Democratic State Reps. Greta Neubauer (second from left) and Angelina Cruz (not pictured) hold a discussion in Racine Wednesday about a proposal from Cruz and and state Rep. Christian Phelps to more fully fund public education. (Photo by Grant Ritchey/Racine County Eye. Photo republished by permission. Not available for republication.)
Democratic State Reps Angelina Cruz of Racine and Christian Phelps of Eau Claire are proposing a new plan aimed at lowering property taxes while increasing funding for public schools by using a portion of the state’s budget surplus.
Cruz hosted a media roundtable in Racine Wednesday, March 25, alongside State Rep. Greta Neubauer (D-Racine), during which they talked about the plan with the superintendents, school board presidents, and parents from Racine and Kenosha Unified School Districts.
The proposal comes as Wisconsin is set to have a $2.5 billion surplus in its 2025–27 biennial budget, according to lawmakers. Cruz and Phelps’ bill would allocate about $1.3 billion of that surplus toward education.
Both the Assembly and the Senate have held their last regular floor sessions for the 2025-26 term, so the proposal is unlikely to get a vote this year.
According to a statement released by Cruz on March 20, the proposal would increase general school aid and raise the state’s reimbursement rate for special education costs. The goal is to reduce the financial burden on local property taxpayers while improving stability for school districts.
“The proposal would use a portion of the state’s surplus to increase general school aid and raise the state reimbursement rate for special education costs, helping ease pressure on local property taxpayers and providing greater financial stability for school districts,” the release states.
Under the plan, general school aid would increase by $445,949,400 for the 2026–27 school year. By shifting more responsibility to the state, the bill would reduce reliance on local property taxes, which have been rising as districts struggle to cover costs.
Kenosha Unified Superintendent Jeff Weiss noted that property taxpayers have already seen increases of up to 29% on their tax bills.
A key component of the proposal focuses on special education funding.
Cruz and Phelps recommend raising the reimbursement rate to 60% for both the current and upcoming school years, with funding guaranteed to cover that percentage.
“While this still falls short of the level of support many districts need, increasing reimbursement to 60% would provide critical relief for public schools,” Cruz said. “It would help stabilize school district budgets and reduce the need for operating referendums in communities across Wisconsin.”
School officials say education funding needed
Currently, many districts rely heavily on referendums to maintain staffing, programs and daily operations because of limited state support.
Racine Unified Superintendent Soren Gajewski emphasized the strain this has placed on communities.
“Once again, this community and Racine have stepped up to the plate and done everything they can to support their public schools,” Gajewski said. “But the problem is, we continue to have the cost of education and the revenue limits because the revenue coming in does not match, or isn’t even close.”
Gajewski also pointed to rising costs driven by inflation and contracts for services such as food, transportation, and electricity. About 18% of students in Racine Unified receive special education services, further adding to budget pressures.
In a public letter, Gajewski joined superintendents from Madison, Milwaukee, Kenosha and Green Bay in calling for increased state support. They specifically requested raising the special education reimbursement rate to 45% instead of the current 35%, along with additional general funding.
The issue of special education funding has been especially contentious. The state’s reimbursement rate was lowered this school year, according to the Department of Public Instruction, a change that Cruz’s and Phelps’ bill would reverse.
Kenosha Unified Board of Education President Mary Modder criticized the current system.
“With special education, we have people out in the public who are saying, ‘Well, you guys got a huge increase in special education’ without realizing that we really didn’t,” Modder said. “It’s kind of a bait and switch, and then we have to make up the difference.”
Local leaders say the lack of consistent state funding has forced districts to make difficult financial decisions.
Racine Mayor Cory Mason expressed frustration with what he sees as the state shifting responsibility onto local taxpayers.
“Year after year, we see the state walking away from its responsibility to adequately fund education and putting more and more of it on local property taxpayers,” Mason said. “There’s no future where we’re successful without great public schools.”
Cruz said the proposal is intended to address what she described as years of underinvestment in public education.
“We have been living with the consequences of long-term disinvestment in our public schools,” she said. “This legislation is a step toward correcting that. By increasing the state’s investment in public education, we can support our schools while delivering meaningful relief to property taxpayers.”
