Wisconsin Right Now

The Wauwatosa School District is asking voters to approve a pair of referendums worth $124.4 million on the Nov. 5 ballot. But a taxpayer advocacy group believes the district , with declining enrollment, should “right-size” its current budget rather than using a referendum to spend more taxpayer money. The group pointed toward a second planned referendum in 2026 as part of a cycle of tax increases that it believes needs to end. The group points to a reported $4 million budget mistake by the district as a sign of mismanagement. The district’s two proposals include $16.1 million per year for four years to fund operational expenses such as salaries and benefits and a $60 million referendum for maintenance and capital projects at Eisenhower, Madison, Roosevelt, Jefferson, and Washington elementary schools, Montessori/Fisher and Wauwatosa East and West high schools. State law caps how much a district can increase its property tax levy without voter approval. The district says t...

The referendums would increase the property tax bill of a resident with a home assessed at $350,000 an additional $241.50 in the first year, $733.99 in the second year, $895.10 in the third year and $1,053.24 in the fourth year. The Madison school district wants voters to approve a pair of referendums worth more than $600 million on the Nov. 5 ballot despite the school district’s dropping enrollment. The ask comes as the Madison Metropolitan School District had a $39 million deficit in this year’s budget after the pandemic funds and previous referendum it was using to pay teachers have run out. Last school year, the federal COVID-19 funds were used to pay 111 educators while reserves were used to pay an 8% increase in wages for teachers and school staff, according to Wisconsin Policy Forum . The referendum asks for a cumulative $100 million in operational funding over four years. The second referendum asks for $507 million over 23 years to build new schools. The district has 2...

School districts around the country are facing issues with how they handle their social media accounts, and the debate has reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Denver Public Schools recently reviewed its social media policy that doesn’t allow employees to restrict comments on social media or limit who can see them. The Denver school district's  policy  was reviewed earlier this month by the school board and states that neither the school, school board members, nor district employees can restrict a person’s ability to view, post, comment, restrict, or delete comments from any public social media pages that are maintained or operated by the district. The document further states that doing so goes against a person’s speech protected by the First Amendment or the Colorado Constitution. In Oregon, a school district is being accused of unconstitutionally violating a mother’s First Amendment rights by suppressing her speech online and at public meetings. The Liberty Justice Center,...

  Denver’s public school system has been taking in as many as 250 new students a week since the new year, which it attributes to the increase in the number of migrants arriving in the city. Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero called the situation an “unprecedented challenge” in a message to the community posted on the district’s website. The district said the influx of new students will cost an additional $837,000 “to support additional needs across the system.” From July 1, 2023 to January 2024, there were 3,221 new-to-country students with more than 1,300 coming to Denver schools since Oct. 1, 2023, the district stated. The district is hiring more staff to deal with the increase in students and focusing on hiring people who are bilingual, according to the superintendent. “The pace of new arrivals has remained steady since the start of 2024, with roughly 200-250 students joining us each week,” a report to the school board stated last week. On Feb. 5, ...

The district has 200 languages spoken across the district. The Denver school district is among the first in the country to adopt a “language justice” policy as a "long term goal." The district would encourage non-English speaking students to be able to use their native language to learn as opposed to being educated in English, which advocates say is oppressive and rooted in racism. Denver schools had about 90,250 students in 2022 with 35,000 multilingual learners with home languages other than English. The district has 200 languages spoken across the district, with Spanish as the home language for the majority of those. The district included a draft of an equity document that includes a policy statement on "language justice." It was included in the Nov. 16 school board agenda . The document includes this definition for "language justice": "The notion of respecting every individual's fundamental language rights – to be able to communicat...

The effort to end school choice in Wisconsin through the state’s supreme court has failed to convince Gov. Tony Evers. The Evers Administration late Friday submitted a brief with the high court, explaining there is no emergency basis for the Supreme Court to take the case. “This response does not address the ultimate merits of Petitioners’ claims, but simply explains why they are more appropriately adjudicated in the circuit court,” the court filing from Administration Secretary Kathy Blumenfeld stated. Progressive activist and often-candidate Kirk Bangstad filed the lawsuit last month, claiming school choice and Wisconsin’s voucher programs are both unconstitutional and hurt traditional public schools by sending money to private schools. Bangstad said both programs need to be shut down “before the next school year.” The Evers’ Administration filing says nothing in Bangstad’s lawsuit makes that case. “While the topic of educating Wisconsin’s children is obviously one of g...

Litigation of school choice and school vouchers in Wisconsin Supreme Court should end, the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce said on Wednesday. The state's largest business group filed an amicus brief with the court. It asks justices to reject the lawsuit that seeks to end school choice and school vouchers. “Since its founding in 1911, WMC has been dedicated to making Wisconsin the most competitive state in the nation in which to conduct business,” the brief states. “WMC and its members have a strong interest in this case. Many employers in Wisconsin, along with the public, support school choice. If the Petitioners get the relief they are seeking, the result will harm students, their families, teachers, and businesses and consumers who rely on a skilled workforce.” The group says thousands of families across the state will be “devastated” if school choice comes to an end. “If the it prevails in this case, the negative impacts for the students currently using these ch...

  School districts across the country are spending federal COVID-19 relief money on bonuses to employees saying their employees earned it for their work during the pandemic. The bonuses vary from district to district, ranging $250 to more than $20,000 per employee. Flint Public Schools in Michigan gave each of its teachers a $22,500 bonus in 2021. Tucson School District in Arizona is going to pay $7,500 retention bonuses to all of its full-time employees spread over three payments starting Dec. 2, 2022, through Dec. 1, 2023. Gaston County Schools in North Carolina approved $5,000 in retention bonuses for all of its permanent employees during the 2021 and 2022 school years. District officials cited additional responsibilities employees "have endured" since the pandemic and said the bonuses helped improve the stability of the district's work force. The Los Angeles Unified School District is paying teachers a 3% retention bonus in 2022-23 and 2023-24. That w...

Marissa Darlingh was one of several speakers at a feminist rally in Madison on April 23 where she used commonly expressed profanity repeatedly as she discussed transgenderism. A Milwaukee elementary school counselor is refusing to resign or change her mind about gender identity, even after the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction opened an investigation that could result in revocation of her license and loss of her job. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction sent Marissa Darlingh a letter on April 29, explaining that she was under investigation for what she said at a rally in Madison just six days before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jB70PNoJeI&t=754s   “DPI has opened an investigation to determine whether to initiate educator license revocation proceedings against you,” the letter stated. “It has been alleged that you engaged in immoral conduct.” [embeddoc url="https://www.wisconsinrightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Darlingh-Letter-from-DP...

In math, students in majority Black schools ended the year with six months of unfinished learning and students in low-income schools with seven. School shutdowns last year created devastating academic, economic and mental consequences among K-12 students that could last into their adulthoods, a new report published by McKinsey & Company found. The impact of school shutdowns on K–12 students was significant, leaving them, on average, five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading by the end of the school year, according to the analysis. Of the 16,000 parents McKinsey surveyed in all 50 states, 35% said they were very or extremely concerned about their children’s mental health. A year of virtual learning, isolation from their friends, and inability to engage in social and athletic activities took a tremendous psychological toll on their children’s well-being. Historically disadvantaged students were hit the hardest. In math, students in majority Black s...