-Fall Creek) told the committee that in conversations she and her Republican colleagues had with providers over the last several months, the loss of 4K children “is one thing that came up over and over — what cut the legs out from under the child care industry.”

Providers “were left with the more expensive, younger, staff-intensive mix of children to serve,” said Priya Bhatia, DCF early care and education division administrator.�� “This bill would provide more stability and continuity of care for children and families.“

The legislation would require school districts offering 4K kindergarten to contract with local child care providers to provide those classes if they wanted to in addition to the 4K classes that the school district operates.

Enlisting more child care centers as 4K providers for public schools would also make it easier on parents who need “wraparound care” — child care before and after the kindergarten classes, Bhatia said.

If families must travel between a school’s part-day 4K program and a child care provider, “this causes disruption for children and can be a transportation burden for families,” Bhatia said. “The 4K community approach reduces these disruptions by providing a more seamless educational program and wraparound experience in a single location offered by a provider that parents already know and trust.”

Bhatia said there were three primary concerns that would make 4K community collaboration more successful if they were addressed in the bill:

Counting children in 4K as the equivalent of a full-time student under the state’s school financing system. Currently 4K students count as one-half of a full-time student when state aid is calculated.��Working out a payment formula for school districts that contract with child care providers that both parties to the contract can accept.

The bill would require districts to pay at least 95% of the local per-pupil funding for 4K students to the providers enrolling those students, with the district retaining up to 5% for administrative costs. Bhatia suggested it would be more appropriate for the child care provider and the district to work out “the appropriate balance” between each party.

Ensuring uniform licensing standards focused on the 4K teachers. Child care providers have questioned DPI’s licensing standards that cover children from birth to third grade as “more geared toward early and elementary education rather than 4K,” Bhatia said.

The legislation would require child care workers who teach in a 4K program to have a bachelor’s degree or an associate degree and to be enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program with a four-year timeline.

The differences in licensing standards between teachers employed in school district 4K programs and those working with that age group in child care centers is one problem that skeptics of the legislation have pointed to.

Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) questioned what he called “eliminating the professional standards for teachers in the bill.” The bill’s Assembly author, Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart), reiterated the bill’s educational requirements for child care workers and stressed that they would be overseen by DCF.

“These people are already taking care of these children,” added Sen. Romaine Quinn (R-Cameron), the Senate author.

“But there’s a difference between child care and school,” Larson replied, calling teachers professionals who have attained a degree.

“Early child care providers are professionals who go through and get a degree in educating children in early childhood,” responded Goeben, a former child care provider, adding that “����’s a little demeaning to say they would be less able to educate in their field and their expertise.”

McCarthy, of DPI, said one concern that the department had was that requiring districts to contract with child care providers to provide 4K lessons could conflict with the heightened attention to early literacy and reading under legislation enacted in 2023. That law includes uniform curriculum standards, while child care centers participating would have greater freedom in curriculum selection under the bill.

McCarthy also questioned how contracted child care providers would respond to children with disabilities or other special needs.

Corrine Hendrickson, a child care provider and organizer of an advocacy and support network for providers and parents, said child care providers involved in community collaboration have a good track record of�� helping children with special needs get services.

“Children with special needs are more likely to be identified and receive supports in communities that collaborate, as the child care program knows who to talk to at the school,” Hendrickson testified.

Hendrickson said that the legislation also supports federal funding changes that are going to favor mixed delivery. Other states are already further along in focusing on the community collaboration approach “to promote every child having access to high quality preschool without impeding access to working parents [for] the care and education of all children between the ages of six weeks and 12 years,” she said.

Joan Beck, a child care administrator in Dodge County, said that her center had enrolled 4-year-olds but lost them to a 4K program that opened in her community. She said her staff considers parents “our partners” while supporting them in the early education and development of their children.

“We take education seriously,” Beck said. “Our education starts at birth.” DCF, she added, provided extensive oversight that contributed to her child care program’s quality.

“Rather than looking at it as, we’re taking [children] out of the public schools, why can’t it be we’re partnering with the public schools?” Beck said. “Look at us as reasonable people who can do the job.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

Each state deployed the American Rescue Plan Act funds to stabilize their child care sectors. The success of the American Rescue Plan stabilization funding provided the impetus for select states to dedicate their own resources to continue the investments. Whether the product of years or organized lobbying, or a decision to reroute surplus funds back to families and educators, 11 states and the District of Columbia have taken concrete steps to shore up their own child care sectors.

from The Century Foundation, authors Julie Kashen and Laura Valle-Gutierrez detail the how and why of states deciding to invest in child care. Kashen was kind enough to share some of her insights from the report with Early Learning Nation magazine. A lightly edited Q&A follows:

Rebecca Gale: It took the American Rescue Plan to show what so many advocates of robust social policy have been saying for decades: government investment works and can make a difference, stabilizing industries and lifting people out of poverty. But the moment the funds ran dry, many policymakers were satisfied to return to the status quo. What do you think changed from their initial support of ARPA to their unwillingness to continue what has been shown to positively impact so many lives?��

Julie Kashen: First, let’s acknowledge how bad the status quo was. Before anyone had heard of the COVID-19 pandemic, families struggled to find quality, affordable child care, and child care providers grappled to retain staff and afford basic necessities.

There were a lot of policymakers who were not satisfied to return to that status quo. In fact, the House of Representatives in November 2021, passed historic legislation proposed by President Biden — the Build Back Better Act — which included that would have lowered child care costs for nine out of 10 families with young children, while giving parents the choice to find the right program for their family in center-based, home-based, family-based, school-based and Head Start programs.

It would have expanded free preschool for three- and four-year-olds, raised wages in the early education sector and supported the cost of high-quality care. In fact, when ARPA passed, many envisioned that when the funding expired, there would be the foundation of a sustainable child care and early learning system in place. Unfortunately, that bill, with no support from Republicans, , and so did not become law.

