Sen. André Jacque (R-New Franken) and Rep. Barbara Dittrich (R-Oconomowoc) argued that a measure regulating the use of student names and pronouns was needed to standardize policies across the state. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

A bill that would require school districts to inform parents when students want to use pronouns and names that differ from the ones given to them at birth received significant pushback Tuesday during a Senate Education Committee hearing.

The committee also took testimony on a bill to add video requirements to human growth and development curriculum as well as to opt the state into a federal school choice tax credit program.

Under SB 120, Wisconsin schools would be required to adopt a policy on name and pronoun changes by July 1, 2026. Policies would not require written authorization if school staff are using a shortened version of a student’s first or middle name.

Sen. André Jacque (R-New Franken) and Rep. Barbara Dittrich (R-Oconomowoc) argued that the measure was needed to standardize policies across the state and ensure parents are involved in conversations related to pronoun and name changes for students. Many testified in opposition to the bill, saying it would do harm to students and infringe on local decision making. 

“It is deeply troubling to me that school staff are being encouraged to keep parents out of major life decisions concerning their children, while at the same time these same officials cannot give them aspirin without parental approval. Why would schools promote secrecy in such a way?” Jacque said. “Something has gone terribly wrong in our education system if officials inherently perceive parents as harmful to their own children. Parents are legally accountable for the health and welfare of their own children… Hiding from us important things that are going on in their lives is not only disrespectful to parents, it is harmful to our children.” 

Jacque said the legislation would be consistent with a 2023 ruling by a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge, which found that a policy that allowed students in the Kettle Moraine School District to change their names and pronouns in school violated the rights of parents to make medical decisions for their children. The school district now has a policy that requires express parental consent for staff to use different names and pronouns. 

“To me, if there’s going to be a name and pronoun change the school should be working together with parents and students to advance that together,” Dittrich said. 

Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) pushed back on the Republican bill, saying it would infringe on local communities’ ability to make decisions about policies and would harm students.

“You could sub out the words ‘parental decision making’ and say that the Legislature is going to have the best authority of what should happen — instead of parents, instead of local governments, instead of local school boards. You’re saying that you guys know better,” Larson said. 

“That’s a total distortion of what the bill does,” Dittrich said.

Larson asked the bill authors to consider a situation where parents may not be accepting of a student who wants to use a different name and pronouns. 

“You are expediting that situation by making it come to a head when there are parents who are less than understanding, who are brought up under a very strict and very incorrect… and you are forcing the question in a vulnerable population that is already overly targeted with transphobia with this, which is already overly targeted for bullying, which is already higher than the average rates of suicide and mental health. You are bullying them by bringing this bill forward,” Larson said.

“You are saying we should hide information and not facilitate those conversations,” Jacque replied. Dittrich added that Larson was “trampling all over parental rights.”

Paul Bartlett, a father of two transgender children, said the bill works to “prioritize the unfounded fears of conservative parents over the well-being of children.” 

“Like any parent, I want my children to thrive and be happy. They are well supported against these continued legislative attacks, but many trans and nonbinary kids are not,” Bartlett said. He said that school should be a refuge for unsupported students, “not a place where teachers are obligated to out and humiliate them.” 

Bartlett pointed out that lawmakers recently approved a law, known as Bradyn’s Law, that seeks to protect young people from being sexually extorted online. 

“That everyone agreed on [that bill] was important because what we were doing was preventing teenagers from killing themselves basically from humiliation… and yet these bills, they do the opposite,” Bartlett said. 

Bartlett noted that anti-trans laws have a negative effect on young transgender people. 

According to a 2024 survey by the Trevor Project, 45% of transgender and nonbinary youth have reported that they or their family have considered moving to a different state due to anti-LGBTQ+ politics and laws, and about 90% have said that their wellbeing was negatively affected by  recent politics. 

The Trevor Project survey, which pulled from the experiences of over 18,000 LGBTQ+ youth, also found that 39% of LGBTQ+ young people, including 46% of transgender and nonbinary young people, had seriously considered attempting suicide. 

“I just don’t understand, like, why do we keep doing this?” Bartlett said.

Abigail Swetz, executive director of FAIR Wisconsin, said bills that target transgender youth contribute to the mental health struggles they face. 

