Evers touts school funding reform, Medicaid
Wisconsin must fix its “broken” school finance system, improve health care for poor students and maintain its vast network of highways without raiding its school coffers to do it, Superintendent Tony Evers said Thursday in his annual “state of education” address.
Evers spoke in the Capitol Rotunda to an audience that included a number of educators gathered for the school superintendents’ annual fall conference.
In remarks that sounded much like a campaign stump speech, the superintendent — who is also a Democratic candidate for governor — invoked President Theodore Roosevelt. And he called on his listeners to advocate for change in ways that will improve the education of young people in Wisconsin.
“The credit belongs to the man — or woman — who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood,” Evers said, quoting Roosevelt. “Here, Teddy is calling us to stand tall in the face of adversity. To demonstrate leadership and confront problems, seek solutions, rather than simply critique.”
Evers’ noon remarks had been scheduled to be aired live on the website Wisconsineye.org. But he was bumped by Gov. Scott Walker’s signing of the state’s $76 billion 2017-’19 budget in Neenah, which overlapped. The budget includes an increase of at least $636 million for education, with most of that going to public schools.
“This budget maintains the highest appropriated levels of K-12 school aid in state history,” Walker said in a statement.
During his speech Thursday, Evers lauded what he described as a grass-roots effort by educators and parents to push for more funding for public schools, and the day-to-day work of teachers who “put the best interests of our kids first.”
And he highlighted three areas where the state can do better, some of which he could more directly affect as governor, though he did not mention that race. Those were:
Fixing the school finance system. Evers touted the Fair Funding plan he said would “restore our investment in the next generation.”
Ensuring healthy students. He said Wisconsin needs to accept all the federal Medicaid dollars to which it’s entitled to “ensure Wisconsin kids have the health care they need.” Walker has opposed accepting the money, saying it would be more costly for the state in the long run.
Transportation. Evers said the state can fund its roads and schools without incurring massive debt.
“There are more than enough solutions,” he said. “Without question, we can fix our roads and fund our schools at the same time.”