When the funding expired, and both called for $16 billion in emergency child care funding to address the immediate needs caused by the child care stabilization funding cliff. So, I would argue that we have quite a number of policymakers fighting hard for change at the federal level, but being blocked in their progress by partisan politics.

RG: D.C. and the 11 states that opted to invest in child care are overwhelmingly “blue” states (D.C., California, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont, Washington) with a handful of “red” or “purple” ones thrown in (Alaska, New Hampshire, Kentucky). to find affordable child care, despite party affiliation. What do you think sets the states apart that opted to direct extra funds to the child care sector?

JK: All of the states that deployed their own resources for stabilizing their child care sectors experienced the positive impact of the ARPA stabilization funds and saw the benefits to communities and local economies of putting resources into children and families. Most of the states had long-term organizing campaigns, including grassroots organizing and union campaigns, that combined with a moment of greater awareness of, support for child care and political leadership that helped them succeed.

It’s also worth noting that there are a number of “red” and “purple” states that took additional action leveraging federal funds. While we did not include them in our list of states that put their own resources in, the results of their leadership are similar using federal dollars. In , for example, after Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ multiple attempts to move $356 million through the state legislature were blocked by legislative opponents, he reallocated $175 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to cover half of this gap. Missouri, Ohio and North Dakota are just some of the

RG: Ten states went through their state legislatures to take action, but New Mexico went through a ballot initiative to create a permanent fund which has the potential to offer some of the longest lasting impact (D.C. took action through the Office of the Mayor). Have you found that social issues like support for child care could do better at the ballot box than in state assemblies?

JK: We know child care is popular among voters regardless of political party. In fact, from GQR and the Child Care for Every Family Network shows four in five Republican parents of children under 18 (79%) support guaranteed child care, as do 83% of independent parents and 97% of Democrat parents. So, ballot initiatives are often a good route.

But ����’s worth noting that more states improved their child care systems and invested in child care in 2023 than we have seen in any recent time, much of it because they finally had the federal resources to help. So, we now have clear evidence that when the federal government and states come together to take action, children, families and local economies all benefit.

That said, a concerning trend we also saw in 2023 was that when states found themselves with significant surpluses, rather than invest in families, that primarily benefited wealthy households and corporations. These tax cuts will reduce state revenues precisely at a time when more revenue is needed to invest in child care. The amount of lost state revenue will grow over time and make it even harder for these states to invest needed funding on child care and reap the economic benefits of those investments. Not only have these short-sighted tax cuts reduced states’ abilities to invest in child care programs, this lack of investment can induce further collapses in state revenues, since we know child care investments support local economies.

RG: Child care is an industry where the math will never quite add up. Your report quotes Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as saying the current state of the nation’s child care is “the textbook example of a broken market” since existing market forces cannot solve it. What about the nature of child care makes it both different from other market services, and makes it hard for people and policymakers to understand why federal investment is needed?

JK: Families across all income levels share the same determination to provide the best possible foundation for their children, especially in their early years. Two-thirds of children under age 6 have all of their parents (either solo or coupled) in the workforce. Parents need the freedom to afford child care and to have peace of mind that their children are safe and nurtured while parents go to work or to school and make the best choices for their families.

Most families don’t send children to fourth grade with a check to cover the cost of their teacher’s salaries or to maintain the school building. The same should be true for child care. Our shared interest in making sure our children thrive shouldn’t start when they turn five. Like public education, public libraries, safe food and clean drinking water, child care benefits all of us. And child care and early learning investments are as essential to economic growth as physical infrastructure or energy.

Most parents need child care at a time when they can least afford it because they are early in their career. This has particular impacts for families of color due to, at least in part, ongoing systemic and structural inequities that perpetuate overrepresentation of communities of color in jobs paying lower wages, the ranks of those experiencing higher unemployment rates, and families living below the federal poverty level. Unlike college tuition, which is also too expensive, parents don’t have eighteen years to plan and save. To access child care, families are forced to pay an amount put together patchwork solutions that create instability for their work lives and for their children, or be one of the fortunate few who receive child care assistance.

Meanwhile, will continue to put upward pressure on prices as child care businesses will have to raise wages to attract early educators – or go out of business. Even before the pandemic wreaked havoc on the child care sector, data from the Center for American Progress showed that more than half of families with young children live in a child care desert (a census tract where there are more than three times as many children as licensed child care slots).

Underlying all of this is the devaluing of care work in American society. One of the many legacies of slavery is the shouldering of care responsibilities by the people in our society with the least power and fewest resources. In the early twentieth century, white lawmakers excluded care workers—who were overwhelmingly Black women—from fair wages and labor protections to preserve the status quo. To this day, our culture and policies continue to undervalue caregiving, leaving caregivers underpaid or unpaid, and without the support they need to thrive.

This history has also contributed to the expectation that family care is an individual responsibility, rather than a communal one: if you struggle, there’s something wrong with you. In reality, care has been a universal need and a public good that requires public-policy-supported solutions, and now more than ever must be treated as such. This is why the pandemic removing the invisibility cloak from all of the hard work of caregiving that had been going on all along was so important.

RG: Even the most generous state support — like Vermont and New Mexico — is not a substitute for robust federal support. From a policy perspective, what could that federal support look like, and what do you think is possible in the existing political climate?

JK: The Build Back Better Act is the closest we’ve come to the robust, comprehensive child care and early learning system we’ve needed since . Build Back Better would have made sure that every family who needs it could find child care that works for their families, nurtures their children and doesn’t break the bank.

The, reintroduced in April of last year, took many of the lessons of the Build Back Better fight and the American Rescue Plan implementation, and built on a solid foundation to become an even stronger approach.

While Congressional champions, advocates and organizers work toward the next big opportunity, the immediate need is significant. The hope is that a combination of an increase in existing child care and early learning programs through the FY24 appropriations process and supplemental emergency child care funding will both make it through Congress as soon as possible.

