Education has played a huge role in Wisconsin politics under outgoing governor and former state superintendent Tony Evers.
But as we head toward the midterms, how will that change with a new governor?
In this special, back-to-school edition of Capitol Notes, WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal asked political editor JR Ross of WisPolitics.com.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
WUWM's Katherine Kokal: I think it's fair to say that education was a huge priority for Gov. Tony Evers because of his previous job. What role would you say education has played during his time in office?
JR Ross: The governor has spent a large chunk of his time in office trying to direct more resources to education, all the while fighting Republicans about various aspects of education. A good example of that has been Act 20, which dedicated more resources to reading. Remember, this was a bill that passed, the governor's partial veto altered some of the language in there. It took a year-long fight to get everything released.
So for the most part, Evers has played defense on things with education when it comes to Republicans. (He's) trying to fight for more funding while trying to knock back everything from transgender athletes in schools to various priorities for Republicans on a parent's bill of rights. I mean, just on the line, these GOP priorities for education, the governor is trying to get a backstop against those.
I want to go back to that famous, or perhaps infamous, 400-year-veto. Could the next governor walk back that line item veto if he wanted to?
That law can change at any time. So in Wisconsin, there's a formula where you take the main pot of state aid and property taxes, and that's what you can spend per student. That annual increase is where the governor reworked the language, rather it being for two years, he made it for 400 years.
Now, the challenge is and why your property tax bill jumped so much in December, is that if you don't put enough state aid into that formula to keep up with the increase, schools can levy more property taxes and make up for it. There was no new state money put into that general big aid pot, and that's why property taxes went up.
Republican Tom Tiffany supports the voucher program and has voted during his time in the legislature to expand it. Conversely, Democrat David Crowley has said that public schools need to be strengthened before the voucher program is expanded. Do you think we'll be hearing more about the voucher program?
It'll always be an issue. Democrats have talked about if they have a trifecta, they want more, in their words, accountability. Now Republicans will argue there's already accountability. Parents can take their kids out of these schools at any time and go to a different one if they think it's not doing a good job.
So definitely going to be an issue going forward for sure. But I don't see it trending toward an end of the program. There's just not that kind of an appetite among a number of Democrats. Now, there definitely are many who want to end it. But David Crowley, for example, I interviewed him month or so ago, and he said there's not capacity right now in Milwaukee. If you ended choice right now, you couldn't house all these kids in the public school system. There's enough teachers right now in Milwaukee to do it. So you're not going to see him propose this next budget to end the choice program.
