Pence may be first from White House to visit Wisconsin statehouse
MADISON – Vice President Mike Pence will speak to hundreds of students inside the Wisconsin State Capitol Tuesday in what may be the first statehouse visit by a sitting vice president.
Pence will deliver a speech in the rotunda of the Capitol to as many as 700 Wisconsin students who attend private voucher and charter schools — a rally meant to promote alternatives to traditional public schools that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said Monday he won’t attend.
Pence’s historic visit underscores the role Wisconsin will play in President Donald Trump’s re-election bid and puts an issue in focus that has divided the Capitol for years.
Wisconsin is home to the nation’s first private school voucher program — launched in Milwaukee 30 years ago — and to one of the most aggressive expansions of private school subsidies in recent years.
Republican lawmakers under former Gov. Scott Walker created three new voucher programs in the last decade, providing taxpayer-funded vouchers to 43,450 low- and middle-income students who want to attend private schools, arguing students who lack the financial means to move to a higherperforming school should be able to enroll in them anyway.
More than half of those students attend schools in Milwaukee.
Evers, as state schools superintendent, oversaw the state’s 422 school districts and its private schools for 10 years beginning in 2009, just before GOP lawmakers expanded vouchers statewide.
In that time, Evers repeatedly argued the state could not properly fund its public schools while also expanding taxpayer-funded private voucher and charter school options without a funding increase for public schools.
The debate over vouchers escalated after Walker and GOP lawmakers created a statewide program in 2013, and the vast majority of students who ended up receiving taxpayer-funded subsidies to enroll in private schools were already attending them.
In his first budget, Evers proposed freezing or scaling back enrollment in the four voucher programs until lawmakers found a new way to fund public schools and vouchers for private schools. GOP lawmakers ultimately removed the proposal from the spending plan.
Now, Pence visits the Capitol to promote public school alternatives after expanding vouchers in Indiana when he was governor and as part of the Trump administration, which backs expanding public school alternatives to all students.
It’s the first time a sitting vice president or president has likely been inside the Capitol building in its century of existence, according to Legislative Reference Bureau chief Rick Champagne.
Pence is visiting the Democratic stronghold of Madison but is addressing parents and supporters of school vouchers and charter schools — an audience more friendly to the president.
Marquette University Law School poll director Charles Franklin said public opinion has generally been divided, but in 2015, a majority opposed eliminating limits on the voucher programs while in 2013 half of voters polled supported expanding the subsidies.
In 2019, polling showed 46% of registered voters polled opposed Evers’ budget proposal to freeze enrollment in voucher schools and suspend creation of charter schools while 41% supported the idea. Thirteen percent weren’t sure.