RG: You’ve been researching and working on social policy for the better part of two decades, yet it took the COVID-19 pandemic to finally give child care its moment in the sun. As we move further away from the emergency lockdown phase of Covid, how do you think people will remember this time in our country’s evolution on public policy? Do you see this as a turning point?

JK: The turning point is that 1. People saw clearly the value of caregiving; 2. The government took historic action that worked and we can now point to as evidence of the value of these investments.

The pandemic underscored the importance of investing in our care infrastructure — it crystallized how caregiving makes all other work possible, and how our failure to treat care as a public good burdens families and stifles our economy. The U.S. investments in children and families during the pandemic demonstrated the life-changing and economy-sustaining power of equitable policy. The investments in child care, the child tax credit and increased home and community-based services for older adults and disabled people were historic, serving millions of families, reducing poverty and supporting more people to age with dignity at home.

I remain optimistic, but the ease with which many of these policies have since been allowed to sunset, or roll back, or be eliminated altogether shows the extent to which bias, discrimination, and inequity are built into our economic system and structures. Two steps forward, one step back — ����’s frustrating, but ����’s progress that we can keep building on.

Walter Lanier stood before a packed room at the Milwaukee County Zoo in May and repeated his mantra: “We have to be organized.

The room was filled with Black leaders — mostly men — from government, nonprofits and academic institutions. The leaders knew all too well that, year after year, studies have ranked the Milwaukee metropolitan area the worst place to live if you’re Black.

Those studies have cited Wisconsin’s dramatic , deep racial disparities in income and educational achievement and a legacy of redlining that made Milwaukee one of the nation’s most segregated major cities.

But Lanier, a pastor and community leader who also has , announced plans to change the narrative by changing the reality — particularly for Black men.

Since 2022, Lanier has served as president and CEO of the African American Leadership Alliance Milwaukee. The nonprofit aims to make Milwaukee a top city for Black residents by 2025 and serves as the backbone for its latest push to narrow wide achievement gaps for Black men and boys.

Doing so, Lanier told the gathering, would require all-hands-on-deck cooperation among nonprofits, civic groups and government.

“All over the city and all over the county, we have all types of stuff going on,” Lanier said. “We haven’t been as organized and connected as we need to be.”

It’s hardly Milwaukee’s first effort to boost the achievement of Black boys and men.

Responding to a nationwide challenge by then-President Barack Obama, city leaders launched an initiative to “address the multitude of challenges” that disadvantage Black men and boys in Milwaukee. That initiative sparked the creation of a Black Male Achievement Advisory Council to set a policy agenda, provide a funding apparatus and coordinate groups striving toward similar goals.

But the initiative fizzled without measurable results, and the council stopped meeting in 2021 — during a mayoral transition and a COVID-19 pandemic that disproportionately harmed Black residents.

Some suggest the effort fell victim to a culture in Milwaukee where ideas often languish without public commitment and coordination. But city leaders are optimistic a new effort under new leadership will yield progress.

Already Lanier’s group has helped Milwaukee gain certification within the Obama Foundation’s My Brother’s Keeper Alliance network, allowing leaders to learn from other communities seeking to improve the lives of men of color.

“Things are changing,” Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley told Wisconsin Watch. “How do we have diversity of thought, diversity of people to really help us move the needle when it comes down to eliminating the racial disparities and the health disparities that we see in Milwaukee County?”

Black Male Achievement Advisory Council

Milwaukee has sought to address barriers for Black males since the 1980s, by which point all of the region’s job growth had shifted to the suburbs.

First came the Milwaukee African American Male Task Force, which led to the creation of African American immersion schools. Then the Milwaukee Parental School Choice Program, which provides funding for children to attend private school. Later was the Milwaukee Fatherhood Collaborative, which advocated for fathers’ rights and for more involvement with their children. The Milwaukee African American Male Unemployment Task Force was among other groups to come.

But the Black Male Achievement Advisory Council, created by a 2013 city ordinance, promised to be different.

Joe Davis Sr., a Common Council member at the time, spearheaded the plan to bring all such efforts under one umbrella to recommend policies and track progress through measurable data.

Following decades of “stealth depression,” Milwaukee was among the top 10 poorest U.S. cities, with 38% of its Black population living below the poverty level and deep disparities between Black and white males.

Only 3% of Black male eighth graders at the time read at or above grade level, 45% graduated on time from high school, and firearm homicide was the leading cause of death for ages 11 to 39 years old.

The National League of Cities, which supports local governments, agreed to assist Milwaukee with data tracking and coaching to reduce racial disparities in education, work and family outcomes.

Business, philanthropic and faith-based leaders joined city, school and police officials in monthly meetings of the Black Male Achievement Advisory Council.

“I cannot recall a time in the city where there was as much energy and cohesiveness across political lines — across business and municipal government, philanthropy partners all speaking and agreeing about a pathway forward — to address this issue,” former Common Council member Ashanti Hamilton told Wisconsin Watch.

The city budget at the time had allocated $100,000 in the council’s first year to fund initiatives supporting Black males.

But tension arose between Davis and then-Mayor Tom Barrett, the council’s co-chairs, before the council reached its first anniversary.

After the city allocated an additional $300,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant dollars to support the council’s goals, Davis called for a larger investment.

“Unfortunately, what I’m finding is that the mayor is not interested in taking a risk or claiming this particular issue on behalf of Black men and boys,” Davis said during a 2014 Common Council meeting.

The frustrations prompted Davis to resign as council co-chair that year. Speaking to Wisconsin Watch, he called Barrett “an obstructionist” who didn’t want to offend other residents by addressing challenges for Black males.

Barrett, now a U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, did not respond to interview requests for this story.

Obama issues My Brother’s Keeper challenge

But in 2015 the council saw an opportunity in Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, launched two years after the Florida reignited national discussions about the life-and-death barriers Black males face.

