More than 100 Madison high schoolers marched to the state Capitol Friday where they denounced lawmakers' inaction on firearm legislation and funding for mental health support in schools.
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Candles, flowers, crosses and plenty of television cameras have accented the Madison cityscape following a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School that wounded six and killed three, including the 15-year-old shooter.
Here’s what it looked like this week as community members gathered to support traumatized families and memorialize lives lost.
Police and first responders lined Buckeye Road as investigations continued.
Abundant Life remains closed to students. The United Way of Dane County has established an Abundant Life Christian School Emergency and Recovery Fund, with all proceeds going to those affected by the shooting, according to the school’s website. Supporters can donate online or text help4ALCS to the number 40403.
By Tuesday morning, news media vehicles swarmed where parents would have dropped off their children on normal school days. Reporters conducted interviews along Buckeye Road, lining sidewalks and street parking spaces.
Police tape surrounded the school and neighboring City Church. Flowers and candles lined the sidewalk.
On a chilly Tuesday evening, hundreds mourned at a candlelit vigil at the Wisconsin Capitol.
Madison Metropolitan School District Superintendent Joe Gothard and Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway called on the community to support those affected.
“That is where our focus is right now — caring for everyone who has been impacted,” Rhodes-Conway said. “Let us be a community that takes care of each other.”
She highlighted resources available through the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Office of School Safety and Office of Crime Victim Services, available 24-7 at 1-800-697-8761 or schoolsafety@doj.state.wi.us.
Vigil attendees sang and held their hands near their candles, protecting flames from gusts of wind. They wrote messages on crosses representing the dead.
“We will fight for change so this can’t happen again,” read one message.
Calls to end gun violence have echoed throughout Madison, including a plea from the Wisconsin State Journal’s editorial board to “break America’s curse of gunfire in schools.”
Photos: Madison mourns after Abundant Life Christian School shooting is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski and state Treasurer John Lieber present a large check to educators to represent the $70 million disbursement from the Common School Fund to public school libraries across state. (Courtesy of Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski)
Wisconsin school libraries and media resources will receive a record $70 million in funding from the Board of Commissioners of Public Land, Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski announced Thursday.
The agency’s contribution from the Common School Fund breaks the record for largest ever provided, which was set last year when the BCPL provided $65 million from the fund.
“I’m proud of our record-breaking distribution. It comes at a time when schools are being asked to do more with less, and our strategic investments and collaborative efforts are making a difference to ensure that every student—no matter where they live—has access to the books, technology, and tools they need to succeed,” Godlewski said in a statement.
The BCPL manages state trust funds created as Wisconsin sold off millions of acres of land granted to the state government in the 19th century. The agency also manages timber sales for 77,000 acres of land still under state control.
The Common School Fund is the “only dedicated funding source for many of Wisconsin’s public school libraries,” according to a news release. The amount of funds provided to school libraries through the fund has substantially increased in recent years. In 2020, libraries received $38.2 million through the fund.
“Today’s milestone reflects the dedication of our team and the strategic investments we’ve made to ensure the fund continues to grow for future generations,” Godlewski said. “We’ve diversified hundreds of millions of dollars to include Wisconsin-based venture funds that support new and growing businesses. This is a win-win for our state: the Common School Fund bolsters Wisconsin’s economy, and the financial returns directly support our schools and libraries, reinforcing our commitment to educational excellence and opportunity.”
At an event in Brown Deer Thursday afternoon, Godlewski, state Treasurer John Leiber and educators celebrated the learning resources the money will be able to provide.
“Without the support from the common school funds, many school libraries would not have the necessary resources to stay up-to-date and provide the digital resources necessary for our students’ continued learning. The BCPL work ensures that these schools are not left behind, and that all students in Wisconsin, no matter their background, have access to the educational opportunities they deserve,” said Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association President Jennifer Griffith.
Funds disbursed through the BCPL have been criticized in recent years because the land provided to the state by the federal government in the 1800s was taken from the state’s Native American tribes.
In February, data collected by the non-profit media outlet Grist showed that funds disbursed through the BCPL’s Normal School Fund to the state’s public universities came from profits made from land taken largely from the Ojibwe tribe, the Wisconsin Examiner reported.
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The school shooting this week at Abundant Life Christian in Madison, Wisconsin, is tragic and senseless, but it’s not at all shocking. Deliberately planned school shootings happen multiple times every school year, mostly in smaller rural and suburban communities. The perpetrators of these attacks are almost always actively suicidal current or former students at the school they target.
Back in April, I wrote an article for the 25th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting. This trend line turned out to be sadly accurate. With the shooting at Abundant Life Christian, there have been five pre-planned attacks at schools this year.
Regardless of how you measure school shootings — guns fired, wounded, killed, active shooter, planned attacks, or near misses — the trend line is going up. While these planned school shootings have taken place since the 1960s, the frequency of the attacks is steadily increasing.
Like the other planned attacks this year in Perry, Iowa; Mount Horeb, Wisconsin; Apalachee, Georgia; and Palermo, California, these incidents have common patterns and connections to prior school shootings. The number of “near misses” where a school shooting almost happens are also going up.
The father of the 15-year-old Madison, Wisconsin, school shooter posted a Facebook photo of his daughter at a shooting range in August. His cover photo shows Natalie Rupnow, who went by the name Samantha.
Natalie can be seen wearing a black shirt with the name of the band KMFDM. The German industrial rock band’s lyrics were thrust into the dark subculture of school shooters by the students who carried out the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School.
In the Columbine “basement tapes,” Dylan Klebold can be seen wearing the same shirt. It’s critical for parents to study prior school shooters, know their names and faces, and recognize symbols like KMFDM that represent idolization of prior attacks.
