The education privatizers in Wisconsin are getting impatient, and greedy. They want what they've paid for, and they want it NOW. They've sunken millions into buying their politicians, and they've been paying THREE former GOP Speakers of the Assembly to lobby for them.
Here is what they want, as per current GOP Assembly leader Robin Vos:
I have said from the beginning my only disappointment with the governor's budget is that we do not have statewide school choice, so I am incredibly optimistic. I know there is some resistance in the Senate, but I want school choice for every single child in the state.
And statewide vouchers, in every school district in Wisconsin, is exactly what they're dealing for -- imposed via the state budget, to be voted on in the Joint Finance Committee this coming Tuesday, with no public hearing before the vote.
It is entirely likely that neither the public nor even the Democratic members of the JFC will see the full proposal until the day of the vote itself.
The scheme is more crooked than the orange twist below; more details on the other side.
An outline of the audacious dirty backroom deal was leaked in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Thursday:
■ A new voucher program would become available to students outside Milwaukee and Racine. It would be limited to 500 students the first year and 1,000 students every year thereafter. Walker wanted no limits on the number of students in the program after the second year.
■ The new program would be available to students in any school district. Walker wanted to make it available in districts with 4,000 or more students that were identified as struggling on school report cards issued by the state.
■ No more than 1% of the students of any given school district could participate in the new program.
■ The new program would be available to students of families making 185% of the federal poverty level or less — well below the income thresholds for Milwaukee and Racine. Those programs are available to families making up to 300% of the federal poverty level, with a higher threshold for married couples.
■ Voucher schools in all parts of the state would receive $7,000 per student — up from the current $6,442. The plan would keep the amount the same for all voucher students; Walker wanted to provide $7,050 for students in kindergarten through eighth grade and $7,856 for students in high school because it costs more to educate them.
■ Starting in the fall of 2016, per-pupil increases for public schools and voucher schools would be linked. Thus, if one received a $100-per-student increase, the other would, as well.
■ Private schools would have to operate for two years before they could accept voucher students. That provision is meant as a way to prevent fly-by-night operations from enrolling students at public expense.
■ Walker's plan for creating a new way to authorize charter schools would be taken up as legislation outside of the budget so it could be modified.
Walker also wanted to create a statewide program for special-needs students, but lawmakers would abandon that idea as part of the proposal.
The original plan, proposed back in February, would have expanded vouchers to only nine urban school districts, including Madison, Green Bay, and Beloit, and would have been open to families making up to 300% of the poverty level (over $70,000 for a family of 4. That's a lot of Wisconsin families!) This would have created an immediate market for new, for-profit schools taking voucher students only. The plan was desperately opposed by
ALL nine of the districts involved.
The original budget proposal also would have allowed private school vouchers for all Wisconsin students with disabilities, imposing no restrictions on family income. That plan drew furious and sustained criticism from the state's disability organizations and a new grassroots group called Stop Special Needs Vouchers.
Intense and immediate objections came from the nine communities the vouchers were supposedly "for", and one of the many objections was that these huge policy changes were being bundled into the budget so as not to get a separate public hearing. The few budget hearings that WERE held saw a veritable parade of anti-voucher testimony, pointing out how miserably the 20-year voucher-experiment in Milwaukee has failed and how unconscionable it would be to expand.
There are 424 school districts in the state of Wisconsin. Only NINE of them got the chance to organize against being voucherized, in advance of the Joint Finance Vote coming up Tuesday.
One particularly diabolical aspect of the reported back-room deal is the extent to which it attempts to spike the criticism from the groups that DID organize. The special needs vouchers, for example, are reportedly pulled from the budget altogether. (They'll come back as separate legislation later in the session, but at least will have a public hearing). Meanwhile, the nine cities originally targeted for the voucher expansion, instead of seeing hundreds of middle-class students being voucher-lured into parochial and fly-by-night schools right away next year, would see only a trickle of low-income students depart next year, and no fly-by-nights, under the amazingly low maximum of only 500 students statewide.
Such groups are having to re-group and figure out how to respond, with precious little time to do so.
Meanwhile, there are 415 districts that weren't voucherized before, that will be now. Oh, it won't hurt much at first -- 500 new voucher students statewide is only 1.2 PER DISTRICT. They will barely notice, even during the next year when it's capped at 1,000 students statewide.
But just wait until next two-year budget cycle, when the intent is to LIFT THE RESTRICTIONS ENTIRELY.
The GOP leadership is not even being subtle about this (though they still aren't talking about the deeper goal of destroying public education as we know it, to the benefit of for-profit education). In fact, the lifting of the enrollment caps is how they're trying to sell it to the more ALEC-y of their members, who are so greedy that they are fulminating about how this deal ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH.
Witness
Governor Walker on Friday:
Walker, responding to the conservative criticisms, said enrollment caps can always be loosened later.
"Every two years we're going to come back and talk about further expansion," he said.
And GOP
Senate President Mike Ellis, who brokered the deal for the supposedly-more-old-school conservatives in the Senate:
Ellis said the governor doesn’t want to have any enrollment caps after 2016 and that’s something they’ll have to argue about in two years.
(Ellis, meanwhile, is coming in for furious criticism that by pulling the special needs scholarships into legislation for separate review, thereby affording the measure its own public hearing, he is BULLYING students with disabilities!)
The true bullying is the Shock Doctrine assault that's underway, dropping the bomb on Wisconsin's public education statewide. This demands that we make an immense outcry RIGHT NOW.
Tuesday June 4 has been designated a Day of Action to Save our Schools. We need a flood of people at the Joint Finance meeting to let them know in the strongest possible terms that ALL voucher expansion must be removed from the budget!
Wisconsin friends, if you can't come, can you at least
e-mail the entire Joint Finance Committee, and copy the rest of the GOP leadership? (Addresses at the link.)
Or if you have even half an hour to spare -- consider going down the list and calling EVERY MEMBER of the Joint Finance committee. Contact information at the link. They need to hear from as many people as possible.
Say NO to vouchers, Wisconsin!
Remove the voucher attack from the budget!