Obama challenged local officials to build “My Brother’s Keepers Communities” by ensuring Black boys enter school ready to learn, read at grade level by third grade, graduate from high school, complete postsecondary education or training and remain safe from violent crime.

Milwaukee officials joined nearly 200 mayors, tribal leaders and county executives across 43 states and the District of Columbia who have accepted the challenge.

In 2015 Barrett and Hamilton, who succeeded Davis as Black Male Achievement Advisory Council co-chair, created a five-year plan focused on 10 priorities for males of color:

• Increase high school graduation rates and readiness for college and/or the workplace.
• Increase rates of graduation from post-secondary education or job training.
• Increase rates of employee retention and promotion.
• Make workplaces attractive and accessible.
• Improve the administration of justice.
• Increase capacity to combat violence and victimization.
• Protect physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellness.
• Fuel creativity and entrepreneurship.
• Establish alternative community-based institutions to sustain achievement.
• Increase representation and participation in decision-making bodies and processes across all sectors.

The city laid out a variety of more specific goals in the plan, ranging from increasing graduation rates for students of color by at least 0.5% annually to boosting Black male voter registration rates by at least 3% annually.

While Hamilton cautioned against becoming frozen in a “search for perfection,” some council members worried about a lack of measurable metrics attached to several items. The Black Male Achievement Advisory Council allocated $50,000 to the Center for Self-Sufficiency to evaluate the plan’s metrics.

Carl Wesley, the center’s president and CEO at the time, told Wisconsin Watch he ran into brick walls while trying to collect baseline data from various entities relevant to the council’s efforts, and many of the plan’s goals were vague.

“It had things in there, like increase from this to that, but no one knew where they were to increase from,” he said.

The center couldn’t complete the project, so it didn’t get paid, Wesley said.

In 2018 the city joined Milwaukee Public Schools, Employ Milwaukee and the local United Way chapter in seeking funding from the My Brother’s Keeper Community Challenge competition, which required an action plan and a protocol for tracking data and benchmarks.

The application did not draw funding. My Brother’s Keeper instead named Milwaukee a “Community to Watch.”

Local officials at the time acknowledged Milwaukee’s lack of progress on improving outcomes for Black males. While the city saw increased engagement around such issues, it didn’t translate into lower crime rates or higher graduation rates.

“Many grassroots and nonprofit organizations make claim to a number of programs and initiatives that support Black men and boys, but operate in silos with inadequate resources and no unifying measures to reinforce efforts between them to collectively move the needle on outcomes,” Jeff Roman, a consultant who later directed the Milwaukee County Office of Equity, . “Where substantial investments are being made, little information exists on actual impacts, and the information that does exist suggests that little improvement is being made.”

The national a “strong city administration commitment to Black men and boys,” while showing a need for more targeted funding and better participation and coordination among government, nonprofits and other groups invested in Black male achievement.

The city’s Black Male Achievement Advisory Council stopped meeting in 2021 as Cavalier Johnson replaced Barrett as mayor and COVID-19 disrupted life.

“There was no individual person to pick it up and keep it moving,” Hamilton said, calling for leaders to make long-term commitments to things they say they care about.

Depending on municipal government to oversee initiatives carries risks, said Shawn Dove, former CEO of the Campaign for Black Male Achievement, which worked with Milwaukee leaders. Political leaders often change, as do their commitments. Housing an initiative outside of government — but still inviting municipal leaders to participate — can bring more stability, he said.

Whether Johnson will revive the council remains unclear. His office did not respond to Wisconsin Watch’s repeated requests for an interview. Nor did José Pérez, the Common Council president.

Nate Deans, the director of Milwaukee Public Schools’ Department of Black and Latino Male Achievement, hopes the council resumes.

The creation of his department, which provides mentors to 500 Black and Latino male students, resulted from the council’s recommendations.

“It’ll streamline the work that much more if we’re all at least meeting,” Deans said.

Christopher Walton Jr., who briefly served on the council before it stopped meeting, said restarting meetings could help.

“It’s a disservice to the community and to young Black males that we don’t have people putting their hand back on that to get that moving again,” he said. “And so I would definitely love to see that brought back up in full force and get moving again.”

‘Community to watch’ to certified city

Regardless, Lanier and the African American Leadership Alliance are forging ahead. He didn’t want Milwaukee’s My Brother’s Keeper plan to go to waste.

He called it a well-designed plan that was insufficiently resourced.

Lanier said he’s forming partnerships to strengthen the plan, with a focus on education, employment and anti-violence.

“We’re doing work in all of those areas in Milwaukee, but ����’s segregated and fragmented and siloed,” Lanier said. “As a result, we don’t present as well as we could externally.”

That has included working with Johnson and Crowley to gain certification within the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance network, allowing Milwaukee’s leaders to learn from other communities that have improved the lives of males of color.

They include cities like Newark, New Jersey, and Omaha, Nebraska. Newark’s homicides plunged by 55% from 2013 to 2021, and Omaha’s homicides dropped by 30% from 2011 to 2022 due to cross-community collaboration, according to the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, enrollment for students of color in pre-kindergarten increased by 33% from 2013 to  2019, and in Yonkers, the city now has New York’s highest graduation rate for students of color: 91%, according to the alliance.

Lanier hopes My Brother’s Keeper will ultimately certify the state as well. That’s the case in Ohio, where and community members partner on best practices for boosting Black male achievement.

Marquette University’s Center for Urban Research, Teaching, and Outreach is helping Lanier identify metrics and compile data to populate a citywide dashboard to track the progress of Black male achievement. The center, which has worked with Lanier for several years, has identified and institutions working on equity issues.

Lanier envisions a future Milwaukee where Black people thrive. That will require making measurable progress and changing narratives in Milwaukee.

“Because if we open that door for us, just like everything else, that door is open for everybody else,” Lanier said at the May gathering. “It’s my job to get it done.”

Learn more

Those wanting to learn more about the African American Leadership Alliance’s collaboration to improve Black male achievement in Milwaukee can sign up for updates .