In January 2024 at Perry High, the 17-year-old student perpetrator entered the school with a shotgun, pistol, knife, and IED inside a duffel bag (important note: both planned attacks at schools in the spring of 2024 involved IEDs). He spent 22 minutes inside a school bathroom where he posted photos of himself with the gun, posted on a Discord “school shooting massacres” channel, posted the same KMFDM song played by the Columbine shooters, and started a livestream on social media.
The Madison shooting follows the common patterns with planned attacks at schools. The perpetrator was a student (insider), committed a surprise attack during morning classes and died by suicide before police arrived.
Most school shootings are committed by current or former students who are “insiders” at the school and know the security plan/procedures.
Since an insider is someone who is allowed to be inside the school, most of these attacks are committed by current students.
I co-published an article in the Los Angeles Times: Here’s what is so unusual about the Wisconsin school shooting — and what isn’t:
“The public’s attention often focuses on the gender of the perpetrators. After the March 2023 mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, the shooter’s transgender identity was much discussed. After other school shootings, “toxic masculinity” has been highlighted, along with the well-documented fact that the majority of mass shootings are perpetrated by men and boys.
In our recently released K-12 school homicide database, which details 349 homicides committed at K-12 schools since 2020, only 12 (3%) of the perpetrators were female. There have been some notable cases involving female school shooters. In 1988, a female babysitter walked into a second-grade classroom in Winnetka, Illinois, and told the students she was there to teach them about guns; she opened fire, killing an 8-year-old boy and wounding five other students.
In Rigby, Idaho, in 2021, a 12-year-old girl plotted to kill 20 to 30 classmates. Armed with two handguns, she walked out of a bathroom and began firing in the hallway, wounding two students and the custodian. A teacher heard the shots, left the classroom and hugged the shooter to disarm her.
The earliest case in our records was in 1979, when a 16-year-old girl opened fire at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, killing two and injuring nine. This was when the American public was first introduced to a female school shooter. Her infamous explanation for her actions — “I just don’t like Mondays” — is etched in pop culture. But it was less about a flippant attitude and more about despair. At a parole hearing years later, the shooter admitted the truth: “I wanted to die.” She saw her attack as a way to be killed by police.
Her story reflects what we now know: Most school shooters are suicidal, in crisis and driven by a mix of hopelessness and rage.
With each school shooting, we tend to concentrate on details: the rare female shooter, the high-profile massacre, the immediate response of authorities. But if we step back, we tend to see the same story repeated again and again. A student insider. In crisis. Suicidal.”
Pre-planned school shootings usually take place during morning classes or at the start of the school day when the building is open before classes start.
Just like the shooting in Wisconsin this week, the most common outcome is the teenage student shooter commits suicide, surrenders or is subdued by students or staff before police intervene.
While “active shooter training” videos produced by the Department of Homeland Security and ads by security tech vendors portray assailants roaming throughout a building while searching for every possible victim, most school shootings begin and end in the same room.
There isn’t much use for a ballistic chalkboard, drop bar lock on the door or panic button when the victims are all in close proximity to an armed assailant who is inside the same room with them.
Following this pattern, the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, took place in a classroom during study hall, and the victims were in the same age group. The teenage shooter didn’t roam the building looking for the elementary school kids; she killed herself before police arrived.
Police usually don’t stop these single shooter insider attacks because they are very short duration incidents that are usually over within the first two minutes.
When a student is committing a surprise attack inside a school, the easiest weapon to sneak inside is a handgun. Most students who are arrested inside schools with guns have a handgun hidden inside their backpack. Because of that, it’s not a surprise that a handgun is the most common weapon used during a school shooting by an insider.
During just these deliberately planned attacks over the last 60 years (these victim counts in the chart do not represent all shootings on school property), there have been roughly twice as many victims killed or wounded with handguns versus rifles.
This doesn’t mean that rifles aren’t as dangerous. At Apalachee High, a student committed an insider attack by sneaking an AR-15 into the building inside a posterboard. Until the last decade, AR-15s weren’t cheap and easily accessible. As there continue to be more school shootings involving rifles, this chart will likely even out over time (unless we take meaningful action to stop these attacks).
I spoke to NBC 5 Investigates on Monday afternoon right after the school shooting. I said that this shooting at Abundant Life Christian School followed a common pattern in that it was carried out by an “insider” — a student familiar with the school grounds.
“We need to understand the actual nature of this problem and apply solutions towards identifying the student who has a grievance, identifying a student who is talking about students and realizing that these are rarely random acts. All the opportunities to prevent it happen before they ever come to campus with a gun,” Riedman told NBC 5 Investigates.
Riedman said the focus should not be on fortifying schools with additional weapons detectors or metal detectors but focusing on the students’ behaviors that may help foretell a future incident — adding that there is a need to “dispel the myth that these school shootings are committed by scary outsiders,” when data shows that they are often committed by those who are familiar with the school and have a grievance that ends in violence.
“We will probably hear in the coming days about a series of missed warning signs, social media posts, a manifesto and so on,” he said.
David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database, chief data officer at a global risk management firm and a tenure-track professor at Idaho State University. He originally published this story on his Substack: School Shooting Data Analysis and Reports.
Analysis: Six common factors in the school shooting at Abundant Life Christian is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
The people shot and killed at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison on Monday were a 42-year-old who worked as a teacher and a 14-year-old girl, who loved music and adored her pets.
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As funding for a Wisconsin school safety initiative is set to expire, a leading Republican lawmaker says he’ll likely support a budget request from the Democratic attorney general to continue the office.