This report includes additional information from the Wisconsin Examiner.
Reports republished from the Racine County Eye are not available for republishing elsewhere.
Sen. Kelda Roys speaks at a press conference Tuesday to promote a bill that would raise Wisconsin's minimum wage, then index it to inflation. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
Democratic lawmakers have drafted legislation to more than double Wisconsin’s minimum wage, which has remained at $7.25 for nearly two decades.
The proposed legislation, announced Tuesday by Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Rep. Angelina Cruz (D-Racine), would raise the wage to $15, then ramp up the minimum to $20 in four years and automatically increase the wage thereafter to keep pace with cost of living, the lawmakers said at a press conference in the Wisconsin state Capitol Tuesday.
Rep. Angelina Cruz, flanked by Sen. Kelda Roys and Rep. Vincent Miresse, explains the elements of a proposed bill to raise Wisconsin’s minimum wage. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
“I ran for office to make sure working people have a voice in this Capitol,” said Cruz, a first-term member of the Assembly. “This bill is about dignity. It’s about fairness and it’s about building an economy where if you work hard in Wisconsin, you can afford to live in Wisconsin.”
With the Legislature’s current two-year session just about finished, Tuesday’s announcement was also aimed at sending a signal to voters in November about the Democrats’ policy priorities.
“We’re going to continue working for this bill, but even if it doesn’t pass this session, we know that elected officials will be held accountable this fall,” said Roys — who, in addition to being a lawmaker, is one of more than a half-dozen Democrats seeking the party’s nomination to run for governor.
17 years since last increase
The state minimum wage was raised to $7.25 17 years ago, when Roys was a first-term member of the Assembly. The bill aims to make the minimum wage a “living wage” — “the amount of money that a single person needs to earn to cover the basics of their life, housing, utilities, food, transportation and health care,” Roys said.
Based on the numbers produced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technologyliving wage calculator, “a million Wisconsin workers earn less than a living wage,” she said, adding that even the legislation’s initial boost to $15 an hour is less than a living wage in all 72 Wisconsin counties.
“So, this bill is not only long overdue, it’s actually pretty modest compared to what people actually need to thrive,” Roys said.
The legislation would push the state minimum to $15 per hour on enactment; increase the minimum in stages to $20 per hour by 2030; and index the new minimum to the consumer price index starting in 2030, “so as the cost of living increases, people’s wages will increase with it,” Roys said.
For small businesses with 50 or fewer employees, the $20 wage would be phased in by 2035.
“We believe in supporting workers and respecting the realities facing small businesses,” Cruz said. “Economic justice and small business stability can and must go hand-in-hand.”
The bill would also move the subminimum wage for tipped workers — now $2.33 — to $7.50 immediately and then phase it up to $10 by 2030, after which it would be tied to half the standard minimum wage, Cruz said.
In addition, the bill would repeal a Wisconsin law that currently bars local municipalities from enacting local minimum wage ordinances.
“Communities know their costs, so they should have the freedom to respond,” Cruz said.
‘Backbone of our communities’
About 800,000 Wisconsin workers are paid less than $20 an hour, Cruz said — as “home health care providers, early childhood educators, grocery workers, nursing assistants — the backbone of our communities.”
Wisconsin’s low-wage workers “are essential workers that make our society run,” Roys said. “And nowhere is a living wage more urgently needed than in rural Wisconsin, where many communities have limited employment opportunities. A handful of employers, often massive multinational corporations, can suppress wages because workers have so few alternatives.”
She argued that increasing the minimum wage will strengthen local economies by boosting the average person’s buying power
“Because when a worker in Ladysmith gets a raise, that money’s going to stay in the community in Wisconsin,” Roys said. “But when a national corporation suppresses wages in Ladysmith, those profits go to shareholders in Arkansas or the Cayman Islands. This legislation is an economic development bill for Wisconsin.”
The band of Democratic lawmakers who joined the news conference were outnumbered by a crowd of service workers in red shirts, most of them members of the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers union — MASH.