Editor’s note: Bevin Christie, project manager for Wisconsin Watch’s News414 service journalism collaboration with Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, has worked as a consultant with the African American Leadership Alliance of Milwaukee. 

The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch () collaborates with Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

During a heavy snowstorm Tuesday that caused schools to close all over Wisconsin, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly spoke by telephone with the Wisconsin Examiner about the health of the state’s public education system, student achievement, the growth of school vouchers, political attacks on diversity and her hopes for the coming year.

Parents bill of rights

As we spoke, Republican legislators were preparing to hold an executive session Thursday on , a “Parents Bill of Rights” that encourages lawsuits by parents who feel that their rights have been violated because they were not informed about medical services offered at school or about the discussion of “controversial subjects”  in class, including gender identity and racism, or because they were not given the authority to determine the names and pronouns used to address their children.

Under the bill, a parent or guardian who successfully asserts a claim “may recover declaratory relief, injunctive relief, reasonable attorney’s fees and costs, and up to $10,000 for any other appropriate relief.”

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“The reality is that meaningful parental engagement is happening every single day between our teachers and their students’ families and caregivers,” Underly said. The Parents Bill of Rights “is designed to shut down discussion and creates an environment of fear for our educators because it inserts them into a culture war that no one should be fighting in the first place.”

She sees the bill as part of a larger pattern of attacks on public schools and democracy itself.

“You think about the things that the Legislature picks up on,” Underly said. “Let’s attack libraries. Let’s attack the curriculum. Let’s attack teachers, let’s attack school boards because they wanted to wear masks during the virus. … I think ����’s really a way to make sure that we instill distrust in our public institutions.”

There is “a lot of misinformation out there,” Underly added, propagated by people and groups insinuating that schools provide inappropriate materials to kids. “That’s by design. Misinformation is designed to stoke outrage.”

Another Republican bill, , would require public schools to comply with written requests from residents in their districts to inspect a textbook, curriculum or instructional material within 14 days.

“That’s really burdensome,” said Underly. “Let me just say right now, if you have a question about curriculum, you can access that. You contact the school, the principal and the teacher will work to get you the information.”

School voucher lawsuit

The message that public schools are “failing” and do not adequately serve Wisconsin families has been promoted for decades by advocates for school privatization, including the Bradley Foundation, which also Milwaukee’s first-in-the-nation school voucher program. That program, which started out serving 350 kids, has mushroomed to include more than 52,000 students in the statewide, Racine and Milwaukee programs.

In December, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to hear a challenging Wisconsin’s private school voucher program. The suit, sponsored by Minocqua Brewing Co. owner Kirk Bangstad, named Underly, in her official capacity, as a defendant. It charged that taxpayer-financed private school vouchers are a huge financial drain, pushing local public school districts into a “death spiral” and that they violate the state constitution’s promise to provide high-quality public schools for every child.

Asked to comment on the lawsuit, Underly said she couldn’t speak to the constitutionality of school vouchers. But, she added,  “I believe that we cannot afford two school systems.”

“We need to robustly fund the system that serves all kids,” she said, “and that’s our public schools.”

(Late last year Underly another recent Supreme Court lawsuit, filed by teachers and other public employees challenging Act 10, the 2011 law that took away most collective bargaining rights from most public employees: “Returning collective bargaining rights to public sector employees will strengthen our educator workforce, and strengthening our educator workforce will improve our children’s education and create a stronger future for our state,” she said in a statement.)

Even though the voucher lawsuit was kicked back down to lower court, Underly said it could still help raise awareness  that, unlike public schools, which are open to every child, Wisconsin’s school choice programs “are allowing these schools that accept vouchers to discriminate against students, students with disabilities, students who are LGBTQ+.”

Worrying about LGBTQ kids

Underly said she worries “all the time” about the well-being of LGBTQ kids in Wisconsin. She cited data showing that “these kids who struggle to feel included or to be seen, you know, their mental health struggles are higher.”

“At the heart of all this I think what I would like people to realize, and I think many people do, [is that] at the center of all of this is a child.”

“And when we attack them,” she added, “when we tell them, you know, their identity doesn’t matter or we have to take down symbols that show that they’re included, that’s hurting them. … It’s saying that you don’t belong here or you’re not wanted. … I just want to tell people, these are kids. These are human beings. And they deserve love and empathy.”

Missing the Regents’ vote to cut back DEI

Along with recent efforts to ban books and remove LGBTQ Pride flags, Wisconsin schools have been at the center of a battle over diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. Underly, who serves on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, was absent for the vote in which the Regents reversed themselves and agreed to legislative Republicans’ demands that they eliminate DEI positions in exchange for promised funding for faculty raises and capital improvements.

Underly was out of the country, traveling with her elderly mother in Austria, on a vacation she said she’d had to reschedule several times, when the Regents voted 9-8 to reject the deal limiting diversity positions on Saturday, Dec. 9. She was still out of the country the following Wednesday, Dec 13, when the Regents reversed their decision in a second vote.

Between votes, Underly issued a statement asking that the second vote be postponed so she could attend. She had intermittent internet access, she explained, and wouldn’t be available at the meeting time. But the Regents went ahead without her.

“Part of my frustration with that is that my position on diversity, equity and inclusion is very clear,” Underly said. “I think people knew how I was going to vote. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it …  I wasn’t part of any of the discussions.”

Like Gov. Tony Evers, Underly doesn’t believe there should have been any further negotiations between the Regents and the Legislature over funds that were already approved as part of the state budget.

Now, as Assembly Speaker Robin Vos pledges to eliminate every trace of DEI throughout the state, Underly said, “It’s definitely that slippery slope argument. You give in on one thing, and they certainly will want to take more.”

Still, she added, “these programs aren’t going to go away. … They exist to make sure that every citizen in the state of Wisconsin has access to higher education. That includes veterans. That includes kids from rural Wisconsin who want to study to become doctors. It includes women. It includes kids who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.”