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The State Building Commission denied a motion to allow $70 million in underspent funds to be used for a series of planned UW projects including the new engineering building at UW-Madison.
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There have been two fatal school shootings in U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan’s district in 2024. He says they will continue to happen until people stand up to the gun industry.
The post US Rep. Mark Pocan urges people to treat gun violence like a public health emergency appeared first on WPR.
“Make no mistake, we still hold the majority,” Felzkowski said. “I hope we have better conversations. I hope we have better negotiations," Senate President Mary Felzkowsi said. (Screenshot via Zoom)
New-elected Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) said Tuesday that she hopes for more bipartisan conversations next year, but that her caucus plans to operate in the same way it has previously, since Republicans still hold the majority in the Wisconsin Legislature, even after losing a handful of seats this election year.
The Legislature will return with closer margins next year following elections under new legislative maps. Republicans will have an 18-15 majority in the Senate, down from their previous 22-seat supermajority. In the Assembly Republicans will hold a 55-45 majority. Felzkowski made her comments during a WisPolitics panel Tuesday alongside Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) and two strategists — Keith Gilkes, a consultant and former chief political advisor for Republican former Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic strategist Tanya Bjork.
“Make no mistake, we still hold the majority,” Felzkowski said. “I hope we have better conversations. I hope we have better negotiations.”
Felzkowski said she would “love” to have more meetings with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, noting that former Gov. Scott Walker used to conduct weekly meetings with lawmakers during his time in office. (During the Walker administration, Republicans controlled both chambers of the Legislature and Democrats accused them of breaking the law by meeting in secret with Walker.)
Democratic leaders have said that they believe there will be more opportunities for work across the aisle next year, and that more competitive legislative districts will encourage that.
“We’ve got some Republicans. We’ve got some Democrats who are in close, 50-50 seats,” Neubauer said during the panel discussion. “I expect that some in Republican leadership want things to continue as they have in the past, but I expect that a lot of those members who are in those difficult seats are going to be pushing to invest in K-12, to lower costs for working families, to take up popular policy.”
The state budget — and potential use of the $4 billion budget surplus — will be a major focus for lawmakers when they return in 2025. Writing the budget is a time when lawmakers discuss potential policy changes on a wide array of issues, and the potential funding that should be placed behind them.
Neubauer and Felzkowski discussed ways to address school safety, through policy changes and the budget, after a 15-year-old girl shot and killed a teacher and another student before turning the gun on herself at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison Monday. Six other people were injured in the school shooting.
“This is the deadliest school shooting on record in Wisconsin and it’s just an incredible tragedy. I know that people across the state are sending their good thoughts, of course, to those who were impacted but also really are looking for leadership in this time,” Neubauer said. She said proposals from President Joe Biden, who called for Congress to pass universal background checks, a national red flag law and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, as well as new proposals from Wisconsin legislators in the state budget could be paths for improving school safety.
“In Wisconsin, for many years, we’ve been talking about red flag laws. We’ve been talking about universal background checks. These are policies that are widely supported by the people of this state, and I think in particular when it hits home for kids,” Neubauer said.
“For my school district here in the Racine area, they would really like to invest in school safety, there are important programs that they run, there are physical improvements that they would like to make, and I know that we’re going to be having a budget conversation very soon,” Neubauer continued. “I do hope that we’re able to keep in mind that investments in K-12 are also investments in school safety, and that’s a responsibility of the Legislature for the coming session.”
Felzkowski stopped short of endorsing the policy changes that Neubauer mentioned. She instead said that people need to look at what has changed in American society, adding that people also took guns to school 30 and 40 years ago.
“We went hunting after school and nobody was afraid. Nobody was afraid that they were going to get shot at school, so society has changed,” Felzkowski said. “I think we need to recognize those factors that have changed in our society.”
“We can pass a lot of different legislation, but we need to start looking at underlying causes…Is it social media? Is it cyberbullying? Is it too much screen time in our children? Is it violence that we’ve allowed them to watch at a young age?” Felzkowski asked. “I hope we can come together with a lot of tough conversations and look at that.”
Felzkowski said increasing weapons screening in schools could also be a point of discussion.
“Those are conversations that we should have in this budget to help fund ideas, so that people can’t walk through the door with no screening,” Felzkowski said.
The state’s $4 billion budget surplus will likely be a key point of discussion during the budget writing process. Felzkowski said that when it comes to the surplus Republicans will “do exactly what we did last time,” and don’t plan on using the money for recurring projects.
“If the majority of this is one-time money we’re going to spend it on one-time projects,” Felzkowski said. “One-time money should be spent on infrastructure. Instead of borrowing, we’ll spend it on our roads. We’ll spend it on maintaining our buildings.”
Felzkowski said during the budget process, lawmakers will survey current spending costs and what funding could be needed for other priorities. She said returning money to taxpayers would also be a priority.
“If we have a $4 billion surplus, then we have too much of our taxpayers’ money; we can return it to them,” Felzkowski said.
Felzkowski added that the government didn’t choose for property taxes to rise in certain communities. Her comments follow a Wisconsin Policy Forum report that found gross K-12 property taxes in the state are expected to rise by the largest amount since 2009. She said she voted in favor of raising property taxes in her own community.
“When people vote at the local level to increase their taxes, their property taxes, that’s a decision they make, and that’s a decision they choose to make,” Felzkowski said. “I don’t think that’s government making that decision for them and I think that’s something they can do.”
Neubauer said Assembly Democrats would be open to conversations about tax cuts, if they’re targeted.
