On November 16, the Assembly Education Committee approved AB 314 on a 6-3 vote, a proposal that will derail school choice expansion for the foreseeable future. This comes less than a year after plans for expansion led to the creation of a Racine voucher program and a potential move out to Green Bay.

So what spurred the sudden change of heart?

Politics. Republican lawmakers – a group that have been responsible for the support and growth of school vouchers in Milwaukee for more than two decades now – are the ones bringing this legislation to freeze school choice to the table. Senate President Mike Ellis has been the vocal leader of a coalition of politicians from both sides of the aisle. In the Assembly Education Committee, only Representatives Jeremy Theisfeldt (R-Fond du Lac), Stephen Nass (R-Whitewater), and Don Pridemore (R-Hartford) voted against the measure. Republicans make up seven members of the 11 person committee.

The two parties have met in the middle to limit school choice and take educational freedom out of the hands of parents across Wisconsin. The freeze was a concession made back in the spring to help bring the two sides closer during the frenzied budget debate. In exchange for less resistance towards the 2011-2013 planned slate of reforms, the battle to expand the country’s first modern school choice program – and potentially the addition of special needs scholarship programs –  would be stalled indefinitely.

This may develop into an even bigger problem thanks to the cautious atmosphere that is primed to grip the Capitol in the midst of recall elections. Pundits in Madison are skeptical that any significant work will take place in the statehouse thanks to Wisconsin’s brewing political turmoil. If so, this will make the trade-off of educational options for a sliver of diplomacy even more lopsided in the wake of inaction.

This means that a parent triggered choice program in Green Bay – where families would decide whether or not they wanted vouchers in their city – has gone from being steps away from a political reality to a legislative burial ground. It means that potential programs in places like Kenosha and Appleton have been squashed before families got a chance to voice their opinion on them. Most importantly, it means that students who can’t afford options other than their local public schools can end up stuck in a failing institution that can’t properly serve them.

Striking down the expansion of school choice may have been a necessary concession to grease the wheels of progress when it came to last spring’s budget. However, it did so by swallowing up the voices of families across Wisconsin. It put a vise around the options that children will have throughout the state. It limited the chances that Wisconsin’s students have to thrive in the classroom.

This moratorium on school choice may have solved an immediate problem, but it will help to perpetuate a growing one. The next few years represented an excellent opportunity to reform and strengthen school choice in Wisconsin by building off of the experiences and correcting the mistakes of Milwaukee. Instead, students in the Badger State will be stuck thanks to political rhetoric.

For years the MacIver Institute has published this regular feature, entitled MPS Checkbook, wherein we highlight some of the district’s most questionable expenditures.

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By Christian D’Andrea
MacIver Institute Education Policy Analyst

There are two different types of charter schools in the City of Milwaukee, and by at least one measure, those not chartered by the Milwaukee Public Schools are performing better.

Milwaukee’s ACT scores rose in 2011, but they still weren’t able to match the production of the city’s non-union charter schools. In the end, the non-district charter schools left their instrumentality counterparts in the dust when it came to college readiness.

The city’s non-instrumentality charter schools outperformed the MPS average when it came to the ACT, a selective college readiness test, in the past school year. These schools aren’t operated or authorized by local school boards, and have been more successful in preparing students when weighed against the city’s average. In the four qualifying high schools, students averaged a score of 18.8.

In all MPS schools, the student mark was 16.0. For district-operated charter schools, the average was a mere 14.7.

Though these schools still trailed the statewide average, they outscored their MPS neighbors by over 14 percent on the test. However, this gap widens if you compare the city’s non-instrumentality charter schools to the district charter schools. These MPS charter schools have the highest participation rate of any of the groups we study in this article, but also the lowest score. The NI schools rated out over four points better on the college prep exam, outscoring these schools by nearly 25 percent on average.

