With little warning and short, sharp debate last week, the 12 Republican members of the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee (JFC) easily prevailed over their four Democratic colleagues in passing sweeping changes to K-12 public education, including turning over low-performing Milwaukee schools to an unelected commissioner and increasing the statewide voucher program.
The Republicans offered their 29-page omnibus motion just before the JFC met last Tuesday afternoon and after a highly contentious debate over drug testing for public assistance recipients, which lacked a price tag or a source of funding.
The Democrats also offered their plans for public education, which included boosting funding for classrooms and halting the voucher program. It went down in flames.
Tax Support for Voucher and Charter Schools
Although Republicans crowed that they were adding funding for public schools, an analysis by the Wisconsin Budget Project (WBP) shows that boast isn’t quite accurate. Gov. Scott Walker had cut K-12 funding by $127 million. The JFC Republicans nixed that and added $208 million over the next two years, but $108 million of that addition will go to property tax relief, not public school classrooms. That’s because Republicans are keeping intact stringent spending caps, so the new funds aren’t “extra” money that the schools can use. Instead, they’ll be used to provide property tax relief.
The remaining $100 million will be divvied up between extra funding for voucher and charter schools and traditional K-12 public schools. The $50 million in new funding for traditional public schools is a half of one percent increase over the previous budget, WBP found.
According to state Superintendent Tony Evers, this is the first time that the state will freeze revenue caps for traditional public schools but increase voucher and charter payments in each year of the budget.
The JFC Republicans voted to gradually lift the cap on voucher school enrollment over the next 10 years, when it would be eliminated entirely. They established vouchers for students with special needs, even though the parents of affected students say they don’t want them. They will force state taxpayers to pay for additional Wisconsin residents who attend public schools in other states. They’re supporting Walker’s proposal to phase out the Chapter 220 school integration program, but will allow K-8 students to participate in the 2015-2016 school year. And they’re changing the state report card, loosening teacher licensing requirements, scrapping the new Smarter Balanced exam and seeking to use more than one state exam to assess student performance.
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The Republicans’ plan shows strong support for anything but traditional public schools the day after Gov. Scott Walker spoke to a gathering of the American Federation for Children in New Orleans on his all-but-declared campaign for the Republican nomination for president. Walker, who lacks a college degree, and his fellow Republicans have gotten strong backing from national voucher supporters, with big donations coming from the Walton family, heirs to the Walmart fortune, as well as the DeVos family of Michigan.
Bonds: Bill ‘Kills MPS’
The Republicans also snuck in a dramatic plan to convert struggling schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools district into voucher or charter schools under the control of an unelected commissioner. The Opportunity Schools and Partnership Program (OSPP), created by state Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills), the JFC co-chair, and state Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield), a JFC vice chair, was leaked a week prior and received no public debate before Republicans inserted it into their omnibus motion on Tuesday.
MPS Board President Michael Bonds slammed the proposal, saying, “In the spirit of full transparency, people should just call it what it is: a takeover. It kills MPS.”
According to the proposal passed by the JFC, the OSPP would:
■ Allow the Milwaukee County executive to select a commissioner from a list of nominees submitted by the governor, Milwaukee mayor and Milwaukee County executive. The commissioner would have the powers, duties and functions of the MPS board and would serve at the pleasure of the Milwaukee County executive.
■ Force the state superintendent to provide a list of low-performing MPS schools by Oct. 15. The commissioner would select up to three schools to transfer to the OSPP in the 2016-2017 school year and up to five schools each year thereafter. The commissioner would let out a request for proposals (RFP) to manage the schools.
■ Give the MPS superintendent the chance to take over schools from the list of schools available for a takeover.
■ Provide $8,075 funding for each student, the total of which would be deducted from state aid for MPS. MPS would not be able to raise taxes to fill that deficit.
■ Fire the MPS employees working in the schools transferred to the OSPP. They could reapply for jobs at the OSPP schools.
■ Give control to the commissioner all of the land, buildings, facilities and other property that is part of the school transferred to the OSPP.
In addition, the MPS board would be forced to sell its vacant buildings only to education operators, defined as independent charter operators, private schools and individuals or groups who seek to operate a charter school. The commissioner would send the operator’s letter of interest to the Milwaukee Common Council, which would allow other education operators to submit bids. The council could then proceed with the sale.
The sale of vacant MPS properties to voucher and charter operators has long been on Darling’s agenda. St. Marcus Lutheran School, a taxpayer-funded voucher school on North Avenue, had made headlines when attempting to purchase Lee Elementary School and the Malcolm X Academy; instead, it bought the nearby Centro Educacional Aurora Weier Center.
Is This Constitutional?
Bonds said that many questions remain about the OSPP proposal. He said the proposal doesn’t allow the OSPP commissioner to take over failing charter or voucher schools, only MPS schools, giving taxpayer-funded private schools a pass. Bonds said there was no evidence that creating a second bureaucracy under the control of an unelected commissioner would increase student performance. Nor, he said, would the siphoning of funds from MPS do anything for the students remaining in the system, who are showing progress in their performance assessments.
“It doesn’t do anything for academic reform,” Bonds said. “It drains resources out of the district. It fires teachers and closes schools and turns them over to private entities. That does nothing at all for education reform.”
He said he also wondered about the constitutionality of the proposal. Under the Wisconsin constitution, the state superintendent of public instruction has authority over state schools, and previous attempts to create new chartering boards with little to no involvement of the state superintendent were on shaky constitutional footing.
The state superintendent apparently has no involvement with the OSPP besides providing a list of low-performing MPS schools to the commissioner.
Department of Public Instruction spokesman Tom McCarthy said the office was reviewing the Darling-Kooyenga plan and has many questions about the proposal and the superintendent’s involvement.
“There is a role in managing the state schools for the state superintendent as is outlined in the constitution,” McCarthy said.
Bonds also warned that although the OSPP district would start out small with only three schools in 2016-2017, it could have a huge impact on MPS. For example, Bonds said, at least one charter operator is eying Bradley Tech in Walker’s Point, with a student population of 1,200, and a voucher school is interested in North Division High School, with 950 students.
“This plan is all about the facilities, not academics,” Bonds said.
Bonds said he was concerned that Superintendent Darienne Driver would consider leaving MPS, since she’s told him she wants nothing to do with the proposal. (The MPS superintendent’s office didn’t respond to the Shepherd’s request to comment for this article.)
“We may lose a very innovative, progressive superintendent,” Bonds said.