“We’re just simply not gonna give a tax cut to the wealthiest Wisconsinites and people who do not need it. We are very open to considering a tax cut that is targeted, that is focused on middle class and working families,” Neubauer said. She said also that people in their communities are being “forced to raise their own property taxes in order to fund their schools.”
Felzkowski didn’t specify what potential tax cut proposals would look like, but noted that Evers “moved the needle” for what he considered a middle class tax cut when he vetoed some tax cut bills lawmakers sent him earlier this year. Those proposals included raising the top income in the state’s second-lowest tax bracket to just over $112,000, exempting up to $150,000 in retirement income from the state income tax and increasing the current maximum marriage tax credit. Evers did sign a law increasing Wisconsin’s child care tax credit.
“If Gov. Evers continues to move the needle on what ‘middle class’ is, then we’re kind of at a loss,” Felzkowski said, adding that some families struggling financially could use a tax cut. “We gave [Evers] the tax cut and he still vetoed it. I’m hoping that that needle doesn’t move again.”
Several policy proposals are likely to be discussed next year in relation to the budget, including for Medicaid expansion and higher education. States that accept the federal Medicaid expansion agree to cover people with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty guideline, and the federal government pays 90% of the cost for the additional Medicaid recipients, more than the 60% Wisconsin currently receives.
Evers has proposed that Wisconsin join 40 other states across the country in adopting the Medicaid expansion every budget cycle, and Republicans have rejected the proposal each time. Felzkowski said that it remains off the table for Republicans.
“We don’t have a gap in Wisconsin, so why would we take people off of private insurance to put them on government insurance and put our hospitals, who are already suffering, into a worse position with a lower reimbursement rate?” Felzkowski said. “We don’t need to create more gaps in health care when we have people covered.”
Neubauer said that Medicaid expansion would continue to be a priority for Assembly Democrats. She said that some insurance remains a “huge strain” on families with private insurance.
“They frankly are not able to afford it. They are cutting in other areas to afford that insurance,” Neubauer said.
Higher education will also be a focus of budget discussions as the UW System has requested an additional $855 million to bring the system up to the national median in state spending. Felzkowski said that she hasn’t heard much support for the proposal.
Lawmakers may also turn their attention back to medical marijuana legalization this year. Felzkowski said that there was one person standing in the way of getting it done last session: Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.
“That person has some pretty strict ideas on how that bill should be drafted,” Felzkowski said. Vos’ proposal last session included opening a handful of state run dispensaries, an unpopular idea among many in the Legislature. “We’re hoping to have a conversation in early January to see if there isn’t a way that we can come to a consensus between Assembly Republicans and Senate Republicans to negotiate a compromise.”
Felzkowski said that a bill to allow “Monday processing” of absentee ballots could also come forward next session. A proposal to allow election clerks to begin processing absentee ballots on the Monday before the election passed the Assembly last session but never advanced in the Senate.
“There are many senators that were very much in support of that. The chair of the Senate elections committee was not and chose not to hear that. He is no longer a member of the Senate,” Felzkowski said. Sen. Dan Knodl, who served as chair of that committee, chose not to run for reelection under the new legislative maps, but will serve in the Assembly next year. “I’m hoping this year that we will have a committee hearing on that bill if it’s brought back and that we have a robust conversation on that. I personally think that is something that we should be doing in the state of Wisconsin.”
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Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman cites third-party financial assessment findings in $855 million budget increase request.
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A 15-year-old student killed a teacher and another teenager with a handgun Monday at a Christian school in Wisconsin, terrifying classmates. A second-grade teacher made the 911 call that sent dozens of police officers rushing to the small school just a week before its Christmas break.
The female student, who was identified at a press conference Monday night, also wounded six others at a study hall at Abundant Life Christian School, including two students who were in critical condition, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said. A teacher and three students had been taken to a hospital with less serious injuries, and two of them had been released by Monday evening.
“Every child, every person in that building is a victim and will be a victim forever. … We need to figure out and try to piece together what exactly happened,” Barnes said.
Barbara Wiers, director of elementary and school relations for Abundant Life Christian School, said students “handled themselves magnificently.”
She said when the school practices safety routines, which it had done just before the school year, leaders always announce that it is a drill. That didn’t happen Monday.
“When they heard, ‘Lockdown, lockdown,’ they knew it was real,” she said.
Police said the shooter, identified as Natalie Rupnow, was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound when officers arrived and died en route to a hospital. Barnes declined to offer additional details about the shooter, partly out of respect for the family.
He also warned people against sharing unconfirmed reports on social media about the shooter’s identity.
“What that does is it helps erode the trust in this process,” he said.
Abundant Life is a nondenominational Christian school — prekindergarten through high school — with approximately 420 students in Madison, the state capital.
Wiers said the school does not have metal detectors but uses other security measures including cameras.
Children and families were reunited at a medical building about a mile away. Parents pressed children against their chests while others squeezed hands and shoulders as they walked side by side. One girl was comforted with an adult-size coat around her shoulders as she moved to a parking lot teeming with police vehicles.
A motive for the shooting was not immediately known, but Barnes said they’re talking with the parents of the suspected shooter and they are cooperating. He also said he didn’t know if the people shot had been targeted.
“I don’t know why, and I feel like if we did know why, we could stop these things from happening,” he told reporters.
A search warrant had been issued Monday to a Madison home, he said.
Barnes said Tuesday the first 911 call to report an active shooter came in shortly before 11 a.m. from a second-grade teacher — not a second-grade student as he reported publicly Monday.
First responders who were in training just 3 miles away dashed to the school for an actual emergency, Barnes said. They arrived 3 minutes after the initial call and went into the building immediately.
Classes had been taking place when the shooting happened, Barnes said.