“This bill is about making sure that there’s some more power in the market for workers so we all can make a living wage,” said Troy Brewer, a lead cook at the Fiserv Forum sports arena in Milwaukee and a MASH union steward.
Sabrina Prochaska (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
Service workers across the state “are withheld access to economic security, while our jobs continue to act as the backbone to our economy,” said Sabrina Prochaska, a shift leader at Anodyne Coffee in Milwaukee, where the union is negotiating its first contract. “The problem is not our jobs, but rather these jobs do not pay a livable wage. It’s not right and we’re done accepting it.”
The legislation also has the backing of a wide range of unions and allied groups. Many of the same organizations joined with MASH at an event in Septemberto launch their demand for a $20 minimum wage.
Rebuilding the New Deal
Peter Rickman, the president and business agent for MASH, said the legislation is part of a larger mission — to reverse the erosion of the New Deal reforms that were enacted in the 1930s.
Rickman said in that era, a coalition that was led by Democrats but included some Republicans helped build the American middle class by fostering collective bargaining and union rights, and by setting a minimum wage.
The minimum wage was intended as a wage floor that would allow people to make a living, he said.
“It was never intended to be a poverty pay for those folks. It was intended to move the whole labor market. That is how we gave birth to the world’s first middle class,” Rickman said. “We built it with public policy. Politicians took the side of working people and said, ‘We are going to make this labor market work for the working class.’”
Peter Rickman, president and business manager for the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers (MASH). (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
He said those policies have been dismantled by “another bipartisan coalition — too many Democrats but mostly Republicans,” which pushed wealth up instead of spreading it among workers.
“The greatest redistribution in the history of the world happened: $79 trillion dollars from worker paychecks went to corporate profits,” Rickman said, citing aRand Corp. study.
The bill was unveiled days after the Wisconsin Assembly concluded its active lawmaking for the Legislature’s current two-year period. The state Senate is expected to follow suit in a few weeks.
Roys, however, appeared unperturbed by the suggestion that the timing would make its enactment this year unlikely. She noted that the impending wrap-up was the work of the Legislature’s Republican leaders, not a requirement
“Republicans choosing to go home and take a 10-month vacation so that they campaign for re-election is a choice that they are making,” Roys said. “They don’t have to. We could come to work every single day for the rest of the year, just like the workers that are standing up here do.”
She said the session’s end won’t stop proponents from talking up the bill. “Maybe this is the last bill of 2025,” Roys said. “And maybe it’s the first law of 2027.”
The state Assembly passed a bill to eliminate the school revenue limit increases that are the result of Gov. Tony Evers’ 400-year veto. Evers signing the 2023 state budget which included the 400-year veto. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
During its final planned floor session this week, the Wisconsin State Assembly passed a constitutional amendment proposal that would limit the executive partial veto power and a bill to eliminate the school revenue limit increases that are the result of Gov. Tony Evers’ 400-year veto.
Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) said it was the “wrong decision” for lawmakers to finish their work in February and “take quite a long vacation.”
“There is a lot left on the table for us to address but we all know that an arbitrary deadline has been set for us to go home,” Neubauer said. “Thankfully, it does seem like the tide is turning in this body and one day things will be different and operate under a different framework that is focused on people rather than politics and power.”
Neubauer mentioned the passage of the postpartum Medicaid extension bill and the breast cancer screening bills that are now on their way to Gov. Tony Evers.
The session wrap-up will free Assembly lawmakers up to campaign for reelection, and the body could look much different next session as some longtime lawmakers, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), are retiring. Under newly competitive maps, the balance of power in both the Assembly and Senate is up for grabs.
“We have a lot left to accomplish this session. There is still time for us to act on funding our public schools, protecting our rights and freedoms, lowering costs and helping Wisconsinites make ends meet,” Neubauer said. “This is the moment to act boldly and do the right thing for the people of Wisconsin.”
Vos told WISN-12 on Friday that leaders and Gov. Tony Evers had not yet reached a deal on how to use the state’s projected $2.5 budget surplus. The leaders have been negotiating on ways to ease property taxes and provide funding to schools.