What’s the difference between the two sets of charter schools? Tenor, Veritas, and Renaissance are all 2R charter schools. Rather than having their charter authorized by a local school board, their authorizer was the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. Carmen High School is a traditionally based, non-instrumentality school that does not fall under the 2R umbrella. However, all four of these schools are not held to local school board policies. Their teachers and staff are not members of the teachers’ union and they are unable to participate in the state pension program.

Despite – or perhaps as a result of – the lack of district oversight, these schools were able to outperform their counterparts by a significant margin on the ACT in 2011. The data presented in these outcomes is strictly observational, so while we can’t say for sure why the results turned out the way they did, we cannot ignore the scoring differences between the two groups. The role of selective test taking and small sample sizes may play a role in the overall outcome, but the fact that just a single MPS charter school came within two points of the non-instrumentality average suggests a significant effect in these schools.

Milwaukee’s non-district charter schools saw great strides in their ACT scores in the past year. All three participating schools raised their averages while increasing the overall total of students who took the test. Carmen’s standard score jumped from 14.4 to 18.1 and had 37 more students participate in 2011. Veritas (whose score rose from 17.0 to 19.5) and Tenor (from 18.3 to 18.6) also posted improvements.

The city’s reversal of declining ACT scores is commendable. However, one of the leaders in this trend breaking has come from a small but significant source. These non-district charter schools, the bulk of whom were authorized by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, are showing strong gains when it comes to preparing students for college, especially in comparison to district charter institutions.

This creates a strong case for a greater presence of university sponsored and other non-instrumentality charter schools. Currently, only Milwaukee and Racine have the capability to authorize these schools.  However, potential legislation may install a statewide authorizer to improve the presence of these academies across Wisconsin in the future. These 2011 results are an imperfect metric, but their implications suggest that these charter schools are having greater success when it comes to college preparation – albeit amongst a selective group of students who are planning to attend college.

It’s a positive result for Milwaukee and the state itself. Students in these non-district charters are outperforming their peers despite having their teachers and administrators cut off from local school board and union rulebooks. In a state where ACT results are highly valued, these schools came through with significant improvements. However, whether or not these outcomes will hold up through other metrics and time rolls on still needs to be seen.

According to a Harvard study, Americans are increasingly in favor of school vouchers in 2011. Teachers, however, don’t feel the same way.

A recent study conducted by Education Next and Harvard University has uncovered a growing divide between teacher and public opinion when it comes to educational issues. The article, titled “The Public Weighs In on School Reform,” shows that teachers and regular citizens had differing views on how factors affect classrooms.

The biggest shift in 2011 was expanded public support of voucher programs, something that hits especially close to home in Wisconsin. Forty-seven percent of public respondents said that they would support a program that uses government funding to help students attend private schools. This was an increase of eight percent compared to 2010’s mark. The program was described as  “a proposal to give families with children in public schools a wider choice, by allowing them to enroll their children in private schools instead, with government helping to pay the tuition.”

Wisconsin’s recent expansion of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, as well as the additional educational opportunities for students in Racine, seems to fall in line with this trend. Though there has been some vocal dissent about the future of school choice in the Badger State in recent years, this Knowledge Networks survey suggests that the tide of public opinion is rising across America.

A similar topic, charter schools, did not see similar gains as voucher programs did. However, teachers’ approval of these schools rose from 39 percent to 45 percent, two percent higher than the public’s approval of charter schools.

Other questions left wide divides between regular citizens and professional teachers. Topics like merit pay and teacher tenure showed significant rifts between the two parties. Opinions on the effect of teachers’ unions saw significant changes since the 2010 survey. While the general population stayed relatively unchanged in their view of these organizations, 58 percent of teachers thought that unions have a positive effect on public schools, a jump from 51 percent in last year’s research.

In all, the survey highlights some of the areas where teachers and the general public have the least in common.. Not surprisingly, issues like union involvement and merit pay – that is, items that directly relate to teacher compensation – are at the forefront of this disparity. However, the two sides will have to work together in order to push meaningful reform forward in the future. This Harvard study suggests that those gaps may be tougher to bridge than we thought.

The PEPG Survey can be found here.