Investigators believe the shooter used a 9mm pistol, a law enforcement official told the AP. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.
Police blocked off roads around the school, and federal agents were at the scene to assist local law enforcement. No shots were fired by police.
Abundant Life asked for prayers in a brief Facebook post.
Wiers said the school’s goal is to have staff get together early in the week and have community opportunities for students to reconnect before the winter break, but it’s still to be decided whether they will resume classes this week.
Bethany Highman, the mother of a student, rushed to the school and learned over FaceTime that her daughter was OK.
“As soon as it happened, your world stops for a minute. Nothing else matters,” Highman said. “There’s nobody around you. You just bolt for the door and try to do everything you can as a parent to be with your kids.”
In a statement, President Joe Biden cited the tragedy in calling on Congress to pass universal background checks, a national red flag law and certain gun restrictions.
“We can never accept senseless violence that traumatizes children, their families, and tears entire communities apart,” Biden said. He spoke with Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and offered his support.
Evers said it’s “unthinkable” that a child or teacher would go to school and never return home.
The episode was the 323rd shooting at a K-12 school campus thus far in 2024, according to researcher David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database. The database uses a broad definition of shooting that includes when a gun is brandished, fired or a bullet hits school property.
“This shooting follows the common patterns with planned attacks at schools. The perpetrator was a student (insider), committed a surprise attack during morning classes, and died by suicide before police arrived,” Riedman wrote Monday on his website.
It was the the latest among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas.
The shootings have set off fervent debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children are growing up accustomed to doing active shooter drills in their classrooms. But school shootings have done little to move the needle on national gun laws.
Firearms were the leading cause of death among children in 2020 and 2021, according to KFF, a nonprofit that researches health care issues.
Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the country needs to do more to prevent gun violence.
“I hoped that this day would never come to Madison,” she said.
Wisconsin Watch contributed information to this story.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Teacher and a teenage student killed in a shooting at a Christian school in Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
University of Utah student Rebeca Damico said her professors at first took a hard line against AI when ChatGPT was introduced in 2022, but she and other students say schools have softened their stands as the usefulness – and career potential – of the technology has become clearer. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for States Newsroom)
For 21-year-old Rebeca Damico, ChatGPT’s public release in 2022 during her sophomore year of college at the University of Utah felt like navigating a minefield.
The public relations student, now readying to graduate in the spring, said her professors immediately added policies to their syllabuses banning use of the chatbot, calling the generative artificial intelligence tool a form of plagiarism.
“For me, as someone who follows the rules, I was very scared,” Damico said. “I was like, oh, I can’t, you know, even think about using it, because they’ll know.”
Salt Lake City-based Damico studied journalism before switching her major to public relations, and saw ChatGPT and tools like it as a real threat to the writing industry. She also felt very aware of the “temptation” she and her classmates now had — suddenly a term paper that might take you all night to write could be done in a few minutes with the help of AI.
“I know people that started using it and would use it to … write their entire essays. I know people that got caught. I know people that didn’t,” Damico said. “Especially in these last couple weeks of the semester, it’s so easy to be like, ‘Oh, put it into ChatGPT,’ but then we’re like, if we do it once, it’s kind of like, this slippery slope.”
But students say they’re getting mixed messages – the stern warning from professors against use of AI and the growing pressure from the job market to learn how to master it.
The technological developments of generative AI over the last few years have cracked open a new industry, and a wealth of job opportunities. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced the first statewide partnership with a tech firm to bring AI curriculum, resources and opportunities to the state’s public colleges.
And even for those students not going into an IT role, it’s likely they will be asked to use AI in some way in their industries. Recent research from the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report found that 75% of people in the workforce are using AI at work, and that some hiring managers are equally prioritizing AI skills with real-world job experience.
Over the last few years, the University of Utah, like most academic institutions, has had to take a position on AI. As Damico experienced, the university added AI guidelines to its student handbook that take a fairly hard stance against the tools.
It urges professors to add additional AI detection tools in addition to education platform Canvas’ Turnitin feature, which scans assignments for plagiarism. The guidelines also now define the use of AI tools without citation, documentation or authorization as forms of cheating.
Though Damico said some professors continue to hold a hard line against AI, some have started to embrace it. The case-by-case basis Damico describes from her professors is in line with how many academic institutions are handling the technology.
Some universities spell out college-wide rules, while others leave it up to professors themselves to set AI standards in their classrooms. Others, like Stanford University’s policy, acknowledge that students are likely to interact with it.
Stanford bans AI from being used to “substantially complete an assignment or exam,” and says students must disclose its use, but says “absent a clear statement from a course instructor, use of or consultation with generative AI shall be treated analogously to assistance from another person.”
Virginia Byrne is an associate professor of higher education and student affairs at Morgan State University in Baltimore, and she studies technology in the lives of learners and educators, with a focus on how it impacts college students. She said the university allows professors to figure out what works best for them when it comes to AI. She herself often assigns projects that prompt students to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of popular AI tools.
She’s also a researcher with the TRAILS Institute, an multi-institution organization aiming to understand what trust in AI looks like, and how to create ethical, sustainable AI solutions. Along with Morgan State, researchers from University of Maryland, George Washington University and Cornell University conduct a variety of research, such as how ChatGPT can be used in health decision making, how to create watermark technology for AI or how other countries are shaping AI policy.
“It’s cool to be in a space with people doing research that’s related, but so different,” Byrne said. “Because it expands your thinking, and it allows us to bring graduate students and undergraduate students into this community where everyone is focused on trustworthiness and AI, but from so many different lenses.”
Byrne hopes that her students can see the potential that AI has to make their lives and work more easy, but she worries that it creates an “artificial expectation” for how young people need to perform online.