The bill is part of a slate of bills that Wisconsin Republicans introduced related to transgender people, including children, last year. According to the 2025 anti-trans bills tracker, there were over 1,020 bills introduced across the country including 20 in Wisconsin. 

“Inclusive policies, like making it possible for students to use an affirming name and the pronouns that best represent their identity in school in an easily accessible way — those policies are a pressure valve making it possible for [youth] to live fully and healthily,” Swetz said. 

Swetz said when she previously worked as a teacher she helped support students that were preparing to share information about themselves with their family and said it was important to follow the child’s lead. 

“The youth themselves are the experts in their own experience and have a better understanding than anyone about the challenges they might face when it comes to acceptance and safety at home. I have witnessed that conversation go well, and I have seen it go badly,” Swetz said. She said the bill that lawmakers were pushing “aims to traffic in distrust while a process like this, one that is directed by a well-supported young person, is actually how we can build trust between parents, children and school staff.” 

Peggy Wirtz-Olson, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), said she was speaking out against the bill on behalf of the students who would be “devastated” by the bill. 

“All students deserve safe and welcoming schools, not only some of them, every single one of them, and that includes our trans students,” Wirtz-Olsen said. “The simple use of preferred names and pronouns is associated with a large decrease in depressive symptoms, suicidal thoughts and even suicidal attempts. Respecting preferred names and pronouns is a proven measure to show respect, earn trust, affirm our students, so they can feel safe, and they can focus on learning.”

Requiring videos of fetal development

Lawmakers also took testimony on a bill to add requirements for schools that offer human growth and development education. 

Human growth and development is optional for Wisconsin school districts, but for those that do opt in, state law includes some requirements including encouraging abstinence for students who are unmarried. 

SB 371 would add requirements that explanations of pregnancy, prenatal development and childbirth include a high definition video that shows the development of the brain, heart, sex organs and other organs, a rendering of the fertilization process and fetal development as well as a presentation on each trimester of pregnancy and the physical and emotional health of the mother. 

The bill would also require that instruction on parental responsibility include information on the importance of secure interpersonal relationships for infant mental health and on the value of reading to young children. 

Bill coauthors Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) and Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) rejected the assertion that the bill is a mandate, noting that school districts do not have to teach human growth and development. 

“Today’s youth are technologically and visually inclined learners. We should lean into this to better convey this important information,” Felzkowski said. She also added that there should be bipartisan agreement around “preparing the young women of today with all the knowledge they could need to prepare for motherhood and young men for fatherhood.” 

“Being able to actually see the real life process of fetal development in action will be more tangible to students than textbooks or seeing it in a still diagram or a drawing. We have a resource at our disposal to bring science into our classroom and we should use it to our advantage to give students a stronger educational experience,” Nedweski said.

Nedweski also said it “might not be obvious to some people that using an iPad as a babysitter is not healthy” and that it is “far more important for their health to read to children and to bond with them.”

Larson asked the lawmakers what type of research they had to back up the change to state law.

“There’s not one specific scientific research that we’re relating this to,” Felzkowski said. “Just Google it and numerous things will pop up, or we can have our staff do that for you.”

No one spoke against the bill. 

The Wisconsin Public Health Association (WPHA) and the Wisconsin Association of Local Health Departments and Boards are registered against the bill, according to the Wisconsin Lobbying website. The organizations outlined their concerns with the Assembly version of the bill in a statement to the Wisconsin Examiner. 

The organizations said they opposed the legislation in part because it doesn’t do anything to restore the educational standards that were in place under the Healthy Youth Act. The former state law, which included a more comprehensive policy that required providing age-appropriate instruction in human growth and development, was adopted in 2010 but was later repealed in 2012 during a special session under former Gov. Scott Walker, who reestablished abstinence-only education. 

“Evidence-based, comprehensive instruction is essential to equip students with accurate information and skills necessary to make informed decisions about their sexual health, reducing rates of unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. It also promotes healthy relationships, consent, and emotional well-being, contributing to overall public health and safety,” the organizations said in the statement.

DPI spokesperson Chris Bucher told the Examiner in an email that the state already has similar guidelines for human development instruction in state law and said the bill is an example of infringing on local control. 