Will UW hold onto minority scholarship programs and other targets of Republicans in the Legislature, and somehow meet its agreement to eliminate the language of DEI without actually getting rid of programs that promote diversity?

“I don’t know,” Underly said. “I guess in my role as Regent what I do look forward to is having these conversations and in many ways protecting these positions [including] the scholarships and [other] components.”

What about voucher schools that serve underserved kids?

On the flip side, what does Underly make of the argument made by school choice advocates like Madison’s One City independent charter school founder Kaleem Caire, that Wisconsin’s between Black and white students is unacceptable and the lack of diversity among teaching staff contributes to a lousy environment in the local public school district for Black kids?

“I’m not going to say that his heart’s not in the right place,” said Underly. “We want all kids to be successful, and he is in a community and he interacts with children of color and their families all the time.”

Still, “I don’t think the answer is pulling kids out of public schools and funding private schools,” Underly said. “I would argue the opposite and say we need to put the resources in the public schools so that all kids can be successful.”

Working on teacher training, curriculum, adjusting the length of the school day or the school year are all “ways we could address the achievement gap, and the opportunity gaps that we see, especially among children of color,” she said.

“This is really where we get at the root of what equity is,” Underly added, “getting the schools what they need, so that their kids can be successful, and that’s not going to be the same thing in every school or in every community.”

Poverty and student success

Among the biggest equity issues public schools must address, Underly said, is poverty.

Children facing housing insecurity and hunger are “not going to score as well on a standardized test,” she said.

“What public schools have done is they’ve tried to level that playing field. They have provided food for kids, they provide stability, whether ����’s for in-school or after-school programs, they provide the art and the music and these enrichment classes that kids in poverty perhaps can’t afford to get outside of school.”

The whole purpose of public schools is to create a more equitable society by providing opportunity to kids whose families live in poverty. “That’s a fundamental value of democracy,” said Underly. “That’s inclusion — making sure that not just the wealthy have access to these things.”

Fundamentally, Underly agrees with the plaintiffs in the anti-voucher lawsuit that the private school voucher movement undermines democracy. “Public schools are among the most democratic institutions that you can think of because they accept everybody, regardless of their language, their socioeconomic status, their gender, who their parents are, their immigrant status. Because that’s what inclusion is. And when you have these outside groups attack public schools, they’re really attacking that democratic institution.”

School report cards

The latest round of released by DPI showed students test scores continuing to improve after the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.

None of Wisconsin’s school districts is rated as “failing” in the latest assessments and 94% of districts meet or exceed  expectations. But critics say DPI is setting the bar too low. Will Flanders of Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty told : “While DPI may tout there has been an increase across the board, we still have districts like Milwaukee where proficiency rates are less than 20% and somehow that seems to be meeting expectations.”

Public school student proficiency rates for 2022-23 were better than in 2020-21 and 2021-22. But they still seem low:  38.9% were proficient in English language arts and 37.4% were proficient in math. Students participating in the state’s Private School Choice Programs, however, had even lower proficiency rates of 22.1% in English language arts and 17.9% in math in 2022-23.

Student assessment scores are only one factor in determining district report card scores, a spokesperson for DPI explains. For districts with high percentages of low-income students, growth is weighted more significantly than achievement — a .

“Our public education system should be about getting every kid what they need – in the way they need it – in order to achieve success,” Underly said.

In announcing the latest assessment data, DPI pointed to a that found Wisconsin’s performance standards in reading and math were among the highest in the nation, corresponding to higher levels of proficiency as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Big financial challenges for public schools

Still, schools face big challenges, particularly those with large numbers of low-income and special education students and English language learners. The biggest challenge, Underly said, is revenue.

After more than a decade of school funding that , and a less than 30% state reimbursement for special education — a mandatory cost that is eating up school districts’ budgets, driving deep cuts in other programs, public school advocates with the latest state budget.

Gov. Evers had adopted DPI’s proposals in his own budget, including a big increase in the state reimbursement for special education from less than 30% to 60%, lifting local revenue limits and providing a total funding increase of $2.6 billion. The Legislature stripped that down to $1 billion, and left 40% of school districts with less funding this year than they had under the previous, zero-increase budget.

Remaining hopeful part of the job

Despite the existential challenges facing Wisconsin public schools, including the elimination, next year, of the cap on enrollment for voucher schools, Underly said she has a lot of hope for 2024.

“When we talk to kids, especially the ones that remember COVID — middle school, high school kids — they have a lot of hope for the future.”

She is already working on her next budget proposal, which will include teacher recruitment, increasing funding for mental health and, once again, an increase in the state’s special education reimbursement, as well as programs including free meals that address poverty.

“We need to get kids what they need, so that they can be successful and making sure that they’re not hungry is really critical for them to be able to focus and concentrate,” she said.

“I think ����’s important that we continue this hopeful outlook because that’s what our schools need,” Underly added. “Our schools don’t need to be attacked. Our students don’t need to be attacked. So just supporting our schools, supporting our students and supporting that hope is part of supporting their education.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

A bill from Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature would require University of Wisconsin schools to provide out-of-state students with information on how to vote absentee in their home states.

The bill’s authors say the proposal is a way to encourage civic participation from students in communities they know better than their college campuses, but opponents say ����’s an effort to remove the largely Democratic student vote from close statewide elections. Students would still be able to decide if they want to vote in Wisconsin or their home states.

“We want to encourage maximum civic participation, but out-of-state students are not often provided the information on how to vote in their state of residence,” the bill’s co-sponsorship states. “This bill would require the Universities of Wisconsin to provide non-resident students information on how to vote absentee in their home state. The goal is to make sure that every UW student has the best information on how to vote before they vote. A 2020 study shows that only 15% of non-Wisconsin resident students stay in Wisconsin after graduating.”