“It might lead some folks, younger folks, who are just starting their careers, to feel like they need to use (social media tool) Canva to look totally perfect on LinkedIn, and use all these tools to … optimize their time and their calendars,” Byrne said. “And I just worry that it’s creating a false expectation of speed and efficiency that the tools currently can’t accomplish.”
Theresa Fesinstine is the founder of peoplepower.ai, which trains HR professionals on ways AI can be used efficiently within their organization. This semester, she instructed her first college course at the City University of New York on AI and business, and taught students of all years and backgrounds.
Fesinstine said she was surprised how many of her students knew little to nothing about AI, but heard that many other instructors warned they’d fail students who were found to have used it in assignments. She thinks this mixed messaging often comes from not understanding the technology, and its abilities to help with an outline, or to find research resources.
“It’s a little scary, and I think that’s where, right now, most of the trepidation is centered around,” she said. “It’s that most people, in my opinion, haven’t been trained or understand how to use AI most effectively, meaning they use it in the same way that you would use Google.”
Shriya Boppana, a 25-year-old MBA student at Duke University, not only uses AI in her day-to-day life for schoolwork, but she’s also pursuing a career in generative AI development and acquisitions. She wasn’t initially interested in AI, she said, but she worked on a project with Google and realized how the technology was set to influence everyday life, and how malleable it still is.
“Once you kind of realize how much that the tech actually isn’t as fleshed out as you think it is, I was a little more interested in … trying to understand what the path is to get it where it needs to go,” Boppana said.
She said she uses some form of AI tool every day, from planning her own schedule, to having a chatbot help decide how students in a group project should divide and complete work, based on their availability. Because she works with it regularly, she understands the strengths and limitations of AI, saying it helps her get mundane tasks done, process data or outline an assignment.
But she said the personalized tone she aims to have in her writing just isn’t there yet with the publicly available AI tools, so she doesn’t completely rely on it for papers or correspondence.
Parris Haynes, a 22-year-old junior studying philosophy at Morgan State, said the structure and high demand of some students’ coursework almost “encourages or incentivizes” them to use AI to help get it all done.
He sees himself either going into law, or academia and said he’s a little nervous about how AI is changing those industries. Though he leans on AI to help organize thoughts or assignments for classes like chemistry, Haynes said he wouldn’t go near it when it comes to his work or career-related objectives for his philosophy classes.
“I don’t really see much of a space for AI to relieve me of the burden of any academic assignments or potential career tasks in regards to philosophy,” Haynes said. “Even if it could write a convincing human-seeming paper, a philosophical paper, it’s robbing me of the joy of doing it.”
Like Haynes, Fesinstine knows that some of her students are interested, but a little scared about the power AI may have over their futures. Although there’s a lot of research about how older generations’ jobs are impacted by AI, those just about to break into the workforce may be the most affected, because they’ve grown up with these technologies.
“I would say the attitude is — I use this term a lot, ‘cautiously curious,’” Fesinstine said. “You know, there’s definitely a vibe around ethics and protection that I don’t know that I would see in other generations, perhaps … But there’s also an acknowledgement that this is something that a lot of companies are going to need and are going to want to use.”
Now, two years since ChatGPT’s release, Damico has started to realize the ways generative AI is useful in the workplace. She began working with PR firm Kronus Communications earlier this year, and was encouraged to explore some time-saving or brainstorming functions of generative AI.
She’s become a fan of having ChatGPT explain new business concepts to her, or to get it to suggest Instagram captions. She also likes to use it for more refined answers than Google might provide, such as if she’s searching for publications to pitch a client to.
Though she’s still cautious, and won’t use generative AI to write actual assignments for her, Damico said she realizes she needs the knowledge and experience after graduation — “it gives you kind of this edge.”
Boppana, who sees her career growing in the AI space, feels incredibly optimistic about the role AI will play in her future. She knows she’s more knowledgeable and prepared to go into an AI-centered workforce than most, but she feels like the opportunities for growth in healthcare, telecommunications, computing and more are worth wading into uncertain waters.
“I think it’s like a beautiful opportunity for people to learn how machines just interact with the human world, and how we can, I don’t know, make, like, prosthetic limbs, like test artificial hearts … find hearing aids,” Boppana said. “There’s so much beauty in the way that AI helps human beings. I think you just have to find your space within it.”
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The U.S. Department of Education released the official application on Nov. 21, after seven weeks of beta testing.
The post This year’s FAFSA is open, and early reviews are positive appeared first on WPR.
The ACRE program — a collaboration among UW-Milwaukee, the Milwaukee School of Engineering and Marquette University — nurtures professionals of color in the commercial real estate market. A recent Wisconsin Policy Forum analysis finds that their efforts are working.
The post Analysis finds Milwaukee program to improve diversity for professionals of color is working appeared first on WPR.
Wisconsin Examiner photo
The Wisconsin Policy Forum recently reported that property tax bills mailed out to Wisconsin taxpayers this month will show the biggest tax increase from a previous year since 2009.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos wasted no time in assigning blame. On X, Vos wrote: “When you receive your property tax bill this month, please remember it was Governor Evers who used his line item veto to create a 400 year guaranteed property tax increase.”
It’s true that Evers’ headline-grabbing partial veto of the last state budget extended the two-year tax increase the Legislature approved for school districts. The Legislature allowed schools to raise another $325 per pupil per year from local taxpayers for each year of the 2023-25 budget. By deleting some digits, Evers stretched that out until the year 2425.