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For years, Wisconsin has been identified as having some of the most relaxed standards when it comes to assessing public schools. A new task force created by Governor Scott Walker and Department of Public Instruction Tony Evers is planning to change that.

The two joined forces Thursday afternoon to unveil a design team aimed towards keeping Wisconsin’s public schools accountable to students, families, and the general population of the Badger State. Together, they’ll work to phase out the flawed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) school grading metric and create a value-added system that accurately gauges how effective the state’s schools are.

Various school leaders, including representatives from public, private, charter and higher education institutions will help create and implement a new accountability system for Wisconsin’s schools. Their work will replace a current metric that State Superintendent Tony Evers described as being “flat-out broken.”

“This is going to be a wake up call for citizens and states that think ‘well, our schools are good,’” said panelist Damian Betebenner.

The meeting was an introductory presentation that unveiled the purpose of the group. Their goal will be to create growth-based methods to replicate the success of high-performing schools while providing assistance for low-performing ones.

This accountability program would have roots in Florida, where overwhelming reform helped turn around the Sunshine State’s schools. Speaker Patricia Levesque, Executive Director of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, expounded on how Florida was able to raise their public schools from the bottom of the national rankings in part thanks to a comprehensive school grading system.

In Wisconsin, this would go beyond Florida’s individual progress measures to include more comprehensive measures for grading schools. This would expand the current scope of accountability from a four-pronged approach (WKCE, attendance, test participation, and graduation rates) to a larger, more descriptive focus on what makes a school successful.

The new system would phase out the current NCLB slate of school grading. Wisconsin’s schools had become proficient of gaming this system to make bad schools seem better, as publicized in the Fordham Institute’s study The Accountability Illusion. This research showed that thanks to relaxed standards, it was considerably easier for schools to meet Adequate Yearly Progress in Wisconsin than in the 27 other states examined in the study. The program devised by the task force would solve this problem by making sure that schools grade proficiently on a rigid metric that allows parents to understand just how strong their neighborhood schools really are.

Value-added research – which counts student progress and how much he or she has learned – stands to be the backbone of the school grading system. Rather than penalizing schools for accepting students who come in at low testing levels, this program would reward teachers and schools who help pupils learn and catch up to their peers. Dr. Rob Meyer, Director of the Value-Added Research Center at UW-Madison, led a session that revolved around measuring this progress.

However, one key player in the future of Wisconsin’s public education was noticeably absent Thursday afternoon. The Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), the state’s largest teachers’ union, declined to participate in the talks over how to assess school quality in the future.

WEAC President Mary Bell refused to have a member of her team participate in the discussion despite the potential effect that the task force could have on the state’s public school teachers. The organization cited a lack of trust in Governor Walker, along with Education Committee Chairmen Senator Luther Olsen and Representative Steve Kestell as the motivating force behind WEAC’s choice not to participate. “We will not join with those who do not value Wisconsin’s public schools,” Bell was quoted as saying in regards to the task force.

WEAC’s refusal means that the union won’t have a say in policy decisions that will shape how Wisconsin’s schools are graded and presented to the public. However, other teacher advocate groups, such as the American Federation for Teachers, Wisconsin Association of School Administrators, and the Wisconsin Association of School Boards have lent their support to ensure that the state’s teachers are included in the grading process. Their lack of participation was a still a concern, however, as one participant, a local special education teacher, openly worried that teachers wouldn’t be well represented without WEAC’s presence.

Despite this absence, the design team appears poised to create a program that will accurately grade Wisconsin’s schools and relay important information to parents and families. The end goal will be an overarching accountability system that Evers is “positively jazzed” to put in place. If successful, this could be the catalyst that pulls the state out of its hypnotic illusion of high performing schools and into an era where the best schools are recognized and the ones that need help are identified.

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Part four in a series.

While the state’s largest city, Milwaukee, won’t be found on the list of districts drafting contracts based on the savings tools of Act 10, many of Wisconsin’s key municipalities have adhered to concessions in order to keep money in their classrooms. Places like Madison, Green Bay, Oshkosh, and Racine have all approved new contracts that will save millions of dollars in 2011-2012 alone. In all, at least 10 districts that serve 8,000 students or more have made the switch to employee contributions in their upcoming pacts

*Teachers’ co-payment-based health care plans will be replaced with high-deductible plans where, for health care and prescriptions, teachers would pay up to $400 a year toward deductibles ranging from $2,000 to $6,000 depending on single or family, in-network or out-of-network care.

**Waukesha’s reported contract applies only to 2009-2011, and a deal for the 2011-2013 school years is still in progress.

If you include Fond du Lac and Stevens Point, both of whom are currently in the midst of contract negotiations, then 12 of the state’s 15 biggest districts will have introduced new contracts or extensions to their educational staff members in 2011. The only missing cities from that list are Milwaukee, Kenosha, and Janesville. Combined, these participating districts will save an estimated $80.3 million for the upcoming school year.

The three holdout cities have steadfastly refused to re-open their teacher contracts to include concessions. As a result, they’ll face a significant deficit in their districts, and may resort to layoffs to cover the breech. Over 500 teachers in Milwaukee and Kenosha alone are facing pink slips thanks to local authorities’ unwillingness to add employee contributions to previously agreed-to contracts.

The state’s larger communities make up the bulk of students covered our list – which is likely due to the fact that these bigger cities earn more media coverage than Wisconsin’s small towns. However, 28 districts that serve fewer than 2,000 students have made the switch to teacher-contribution contracts. These districts, which include places like Ripon, Waupun, Hartford, and Altoona, will save an estimated $19,224,579 in 2011-2012.

These cuts have had significant effects from Wisconsin’s largest cities to its smallest towns. The 12 large cities with contracts that cover the 2011-2012 school year (Waukesha, whose contract extends as far as the 2010-2011 school year, is excluded) are saving an average of $617 per student. That figure is more than $100 above the statewide average of $517.12 in savings. In the 28 small towns that have been reported, the per-student benefit is $558.

The list is still a work in progress, but the benefits are mounting. Districts across the state have been able to cover financial shortfalls thanks to the efforts of staff members who are pitching in to contribute to their benefit packages. This stretches from communities with nearly 25,000 students (Madison) to some with less than 400 (Green Lake, Weston). Despite trying times, these schools have been an importance example of perseverance in Wisconsin.

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Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Gregory Thornton put out a statement Friday on YouTube to Milwaukee’s teachers. Thornton wished them a Happy Independence Day and said those trying to find someone to blame for the recent layoff announcements are giving him a headache.

“Remember how we started this year. One team, one goal, and one MPS.”

That may have been how Thornton perceived the beginning of the year, but unless everyone was on the same team with the goal of really screwing things up, Thornton is missing a few people with that team spirit. Now his school district is preparing to layoff 354 teachers.

MPS will be getting $84 million less in state aid in the next state budget. However, when MPS asked the union to make concessions in the pension plan to mitigate the loss of state and federal aid, the teachers union refused. Not only is the union lacking team spirit in its relationship with MPS, it’s lacking a team spirit among its own members. Protecting the benefits of the union’s most senior members will result in the unemployment of 200 of the union’s members with less seniority.

Thornton says looking for someone to blame is causing him a headache. Perhaps it’s a guilt-induced stress migraine.

Last October, at the height of the race for governor, Thornton and the teachers union reached a tentative agreement on a contract through 2013. The agreement called for MPS teachers to contribute to the premium cost of their health care for the first time. Due to the health care contribution and a freeze in teacher pay for the first year, the estimated savings over the next two years was $50 million.

MPS will lose $82 million in federal funding with the end of the federal stimulus program at the end of 2011. The total MPS budget was $1.26 billion and the $82 million loss of funding results in a 6.5% reduction in total funding. A very modest reduction when compared to those in the private sector and a reduction that was very predictable as the federal funding was a one-time stimulus.