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“College students from out of state typically move back to their home state after graduating and do not stay here in Wisconsin,” the memo continues. “Students are typically more involved in their home state where they grew up and have ties to. This bill would simply require the UW System to give students information on voting absentee so they are able to vote in their home state.”

The student vote in Wisconsin is often consequential. In the spring 2023 election, long lines were seen at campus polling locations across the state and the heavy turnout among students was cited as a reason for Janet Protasiewicz’s comfortable margin of victory in last spring’s Supreme Court race.

In Madison, the large student population is one source of the Democratic Party’s strength in Dane County, yet Wisconsin residents make up less than half of the approximately 37,000 undergraduate students.

Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) told his concern is college students casting deciding votes in local races when they aren’t fully entrenched in the community and don’t pay property taxes.

“Why should a student be voting on these when they are not gonna have any of the impact of it? They’re not paying any of the property taxes in our area,” Moses, one of the bill’s co-authors, said.

Rep. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) said that paying property taxes isn’t a requirement to vote and noted that college is often when students become more politically engaged and informed about local issues where they live. He added that the Legislature should be finding ways to keep out-of-state students in Wisconsin after graduation.

“We are constantly talking about workforce challenges and we know that the only way to solve that is gonna be to bring people into our state,” he told WPR. “And bringing them here for college and then spending those four years convincing them that Wisconsin is where they wanna spend their rest of their lives is one of the ways that we can do that.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

One day, teachers and library staff across Wisconsin may find that they could be prosecuted for allowing K-12 students to view certain books or other materials. A new Republican legislative proposal to penalize educators for exposing children to obscene materials comes out of a wider effort to restrict what K-12 students can see or read. The bill had its day Dec. 5 before the Republican-led Assembly Committee on Education. �� would remove protections for school and library staff against being prosecuted for providing “obscene” materials to minors. If passed, the bill would create a new class of felons —�� teachers and library staff who are found to have provided students with inappropriate books or other media.

One day after the Assembly education committee hearing on the bill, Dr. Jill Underly, the state superintendent of public instruction, expressed concern about increased attacks on libraries and schools on X, formerly known as Twitter. “At this moment in our history, we need spaces to engage with new ideas and our history,” Underly wrote in a Dec. 6 post. “We need it in the face of hate and increased threats and attempts at silencing. Libraries are a bastion of freedom of thought, expression, and creativity.”

Underly also shared video of statements she made at a late November press conference, streamed by WisconsinEye. In the video, Underly said that school libraries are welcoming, exciting places where children can learn and explore new ideas and stories. “When we see the current increases in attempts at censorship and attacks of disinformation against school libraries, we should be very, very worried,” Underly said. To Underly, “censorship is suppression,” and goes against the spirit of education. “Disinformation threatens the existence of inclusive spaces because it weaponizes the fact that they welcome all students as their authentic selves,” said Underly.

Throughout the hearing, however, Rep. Scott Allen (R-Waukesha) and Sen. Andre Jacque (R-DePere) pushed back against concerns about the bills. “I’m grateful for the public hearing as there are many who suggest that there are no obscene materials in our schools and that this bill is just about book bans and political agendas,” said Allen in testimony to the committee. “As you’ll hear today from other testifiers, there are many parents and educators who have become concerned at how students can encounter sexually explicit material at school.”

Current law exempts librarians and teachers from being prosecuted under the state’s obscene materials laws in the interest of allowing for a free flow of literary and educational materials. Allen described “obscene material” as any writing, picture, film or recording which could cause “immoderate or unwholesome desires,” depicts sexual conduct in an offensive way, or lacks serious literary, artistic, political, educational or scientific value. “When we look at this definition, I think all of us, regardless of political persuasions, would agree that material showing sexual content in a provocative way should not be something that we give to 12-year-olds,” said Allen. “If any of us chose to distribute obscene material to a minor, we would be subject to felony charges. Rightly so.” Allen added. “Should we not hold those who work with minors to the same level of responsibility as any other Wisconsinite?”

Both Allen and Jacque stressed that the bill isn’t about banning books. “It’s a simple, commonsense acknowledgment that all books and materials may not be appropriate for all kids of all age groups, particularly those with sexually explicit and perverse content,” said Jacque. “This is hardly an extreme or radical expectation.” Jacque, like committee vice-chair Barbara Dittrich (R-Oconomowoc) who went before a Senate committee with another library-related bill last week, said that virtual learning after the pandemic caused parents to pay closer attention to what their children had access to in school. Some turned their outrage into organizing, creating lists of books largely about LGBTQ issues, race  and social justice issues to remove or restrict in schools. Allen and Jacque said some constituents told them prosecuting school and library staff for providing certain materials to students was a step in the right direction.

In emails, parents compiled a list of books they viewed as inappropriate for young students, and encouraged Republican lawmakers to look into removing them. Some parents felt the books were sexually obscene, others felt that their kids were being taught to “hate cops and hate their white skin in the classrooms at our elementary schools.” Prosecuting teachers and library staff for providing such books to students was recommended by constituents in many of these early emails. Allen was among Republican lawmakers who’d received those early conversations regarding prosecution of school and library staff.

, Allen and Jacque floated co-sponsorship memos for legislation to remove protections for school staff and prohibit school districts from using funds to purchase any materials found to be obscene. In the Dec. 5 hearing, the two lawmakers continued that effort. Other people speaking in favor of the bill included representatives of groups including one called Gays Against Groomers as well as Wisconsin Family Action. A member of Gays Against Groomers testified wearing an American flag patterned bandana, and stated that books like Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe are “pedophile books.” Testimony from Moms for Liberty was also provided to the committee. People speaking in favor of the bill argued that they wanted to protect the innocence of young children, particularly from teachers who have “an agenda.”