But Vos’ accusation is fundamentally misleading in a couple of ways. First, the Legislature approved the increase for the duration of the current budget cycle. The fact that Evers extended it for centuries into the future made a big splash, but it didn’t add a penny to anyone’s property taxes this year.
Second, and more important to understand, as we begin another budget cycle and another slugfest over spending on schools, is that the Legislature’s stinginess when it comes to the state’s share of school funding is a major driver of property tax increases.
As the Wisconsin Policy Forum points out in its report, one key reason for the recent spike in property taxes is the historic number of school district referenda passed by local communities. Local property taxpayers voted to raise their own taxes. And why is that? Because the Legislature refused to give school districts enough money in the state budget to cover their costs.
But, you might object, Vos and other Republicans made a big point of touting their last budget’s “historic” $1.2 billion increase in funding for schools. Unfortunately, that claim is as misleading as Vos’ effort to blame Evers for your property tax bill.
To understand why school districts are begging local taxpayers for money at the same time Republicans claim they gave schools a “historic increase,” take a look at how little of that $1.2 billion in “education spending” actually went to schools.
For each budget cycle, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau produces a detailed summary of budget items by category. In the “Public Instruction” category, the Fiscal Bureau reports that “total school aid” in the 2023-25 budget came to $625 million.
Where did the rest go? To find out, you have to look down the list of Fiscal Bureau categories to “shared revenue and tax relief.” There, under the heading “school levy tax credit” you will find the missing $590 million in so-called school funding, in the form of a rebate to property taxpayers. Schools never get to touch that money. It is an oddity of Wisconsin law that the school levy tax credit is labeled as school funding.
The school levy tax credit puts school districts in an awkward position every year. At the end of October, every district sets its levy. People believe, based on that number, that they know what their tax bill will be. But later, on Nov. 20, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue tells each municipality the amount of the school levy tax credit that will be applied to local property tax bills and the number is readjusted. The state calls this tax credit money for schools, but it’s actually just a straight-up discount for property tax payers.
Now, had the Legislature actually put $590 million into school funding, schools would have been in a much better financial position, and we probably would not have seen a record-breaking number of districts asking property taxpayers to hike their own taxes to keep their local schools afloat.
The backdrop to all this was a huge, historic cut to school funding in Wisconsin back in 2012, followed by a decade and a half in which schools never recovered. Wisconsin has not given schools enough funding to keep pace with inflation for the last 15 years, state schools superintendent Jill Underly pointed out when she released her $4 billion 2025-27 budget proposal.
Vos dismissed Underly’s budget proposal as completely unrealistic. But in truth, it would pretty much restore Wisconsin schools to the level of funding they enjoyed right before the brutal cuts of former Gov. Scott Walker’s administration.
One of Underly’s top budget priorities is asking the state to meet its neglected commitment to cover 90% of special education costs, instead of the current 32%, which forces schools to raid general funds and cut programs to cover this unavoidable, federally mandated expense.
Another sensible idea, endorsed by the Legislature’s bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission on School Funding in 2017, is to end the deceptive practice of putting money into the school levy tax credit and pretending that it funds schools.
Instead of playing a shell game with school funding and pointing fingers as local taxpayers continue to shoulder more and more of the cost, Wisconsin should use a portion of the state’s massive budget surplus to adequately fund schools.
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The form to apply for federal financial student aid now must roll out by Oct. 1 annually under a bill signed into law by President Joe Biden on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. (Photo by Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The form to apply for federal financial student aid must roll out by Oct. 1 annually after President Joe Biden signed a bill into law Wednesday that ensures an earlier processing cycle.
Though the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, typically launches in October each year, the U.S. Department of Education legally had until Jan. 1 to make the form available.
The new law came as the department has taken heat over its botched rollout of the 2024-25 form, when users faced a series of glitches and errors. The form did not officially launch until January.
Adding fuel to the fire, the agency announced earlier this year that it would take a staggered approach to the 2025-26 form so it could address problems that might pop up before opening applications to everyone — again making the form available later than usual.
After testing stages that began Oct. 1, the department fully debuted the 2025-26 form in late November — 10 days ahead of its Dec. 1 official launch.
A spokesperson for the department said it is “committed to enforcing all laws duly passed by Congress” when asked about Biden signing the FAFSA bill into law.
Meanwhile, the department said Thursday it had received over 1.5 million 2025-26 FAFSA submissions and has delivered more than 7 million student records to states and schools.
U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said that even with these developments, the department’s work “is not done.”
“We will continue to fix bugs and improve the user experience to make it easier for students and families to get the financial aid they need,” Kvaal said on a call with reporters Thursday regarding updates on the 2025-26 form.
The bill was met with sweeping bipartisan support and swiftly passed both the House and Senate in November. Indiana GOP Rep. Erin Houchin, a member of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, introduced the legislation in July.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, put forth the Senate version of the bill. The Louisiana Republican is in line to chair the panel next year.
Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House education panel, celebrated the bill becoming law on Wednesday.
“As college costs continue to rise, federal financial aid, including Pell Grants, is essential to making higher education more affordable and accessible,” the Virginia Democrat said in a statement.
Scott said that by standardizing the deadline, the measure “gives students and families more time to complete their applications and secure the financial support they need to attend college without unnecessary delays.”
The 2024-25 application got a makeover after Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act in late 2020 but was met with several issues that prompted processing delays and gaps in submissions.
The department’s staff worked to fix these errors and close the gap in submissions from the previous processing cycle, and officials said they reflected on how to make improvements for the 2025-26 form and beyond.
Lincoln Hills, a detention facility the state had ordered closed by 2021. (Photo courtesy of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections)
When Randy Forsterling went to the Lincoln Hills juvenile prison at 16, he learned skills he still uses today, he told the Examiner.
“I’m a machine operator,” Forsterling said. “I die cast, I make transmission casings and engine blocks for one of the largest corporations in the world. A lot of the metallurgy that I learned when I was in the foundry in Lincoln Hills, I use it now — 25 years later.”
While Forsterling doesn’t believe Lincoln Hills still has a foundry, a Wisconsin initiative is aiming to better prepare incarcerated youth with disabilities for the workforce.
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction released a statement about a collaboration with the Departments of Corrections and Workforce Development that is “the first of its kind in Wisconsin.”
“By providing these young individuals with the guidance, education and opportunities they need, we empower them to break the cycle and contribute positively to society,” State Superintendent Jill Underly said in the statement. “Supporting these kids is not only a step toward healing, it is an investment in their future and will save future taxpayer expenses.”
The U.S. Department of Education awarded the DPI a 5-year, $10 million grant. The program aims to help youth with disabilities transition from correctional facilities into their communities, according to a DPI statement released in September. Funds will also be used for work rehabilitation training and for dyslexia screening for all youth during intake at state correctional facilities.
The project provides three different levels of support, with some youth falling into more than one level.
The program intends to support all justice-involved youth with disabilities and the adults who care about them, according to an abstract on the federal Rehabilitation Services Administration’s website. They will receive support through social media campaigns and an app-based reentry toolkit. This is the broadest level of support, for 8,000 participants, the abstract says.
The second level will support a “targeted group” of students made up of Wisconsin youth under 18 in state correctional facilities. This level involves dyslexia screening and “related intervention services” and is for 1,500 participants.
The smallest group will receive the highest level of care, or intensive supports, the abstract says. These are students “most marginalized at the intersection of disability and justice and, often, race.” They will receive care under a model that is “trauma-informed, community-based” and facilitated by mentors. This level is for 250 participants, who will begin receiving care while incarcerated.
The Department of Public Instruction’s statement compared youth to older age groups for a three-year period after release, citing an August 2021 DOC report. The report found that for a 2016 cohort, 20-24 year-olds were reincarcerated about twice as often as people aged 45 or older.
According to the DOC’s website, of 45 people aged 19 and younger released in 2020, 33 were reincarcerated in Wisconsin within three years after release due to a new sentence or a revocation. This data is based only on readmissions to DOC prisons, so it wouldn’t include reincarceration in another state.
Forsterling said he committed crimes when he was 20 and went into adult prison at 21; he was released to extended supervision last year. He hopes the program will take the experiences of formerly incarcerated people and staff into account.
Good job training is important for getting a good job, Forsterling said, which helps people avoid a desperate situation that may lead to a return to crime.
“And that’s where mentors come in very handy,” he said.
Forsterling said he received helpful mentoring at Lincoln Hills. He mentors and supports several friends who are still incarcerated.
The cost of incarceration at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake has “ballooned” to nearly $463,000 per child per year, as enrollment has “plummeted,” Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service reported last week. Fewer youth means fixed infrastructure and staffing costs are spread across fewer individuals.
A new Department of Corrections budget request would nearly double that amount, they reported. That would raise the cost to 58 times what taxpayers spend on the average K-12 public school student.
Wisconsin’s Division of Juvenile Corrections had a population of 81 people as of a monthly report for September, including 40 at Lincoln Hills and 14 at Copper Lake. The campus was designed for more than 500 youth, the news organizations reported.
The juvenile prisons, which have been troubled for many years and are slated for closure, received renewed scrutiny after youth counselor Corey Proulx died from injuries received in an assault in late June. Lawmakers on the 2023 Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety heard testimony about safety concerns at a hearing in August.
The DOC is under a court-ordered consent decree mandating changes at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake after a 2018 lawsuit challenged practices such as the use of pepper spray and punitive solitary confinement.
The DPI received the grant to assist minors with disabilities as part of the U.S. Department of Education’s Disability Innovation Fund program. The program seeks to ensure people with disabilities receive “in-demand, good-paying jobs.” Out of over 800 organizations, Wisconsin was one of 27 projects to receive the grant.
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Nearly 500 people have graduated from the Sauk County Institute of Leadership since it started in 1997.
The post Sauk County initiative fills local need as county leadership programs dwindle appeared first on WPR.
As Appleton prepares to open a new Hmong American Immersion School next fall, educators and researchers study different responses to Hmong culture fragmentation.
The post Hmong educators make strides toward cultural representation in Wisconsin and US schools appeared first on WPR.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Wisconsin parents who wanted to challenge a school district’s guidance for supporting transgender students.
The justices, acting in a case from Eau Claire, left in place an appellate ruling dismissing the parents’ lawsuit.
Three justices, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, would have heard the case. That’s one short of what is needed for full review by the Supreme Court.
Parents with children in Eau Claire public schools argued in a lawsuit that the school district’s policy violates constitutional protections for parental rights and religious freedom.
Sixteen Republican-led states had urged the court to take up the parents’ case.
Lower courts had found that the parents lacked the legal right, or standing. Among other reasons, the courts said no parent presented evidence that the policy affected them or their children.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals included two judges Republican Donald Trump appointed during his first term.
But Alito described the case as presenting “a question of great and growing national importance,” whether public school districts violate parents’ rights when they encourage students to transition or assist in the process without parental consent or knowledge.
“Administrative Guidance for Gender Identity Support” encourages transgender students to reach out to staff members with concerns and instructs employees to be careful who they talk to about a student’s gender identity, since not all students are “out” to their families.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
US Supreme Court rejects Wisconsin parents’ challenge to school guidance for transgender students is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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