“We’re going to figure a way to get it done,” Vos said, adding that he wants the money to “go back to the people” while Evers wants additional investments. “The middle ground is a little of each.”
“We’ll probably have to come back in a special session or extraordinary session, something like that,” he said.
Lawmakers passed proposals that were introduced in reaction to the veto as well as bills to ban phones in school, regulate app and social media companies and to provide state money towards “Trump accounts.”
Fight over partial veto
The Assembly passed two proposals that took aim at the partial veto Evers used when he signed the 2023 state budget that extended an annual $325 per-pupil school revenue limit increase for 400 years. Evers, who recently defended the veto in his State of the State address, said he wanted to provide school districts with a consistent way to raise revenue in the absence of reliable state funding increases.
The Assembly also approved in a 54-41 vote along party lines a third constitutional amendment to go before voters later this year.
The amendments will go before Wisconsin voters in November. Two others, including one to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs from state and local governments and one to prohibit the state from ordering the closure of places of worship during a state of emergency, passed the state Legislature earlier this year.
Constitutional amendment proposals have to pass the state Legislature in two consecutive legislative sessions before they go to voters. If approved, SJR 116 would prohibit partial vetoes from raising or creating any taxes or fees.
Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) introduced the amendment proposal after Evers’ veto.
“You never know for sure who’s going to be the next governor,” Nedweski said on the Assembly floor Thursday. “Choose wisely on this.”
The Assembly also concurred in a bill that would outright eliminate the annual $325 per pupil revenue limit increases that are the result of the partial veto. The vote on SB 389 was 54-40 and it sends the bill to Evers, who is likely to veto it.
Despite its likely rejection, Republican lawmakers still made the case for why Evers should sign the bill into law.
Rep. Karen Hurd (R-Withee) read a letter from superintendents on the professional advisory committee for the Cooperative Educational Service Agency 10, which serves parts of northwestern Wisconsin, urging Evers to reverse his veto. They argued in part that $325 per pupil is not an increase that allows schools to keep pace with the rate of inflation, doesn’t fix chronic underfunding of special education funding and puts it all on property taxpayers.
The superintendents said that they thought the veto could impede reform of school funding in Wisconsin.
The veto doesn’t stop lawmakers from being able to put more state funding into schools, but Republican lawmakers have refused to do so. During the state budget process, Republican lawmakers angered by the veto opted not to provide any increase in general school aid in the 2025-26 or 2026-27 fiscal years. School advocates said the decision would only further exacerbate the funding issues they face, especially since their decision on whether to use the additional $325 increase would rely only on property tax increases.
“Every year we put together a budget, a budget that has to be sustainable. There may be a year that we could put more aid into schools than $325 per student. We have to look at that each year,” Hurd said. “We are people that are trying to fund the schools in every way that we can, but when it is set at $325 per year for the next 400 years, then that opportunity for us to work within the budget and increase it has been ripped away.”
Democrats said that before taking away authority from schools, lawmakers should consider improving the state’s system for funding schools. Rep. Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) said that the annual school revenue limit increase is the “only predictable source of revenue” for Wisconsin public schools.
“We should not close public schools,” he said, alluding to Republican lawmakers who have proposed consolidating school districts as a way of helping with funding challenges. “We should fund them.”
Rep. Angelina Cruz (D-Racine) said the GOP bill does not answer the question of how to fund schools and provide relief to property taxpayers
“The answer is to reconnect school funding to inflation. The answer is to increase state aid so local property taxes are not the backstop. The answer is to modernize the formula to reflect demographic realities. The answer is to fulfill our constitutional obligation to fully fund public schools,” Cruz said.
AB 460 would allow siblings of students in the state’s school voucher program to qualify for participation even if their family no longer meets the family income requirements. It passed on a voice vote. It now goes to the state Senate.
“I’m not going to do anything that further exacerbates the zeroing out of the state’s resources on public schools or expands privatization on the Wisconsin taxpayers dime, particularly Wisconsin property taxpayers dime,” Phelps said. “Unfortunately, this bill proposes removing income caps on the students that Wisconsin property taxpayers would be funding to attend private schools.”