Hearing materials provided to the committee included pages and excerpts of books which parents said they  found in school districts across Wisconsin. Some of the pages included sexual dialogue or situations between characters or images of sexual acts. “The Infinite Moment of Us” by Lauren Myracle, “Fun Home” by Alison Bechdel, and “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood were among the books identified for having violence, descriptions of self-harm, “alternate gender ideologies,” “controversial religious commentary,” and “profanity.” Although no one spoke against the bill in person,, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, multiple associations representing school district administrators, school nurses, school business officials, and librarians. Several members of the committee chimed in on the bill in testimony. Rep. William Penterman (R-Columbus) said he had concerns “that the bill doesn’t go far enough.” Penterman felt the bill couldn’t be applied widely enough to different communities and situations. Penterman said that in his own city, “a naked bike ride wouldn’t fly, but in other places that might be seen as totally acceptable,” said Penterman.

Other Republican members harked back to a remembered golden era of modesty. Rep. Chuck Wichgers (R-Muskego) said there’s a battle between school librarians “who say we’re licensed, we’re the experts, we decide what meets the burden of ‘scandalizes’.” He added that, “for 50 years parents trusted the schools, the teachers, and then all of a sudden this movement after COVID [challenged those assumptions].”

“We’ve gone 50 years of letting teachers decide what is best for our kids on these sensitive topics,” Wichgers added. “And now the parents saw what the sensitive topics have become, compared to when their first set of kids went through five, 10, 15 years ago. When they were in school 30, 40 years ago, and they’re saying how did we get here so quickly? And can we go back to Elvis Presley shaking his leg and singing as a baseline of what is scandal? And can we go back to that? Because I think that we’ve gone too far.”

Democratic members of the committee questioned various aspects of the bills. Rep. Dave Considine (D-Baraboo) said the bill would result in the state policing what different communities do, despite what those communities may want. Not all communities find the same issues, topics, or lifestyles obscene or perverse, he added. Allen said that adults can have discussions about which materials are valuable and appropriate for different age groups. He pushed back against the idea that there should be a variety of different standards. “There should be no one exempt from our obscene statutes, or obscene materials law,” said Allen. Speaking of elementary school teachers, and  Allen said, “if there’s one bad apple in the bunch it can do a significant amount of damage.”

Allen and Jacque said that teachers and librarians don’t have to worry about overzealous enforcement, since a case for prosecution would need to be brought to the district attorney, and then the attorney general, before any criminal action was taken.

Rep. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay) questioned whether Allen and others had actually read school library policies. In many cases across the state as books have become more controversial, or. Andraca pointed out that in those cases the policies worked. In some cases, the policies were specifically requested by the same parents pushing to restrict what books students could access. Allen argued that no one should be exempted from responsibility just because of their profession. “Does that apply to law enforcement then? Shelton asked, noting that police have qualified immunity and a host of other protections and privileges under the law. “I don’t believe that law enforcement is exempt from the obscene materials statute,” Allen responded.

At one point, legislative counsel clarified that the bill could not make teachers criminally liable for what a district has told them or allowed them to instruct. Rep. Kristina Shelton (D-Green Bay) asked if the bills had been crafted in cooperation with other clear efforts across the state to remove books, and expose teachers to liability. Jacque rejected the suggestion, and was supported by committee chair Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay), who interjected that many bills are made with inspiration from other states and made light of any suggestion of a “big conspiracy.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

The University of Wisconsin-Madison announced a program on Monday that would cover all of the costs for students who are members of one of Wisconsin’s 11 federally recognized Native American tribes.

Any enrolled member of one of the tribes will be eligible for the program and eligibility will not depend on a student’s financial need. The program was announced less than a week after the UW System Board of Regents a deal with the Republican-controlled state Legislature to freeze hiring for positions focused on diversity, equity and inclusion in exchange for the release of pay raises for thousands of UW employees and funds for capital projects — including a new engineering building on UW-Madison’s campus.

UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, who supported the deal with the Legislature, said the program for Native American students has been in the works for more than a year so its announcement is not related but added that it shows the university remains committed to diversity.

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“I have said and will continue to say that diversity is a core value for us as an institution here at UW Madison,” Mnookin said at a press conference announcing the program. “And this program is another example of the ways that that is and will continue to be true.”

The undergraduate program will cover the full costs of getting a degree at UW-Madison, including tuition and fees, housing, meals, books and other educational expenses. A separate five-year pilot program will cover in-state tuition and fees for students in the medical and law schools. The annual in-state cost for an undergraduate student is $28,916, according to the university. The cost of tuition and fees for law students is $35,197 annually and $42,198 annually for medical students.

Students will not need to apply for funding under the program. At the press conference Monday, university officials said students would just need to provide proof of tribal membership when they submit their annual financial aid forms.

Officials said there are about 650 students at UW-Madison who self-identify as Native American, however that self-identification doesn’t require proof of tribal affiliation and includes Native students from tribes outside of Wisconsin.

Mnookin said the program will be funded with money from private donations and “other institutional resources.” She wouldn’t say where specifically the other resources are coming from, but noted that none of the money will come from state funding.

The chancellor added that creating the program “felt like the right thing to do” to continue improving the partnership between the university — which sits on traditional Ho-Chunk Nation land — and the state’s 11 tribes.

“The tribal nations of Wisconsin, dating from the 1700s and into the 21st century, have always believed education to be the equalizer,” Shannon Holsey, president of the Stockbridge-Munsee band of Mohican Indians, said. “The truth is, if it were not for the loss of land by indigenous peoples, American colleges and universities would not exist. Institutions must challenge themselves to move away from encouraging acts that are performative into communities of transformative change. I believe today represents just that, the creation of this program marks a significant step in the partnership between American Indian tribes in Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While several other states have programs with similar goals, we are not aware of any other effort that goes this far beyond financially helping Native students afford higher education.”

Officials said they don’t yet know how popular the program will be, noting that the application deadline for incoming students for the fall of 2024, when the programs will begin, is Feb. 1. Mnookin said it would be unrealistic to expect a large increase in Native American applicants within six weeks of announcing the program, but that she hopes the number of tribal members at UW-Madison will continue to increase once the program is more established.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .