Parent groups take on funding issue
Public school cuts spur grass-roots efforts across state
When Wauwatosa parent Darnelle Kaishian first heard about the K-12 budget cut in Gov. Scott Walker’s biennial state budget proposal, she wondered: What would that actually mean for her schools?
When she and some other parents heard that the cut would amount to about $900,000 for Wauwatosa next year and that art, some orchestra, an Advanced Placement course or school maintenance work could be trimmed, they sprang into action.
Six weeks later, they’ve created websites and yard signs and T-shirts, knocked on doors, talked to neighbors and launched a letter-writing campaign that has blasted lawmakers with more than 2,000 pieces of mail, asking them not just to preserve education funding over the next two-year state budget but to increase it.
“We want the money restored,” Kaishian said. “This is about my kids and your kids.”
Wauwatosa parents protesting critical components of Walker’s education budget is notable because this is Walker’s home district. But it’s also part of a more widespread blossoming of propublic school parent and community activism that has taken root across Wisconsin over the past few years — and that has gained steam since Walker released his latest budget proposal in February.
As lawmakers on the Legislature’s budget committee work on revising the governor’s budget, the parents groups are calling on them to preserve the funding for programs and services they hold dear in their schools. They also want non-fiscal education items dropped from the state budget proposal, such as Walker’s proposals to expand private voucher schools and non-district charter schools.
The defense of public education puts participants on the same page as most Democrats and teachers unions, but the parents say their efforts are officially nonpartisan and more aimed at educating neighbors who aren’t well-informed.
“The biggest thing we’re trying to do is to get people to pay attention,” said Sandy Whisler, the president of Lake Mills-based Citizen Advocates for Public Education , which formed in 2012 during the Walker recall campaign. “These grass-roots groups are emerging because people are realizing that funding for public education has reached crisis proportions, not just in some parts of the state but throughout the state,” she said. “People of all political persuasions really value their local schools. They are willing to invest in them.”
Grass-roots parent activism around education in Wisconsin has taken the form of new groups such as Wauwatosa S.O.S. — or “Support Our Schools,” coupled with a reference to the universal distress signal. Some community groups with a longer history have taken up school funding as a new issue.
Nationwide, grass-roots campaigns driven largely by parents have emerged to support or critique other hotbutton education issues in recent years, such as testing or the Common Core State Standards.
Local parent groups point to the results of a recent Marquette University Law School poll as evidence that their opinions are not fringe. The poll showed 78% of Wisconsin residents opposed Walker’s proposal to cut $127 million from K-12 schools in the first year of the budget.
Walker’s budget calls for restoring that per-pupil funding in the second year, plus a bit more, but overall, his budget would result in a net loss for K-12 schools over the biennium. Walker has signaled that tax projections due out soon would modestly beat expectations and that extra money should be channeled to schools.
Purely restoring the $127 million cut that he proposed gets K-12 schools back to about the same level of funding they had in the previous year. Whether or how much of an increase they will get is unknown. Walker’s budget also proposes substantial cuts to the University of Wisconsin System.
Younger parents step in
Dodgeville resident Jessica Wieczorek, 35, has two boys ages 3 and 5, with the latter poised to enter kindergarten this fall. She recently drove an hour to Reedsburg for a panel discussion about public school funding hosted by Reedsburg Area Concerned Citizens, an activist group for progressives that has received some donations from Democratic candidates.
Wieczorek noticed at the Reedsburg meeting that most of the 150 or so attendees were in their 50s or 60s.
“I looked around and thought, more (younger) parents need to be hearing this information,” she said.
That prompted Wieczorek to reach out to Dodgevillebased Grassroots Citizens of Wisconsin to ask if the group would host a nonpartisan education discussion. The group has been around since 2003 and has hosted dialogue about issues such as health care reform, immigration, reducing global warming and promoting global peace, according to its website.
“Now we’re organizing to have a panel discussion in a couple of weeks for the seven school districts in Iowa County,” Wieczorek said. “We’re going to try to focus on getting as many parents of children into the discussion as possible, and school district administrators have all been invited.”
Wauwatosa S.O.S. gains
The blue and white “S.O.S.” signs in Wauwatosa have been everywhere in recent weeks: in lawns, at schools, facing outward from
“People of all political persuasions really value their local schools. They are willing to invest in them.”
Sandy Whisler, president of Citizen Advocates for Public Education
the lower corners of windshields of cars.
So many postcards and form letters have been passed along that volunteers frequently get signed material back from parents with addresses located far beyond Wauwatosa district borders. The volunteers look up those residents’ local lawmakers so they can send the letters to the right office. They all split the costs of postage, although the Wauwatosa teachers union paid for an initial run of S.O.S. cards and yard signs.
Participants say they are trying to keep everything nonpolitical.
“It’s a touchy subject in our town to talk politics,” said Karen Suarez Flint, a Wauwatosa mother of two daughters at Mckinley Elementary. “People tend to say, well that’s blue or that’s red, that’s a (Democrat) or that’s a (Republican). But it’s OK to disagree with who you voted for on a particular issue.”
Shawn Rolland, a Wauwatosa parent of three children who quickly organized a website for the group, said they’ve had success getting people to come out to public meetings in Wauwatosa held by their state senators and representatives.
“Some parent groups have called us and been like, how did you get those lawmakers to come to your event? And I’ve said: We didn’t. We just got people to go to their event.”
The campaign has been underscored by organizing on Facebook and online and making a greater effort to reach out to community members at events around town.
Angela Mcmanaman, president of Parents for Public Schools of Milwaukee, a group that formed within the past few years in the face of significant cuts to the state’s largest school district, said the groundswell of parent activism is because every school in Wisconsin is now “on the front lines of a budget crisis.”
In other words, it’s not just Milwaukee and the large urban areas feeling the brunt of the cuts anymore.
“A few years ago we were mostly just advocating for Milwaukee,” Mcmanaman said. “It’s been great to pick up the phone and talk with other parent leaders in Whitefish Bay or Wauwatosa or Sun Prairie. Now everybody can relate.”