Cell phone ban, online regulations
AB 948 would require school districts to adopt policies that prohibit the use of cell phones for the entire school days, taking a step further than the recent law signed by Evers that bans phones during class. It passed via voice vote and will now go to the Senate.
Rep. Alex Joers (D-Waunakee) said he would support the bill but thought it was the “easy way out,” saying he wasn’t sure with advancing technologies in the future that to “blanketly ban things” would be an effective solution.
Rep. Alex Penterman (R-Hustisford), who has worked as a substitute teacher, said students in middle and high school can become a “social piranha” if they don’t have the latest smartphone.
Rep. Lindee Brill (R-Sheboygan Falls) said the bill would encourage students to engage with each other and bring back “loud lunches” where “kids aren’t on the phones but instead negotiations are happening between peanut butter and jelly and grilled cheese and not Snapchat. We need to go back to kids making their after school plans while they’re eating their lunches instead of bullying each other online.”
Goeben said her bills would support the “God-given constitutional right of parents to protect and guide their children, not tech platforms.”
The Assembly also passed a set of bills meant to put regulations on apps and social media companies that are intended to give parents more oversight over their children’s activity.
Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) said the bills were aimed at protecting children in “digital world that was not built with their safety in mind.”
“We’re living in an age of online predatory behavior, instant access and algorithm driven exposure. Children are encountering explicit material at younger and younger ages and many parents feel that they are fighting a losing battle.”
“We cannot pretend that warning labels will solve every problem but we can insist on honesty and accountability from those who profit from this content.”
AB 961 passed 61-34. It would would require digital distributors of media to display prominent “explicit content” warning labels on material that “predominantly appeals to the prurient, shameful, or morbid interest of children,” “is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable for children” and “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, scientific or educational value for children.”
The bill calls for the warning label to be displayed on the front page of digital platforms, the label would need to appear for at least 10 seconds or until a user acknowledges the warning.
AB 962 passed 58-37. It would require app developers and app stores to verify the age of users and get parental consent before children are able to download or purchase apps or make in-store purchases. Accounts belonging to a minor would have to be affiliated with an account owned by a parent.
AB 963 passed 60-35. It would require social media platforms that bring in more than $1 billion in revenue per year to take several steps, including estimating the age of users and for minors, setting their privacy to the most private settings, turning off addictive features and prohibiting profile-based, paid commercial advertising in their feeds.
Trump accounts
The Assembly also approved bills to provide state funds to the “Trump accounts” program.
The federal tax and spending bill signed into law by President Donald Trump last year included a measure to allow parents to create dedicated “Trump accounts” similar to IRA accounts, for their children. Parents of babies born between Jan. 1, 2025 through the end of 2028 and who are U.S. citizens with a valid Social Security number will be eligible to have $1,000 deposited in the account from the federal government.
AB 996 would provide a state match for the accounts. AB 997 includes the $60 million in annual funding for the 2025-27 budget cycle for proposal. Both passed 62-35 with eight Democrats joining Republicans in favor.
“People are not saving at the right pace for retirement,” said the author of both bills, Rep. Elijah Behnke (R- Town of Chase). “The reason this is the best possible policy is because you’re investing in your kids’ future.”
Joers said the money should be invested in other priorities that could help children and parents more and expressed concerns about the federal program not being up and running yet.
“I think that we need to do a lot better for our kids and our parents,” Joers said. “This bill takes money that we should be giving to our children and our parents right now and instead takes it and gives it to a federal program that has not even been set up yet. I know the president wandered around stage with Nicki Minaj, but this program has not started yet.”
“Kids need this money now, not 18 years from now. They need it now in their schools they need this money. Let’s keep the promise that we made in our budget to fund special education reimbursement.”
“Immoral conduct” investigations
The Assembly also approved two additional bills that were introduced after an investigation by the CapTimes that found there were over 200 investigations into teacher licenses due to allegations of sexual misconduct or grooming from 2018 to 2023.
The bills seek to provide new rules on how “immoral conduct” investigations are conducted.
AB 1003, which passed on a voice vote, would prohibit the Department of Public Instruction from ending an investigation into a license holder accused of immoral conduct without a determination on whether there should be a license revocation or termination. The prohibition wouldn’t apply if a licensee permanently surrenders the licenses and waives their rights to a future appeal.
AB 1004, which passed 87-8, prohibits public and private schools from entering agreements that would suppress information on the immoral conduct of an employee, would affect the report of immoral conduct by an employer or employees or require an education employer to expunge information about allegations of findings or immoral conduct.
Other bills on the issue that have passed the Assembly or Senate include one to create a “grooming” crime in Wisconsin, one to ensure school districts have policies on appropriate communications and one to require DPI to maintain an online licensing portal that is searchable by the public at no cost.
One City Schools founder and CEO Kaleem Caire, left, foreground, and state Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), center, take part in a Jan. 28 hearing on a bill to boost funding for "demonstration" charter schools. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Update:
GOP members pass bill
The Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities voted 6-5 Wednesday to recommend AB 818 for passage.
All committee Republicans voted in favor of the measure except for Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie), who joined the committee’s four Democrats in voting against the bill.
Wisconsin lawmakers are set to advance a bill that would create a “demonstration” charter school designation and boost state aid for that school by more than 50%.
During the Jan. 28 public hearing, Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia) and Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Appleton) said the bill would help create a mechanism in the state to try out innovative teaching methods and export them across the state.
“Right now, we are reinventing the wheel in isolation rather than sharing the blueprint for success,” Wittke said. “A teaching hospital receives higher funding to train research and innovate. Similarly, a demonstration school would be a K-12 education lab.”
Independent charter schools are different from traditional charter schools. They are not authorized by a public school district and do not answer to a public school board, but instead are authorized by one of a number of designated authorizers, including the Universities of Wisconsin’s Office of Educational Opportunity (OEO).
AB 818 would allow the Office of Educational Opportunity to designate a school that meets a certain set of criteria as a “demonstration” charter school. For a school to receive the designation, it would need to participate in a longitudinal study; provide professional development opportunities; share the best practices from its educational model to other schools and maintain partnerships with community organizations.
The school would receive an additional $6,863 per pupil — a 55% increase from its current funding. The bill is scheduled for a vote in the Assembly Colleges and Universities committee Tuesday.
Wittke said that any school authorized through the Office of Educational Opportunity could apply once the program is set up.
“Once this bill would get signed into law, they would have to make an application to be designated as this. Any other charter school that is under the OEO presence could make an application to do the same. There could be others that want to be chartered under OEO for the purpose of doing this. We would love to see that,” Wittke said. “This is an idea that was brought in front of me, so we looked at this framework. It wasn’t to preclude anyone, but this is what I believe is a step in the right direction so that others can follow, and we can start moving the needle up so that our children will realize opportunities that are in front of us.”
The UW Office of Educational Opportunity currently authorizes nine schools, though there is one that is seeking to serve as a model for what the bill proposes.
One City Schools, a Madison area independent charter school, operates One City Elementary and One City Preparatory Academy. The two schools serve kindergarten through 8th grade, in Monona. It also operates One City Preschool, which serves ages 2 through 4-year-old kindergarten, on Madison’s south side.
Kaleem Caire, One City Schools’ founder and CEO, told lawmakers that the organization is trying to serve students who have not been served by traditional schools, as well as to act as an incubator for innovation. But One City Schools is always in need of money to continue operating.
“If any of you have money that you don’t like, you can send it to One City Schools,” Caire quipped, adding, “Yes, we are always at risk of closing our doors” because of the needs of students.
He said the student population of One City Schools is 94% students of color, about 70% students in poverty and 17% special needs.
“We are the least funded public school,” he said.
The school has struggled with sustainable growth in the past. In 2023, the school sent 51 ninth- and tenth-graders back to Madison Metropolitan School District after one semester due to teacher shortages, pausing its high school aspirations for several years.
At the time, Caire said the school would reopen its high school in 2025, but as of last year, those plans have been delayed until 2026-27 due to its eighth grade enrollment numbers, facility readiness and funding uncertainties.
Caire said the independent charter school currently serves about 400 students and its preschool serves about 80. Practices that he said set the schools apart from traditional schools include providing breakfast and lunch to students each day and its partnership with Project Read AI, an artificial intelligence program meant to help teach literacy.