“It is up to districts to determine human development curriculum for what best fits their community. This is also another unfunded mandate for districts choosing to offer human development. District budgets are already stretched thin,” Bucher said. “If the Legislature wants to mandate specific instruction, they should provide funding for curriculum.”

Federal choice tax credit program 

SB 600 would instruct Gov. Tony Evers to opt Wisconsin into a federal school choice tax credit program.

Gov. Tony Evers has previously said he will not opt Wisconsin into the program, and if the bill were passed by the Senate and Assembly instructing Evers to take action, he could veto the legislation. 

A provision in the federal law signed by President Donald Trump in July, which goes into effect in 2027, will provide a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 to people who donate to a qualifying “scholarship granting program” to support certain educational expenses including tuition and board at private schools, tutoring and books. 

However, governors in each state must decide whether to opt in and have until Jan. 1, 2027 to do so.

Felzkowski said it would be “shortsighted and self-defeating” to not opt into the tax credit, noting that other states including North Carolina, Tennessee, Nebraska, Texas, South Dakota and Iowa, are already opting in. 

If Wisconsinites opt into the federal tax credit, the money will be directed to private schools outside the state if the law does not pass, Felzkowski said. “Our dollars will be going to those states… instead of our students here in the state of Wisconsin.”

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Senators and two current representatives seeking Senate seats in 2026 have been touring the state to highlight affordability and the effects of Republican policy choices, including tariffs and cuts to health care at the federal level. Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, second from left, listens as Christmas Tree farm operator Lance Jensen discusses his business with Hesselbein and Sens. Sarah Keyeski and Melissa Ratcliff, during a visit to Jensen's farm on Dec. 8. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein told the Wisconsin Examiner in a year-end interview that while she may have had a seat at the budget negotiating table this year, the Legislature still hasn’t engaged in as much bipartisan work as she had hoped. 

Democratic lawmakers entered this year with bolstered numbers under new voting maps, but still in the minority. The closely divided partisan breakdown in the Senate — 15 Democrats and 18 Republicans —  led to Republicans scrapping their plans to cut the University of Wisconsin budget and providing additional funding for K-12 schools, in budget negotiations with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers where Hesselbein had a seat at the negotiating table. But the current session still hasn’t matched up to Hesselbein’s “really high hopes at the beginning of the session that we were going to be able to do some really good bipartisan work.” 

Hesselbein noted that at the start of the session, lawmakers introduced three bills she thought were “really strong.”

“Unfortunately, Republicans are refusing to work with us on those issues,” Hesselbein said. “I am hopeful that they will go spend time with their families back home over the holidays, and they will realize that we can still get a lot of great things done for the state of Wisconsin in the spring.” 

One bill would provide school breakfast and lunch to students at no cost, another would make several policy changes aimed at helping bring down the costs of prescription drugs and the final one would expand the homestead tax credit to provide additional relief to low-income homeowners and renters.

Hesselbein said the “Healthy Schools Meals” legislation would help “every single kid, make sure they get a good nutritious lunch at school” and help “save the average family like $1800 a year on grocery costs.” She said the prescription drug legislation would help prevent more people from “choosing to cut their medicine in half” due to costs and the tax credit would help people stay in their homes longer. 

“These were three really common-sense bills. I still really think they are, and all we needed was two Senate Republicans to help us get these bills across the finish line and show that they care about the people of the state of Wisconsin and that they want to do some bipartisan work,” Hesselbein said. “Unfortunately, they weren’t interested in doing that work with us, and they don’t have a plan to help people with the rising costs in the state of Wisconsin.” 

Hesselbein said that passing helpful legislation, including the three bills she mentioned, could mitigate the upheaval of President Donald Trump’s administration.

“There’s so much chaos and confusion happening with the Trump administration that sometimes it’s hard to keep track of it day to day,” she said. “…What we can do as legislators in the state of Wisconsin is pass bills that actually help people.” 

Hesselbein said Senate Democrats continue to have conversations with Republicans in the hopes that they can get more legislation passed. One pressing concern is  the Knowles-Nelson stewardship program which, without legislative action, will sunset early in 2026. 