The bill has support of one Democratic lawmaker: Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), whose district includes the schools.
Stubbs urged lawmakers to support the bill, calling the school a “pioneer in providing innovative, high quality education and wrap-around support services to some of Dane County’s and Wisconsin’s most vulnerable scholars.” She said the bill will “ensure that an operator with an innovative learning model is able to continue improving the educational outcome of hundreds of scholars in our community every year.”
Stubbs said the additional funding would come from the existing charter school payment appropriation.
“Why do we need to spend more if you’re really successful?” Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Hortonville) asked Caire, who said that the organization currently must raise about $5 million annually to meet the needs of its students.
According to written testimony provided by One City Schools, the organization’s long-term sustainability goal will rely on increased state funding, including by nearly doubling its student base and boosting state aid overall.
“Their goal is to reach 900 students, which they consider a funding tipping point where they’ll receive more predictable public funding and substantially reduce their need for private support,” the testimony stated. It also identified a plan for achieving financial sustainability including securing multi-year funding, growing enrollment, achieving “economies of scale” and increasing state aid.
Rep. Jerry O’Connor (R-Fond Du Lac) said he didn’t think the funding in the bill would provide a “phenomenal advantage” to the schools, but would instead give them, as independent charter schools, “equal funding.”
“These are poor lives and kids and people, so I don’t have a problem with the funding,” O’Connor said. “I like the fact that the rules are in place. There’s accountability. There are consequences.”
Democratic lawmakers expressed caution and concerns about the bill, saying they weren’t sure how it would help schools and students more broadly.
“It feels like you all are doing some amazing things at One City and I appreciate that. I think most schools would like to have the holistic approach that you are aiming for, but money is always the issue,” Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire), a member of the committee, said during the hearing.
Emerson noted that Democratic lawmakers have proposed legislation that would allow for free school meals at all public and voucher schools in the state. “That’s what I’d like to see our body advocating for more than picking winners and losers, and to be honest, sir, I feel like that’s what this bill is right now.”
Caire told lawmakers that there aren’t other schools that have volunteered to serve as a “demonstration” school for the state.
“That is why we’re coming here to you,” Caire said. “How many public schools in Wisconsin do you know of are germinating this level of opportunity for kids intentionally to scale across the country at an affordable price?… What we’re asking the state for is the average per-pupil revenue that the average public school system gets from the state of Wisconsin.”
The Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), the state’s largest teachers union, opposes the bill, saying it would further drain resources from traditional public schools.
“This bill hands a single, unaccountable charter operator a funding windfall that educators in every comer of this state can only dream of for their own students,” WEAC said in written testimony.
The union said the bill comes as public schools continue to face difficulties, and as state funding has not kept pace with inflation.
In the most recent state budget cycle, Wisconsin’s traditional public schools did not receive any increase in its state per-pupil aid. The budget did provide additional funding for special education, but the available funds are not expected to meet the percentage promised by lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers. School districts are instead turning to property tax increases to raise additional funds.
“Public school educators experience the consequences of state budget choices every day in crowded classrooms, growing student mental health needs, outdated materials, and painful cuts to electives that once kept kids engaged in school,” WEAC’s statement said. “AB 818 does nothing to address those real and urgent problems. Instead, it carves out a special lane for one favored type of charter operator and invites others to line up for the same bonus, further draining resources from the vast majority of students who attend public schools that are transparent, democratically governed, and open to all.”
Democratic lawmakers on the Assembly Education Committee, including Reps. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire), Angelina Cruz (D-Racine) and Joe Sheehan (D-Sheboygan), submitted testimony opposing the bill. They said they had concerns the legislation would divert resources from public schools and continue a pattern of “linking education privatization to segregation.”
“Policies that funnel public money toward select private and charter operators have repeatedly exacerbated segregation and disparities along lines of race, socioeconomic background, disability status, and more, leaving public schools with fewer resources to meet all students’ needs despite our constitutional obligation to help them do so,” the lawmakers stated. “AB 818 promises to continue that legacy.”
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