“We’re very worried about that happening, so our doors are open to any ideas they have,” Hesselbein said of her Republican colleagues, adding that she hopes a bill authored by Sen. Jodi Habush-Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) can move forward.

Hesselbein noted that the stewardship program, which was created in 1989 to fund land conservation in Wisconsin, has bipartisan roots. It is named after former Republican Gov. Warren Knowles and former Democratic Gov. Gaylord Nelson and was signed into law by Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson.

“This has never been a partisan issue,” Hesselbein said, noting that the program is popular with people across Wisconsin who love the outdoors, “whether they’re going hiking or they’re fishing, or they’re hunting.”

Hesselbein also said she is hopeful that the bill she coauthored, which would bolster education on menopause and perimenopause, will advance. It received a public hearing in the Senate earlier this year.

Wisconsin Senate is the ‘most flippable’ in 2026

Next year will be a definitive election year in Wisconsin with control of the Senate, Assembly and governor’s office up for grabs.

Hesselbein said she believes that the Wisconsin State Senate is “the most flippable chamber” in the United States — and Democrats are working hard towards that goal. Wisconsin’s 17 odd-numbered Senate districts are up for reelections in 2026. It’s the first time new legislative maps adopted in 2024 that reflect the 50/50 partisan divide in the state will be in effect for those districts.

Hesselbein said Democrats are focused on winning districts that previously went to former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, former President Joe Biden in 2020, Gov. Tony Evers in his two elections and to Mary Burke, who lost to former Gov. Scott Walker in 2014. 

Two seats targeted by Democrats to flip are Senate District 5, which is currently held by Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) and Senate District 17, which is currently held by Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green).

“Fair maps and great candidates matter, and we already have people on the field that are out there knocking on doors listening to voters today on a cold day in Wisconsin… We have people that want to be elected to do the right thing for the people in the state of Wisconsin,” Hesselbein said.

Democratic candidates in Wisconsin and nationwide are hammering a message about affordability. Through the State Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, senators and two current representatives seeking Senate seats in 2026 have been touring the state to highlight the effects of Republican policy choices, including tariffs and cuts to health care at the federal level. They also recently launched an ad titled “Aisle 5.”

The ad opens as a group of Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi), Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Hesselbein, declare: “Same groceries from the same store. Same people in power, calling the shots and driving the prices up.”  The words “Senate Republicans” pop up on the screen. “My colleagues and I are fighting every single day against tariffs that make beef, eggs, and even cheese more expensive,” Hesselbein says. “But guess what? They don’t care. We can’t keep hoping they’re going to make the right choice because they’ve shown us they won’t.”

Hesselbein vowed in the interview with the Examiner that under Democratic control the Senate will have more floor sessions, be more transparent and “be actually doing the people’s work.”

“When Senate Democrats are fortunate enough to be the majority, we will continue to work with our Republican colleagues and get the best policies to help the people in the state of Wisconsin, especially when it comes to rising costs,” she told the Examiner. 

Senate Democrats’ ability to pursue their agenda will not only rely on winning the majority, but will also depend on who wins the consequential gubernatorial race, though Hesselbein said she is prepared to work with whoever wins. 

“I was able to work with a Republican governor when Scott Walker was there. I was able to pass some bills,” Hesselbein said. “I’m hoping we have a Democratic governor so we can finally start listening to the people of the state of Wisconsin and get things done because we’ve been waiting a long time.” 

Hesselbein said she doesn’t plan to endorse anyone in the Democratic primary for governor. 

Many of the candidates have legislative experience including state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) as well as Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, Milwaukee County Exec. David Crowley, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and former state Rep. Brett Hulsey. Other Democratic candidates include former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes and former Department of Administration Sec. Joel Brennan.

“I have too many friends,” Hesselbein said of her decision not to make an endorsement. “I have been in caucus with some of them… They are really good people, and when the going got tough, they never ran from an argument or anything, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how that race shapes up.” 

Hesselbein said she is looking forward to seeing each candidate’s platform and a “robust” discussion among them. 

“What are the plans that they have for the state of Wisconsin? How do they see us addressing rising costs and affordability? What is their plan for K-12 education, higher education? For the environment and all the things that we’ve been hearing about for years that people in the state of Wisconsin want us to effectively address,” Hesselbein said.

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