However, the contract agreement was at a time of a great fiscal crisis at the state level. Scott Walker was campaigning on bringing the budget under control without raising taxes and he was leading in the polls. On the other side was Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett who was also talking about bringing state spending under control.  Meanwhile the state under Governor Jim Doyle was not living up to the promise made under Governor Tommy Thompson to fund two-thirds of the state’s education costs. It was pretty clear that MPS was in danger of facing real cuts in funding, but MPS was locking in their labor costs.

Originally the union was supposed to ratify the contract in October, and the school board was also scheduled to approve the agreement in October. However, the union waited because, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, they wanted to make sure the members, “had all of the info and had the time to really think about the new terms.”

Walker was elected governor on November 2^nd, 2010, before the union and MPS ratified the new contract. By November 6^th, the Wisconsin State Journal was quoting Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald predicting that there would be “all-out war” in the spring with the unions over collective bargaining issues. “

Then-Governor-elect Walker was declaring the $3 billion budget hole “an economic emergency.” Already unions were claiming that Walker’s campaign was telling them not to ratify any contracts in December before Walker took office.  By Mid-November, Walker was calling on the Democrats who were still in the majority not to ratify any contracts with the State of Wisconsin Employee unions because he wanted to consider the issue when he took office as part of the effort to bring the state budget into balance.

Warning sirens should have been going off in the MPS Administration Building hallways. Instead, Thornton was touting the unprecedented agreement with MPS as one the major accomplishments of his first four months in Milwaukee.

The union did not ratify the contract until November 17^th. Rather than wait to see what was going to happen with the new administration in Madison, the MPS board approved the contract on December 3^rd. There was no compelling reason that the contract had to be approved at that time, but the MPS board went ahead anyway.

Now the school board and Dr. Thornton find themselves asking the teachers union to agree to the same pension contributions asked for by Walker. These contributions would be at the same level WEAC President Mary Bell said were never a problem, 5.8% of the teachers’ salaries.

Of course the MTEA said no to Thorton’s request. Many local public employee unions across the state have refused to even consider what the union bosses were telling the press in February were concessions they were willing to make.

In the case of the Milwaukee teachers union, this is the same union that in 2010 was willing to let 480 teachers go rather than switch health care plans. This is also the same teachers union still fighting to get taxpayer-funded Viagra included in their prescription drug plans.

Now the union (completely oblivious to what’s been happening in the private sector in the Obama economy and under the taxes of Jim Doyle) is asking private businesses to come up with the $94 million so the teachers union members can continue to have a pension program nearly unparalleled in the private sector.

Someone should remind the union that if the private sector had that kind of money laying around, they could invest it in the city’s choice schools and get more of a return for their investment.

The only ones that seem surprised by the union’s behavior of this are Thornton and the MPS Board. Unfortunately, MPS has now begun to lay off teachers, in part because they refused to see the changes that were coming, and in part because they aren’t better at making cuts.  The MacIver Institute has long-chronicled wasteful spending at MPS. Surely some teachers jobs could be saved if they privatized food service, painting and other services and cut down on the Administrative bloat, for example.

Or, maybe MPS will see this as a good reason to sell off a few empty buildings rather than worrying about whether Milwaukee School Choice Program schools will use them to educate children.

Thornton’s “One Team” concept sounds good but he needs to wake up to fact that the teachers union leadership are wearing different jerseys.

Only when the full impact of ACT 10 is fully in effect will MPS and districts across the state truly be able to celebrate Independence Day…from unions that don’t put children first.

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[MILWAUKEE] The Milwaukee teachers’ union wants area businesses to donate $94 million to solve the district’s financial problems, hoping that will save some of the 519 jobs to be lost on Friday.

Milwaukee Public Schools announced the layoffs on Wednesday.  Dr. Gregory Thornton, MPS superintendent, said at least 200 teachers’ jobs could be saved if the union would have agreed to a 5.8 percent pension contribution from its members.

“We will move into a new school year with a big loss of a lot of talent and a lot of strong educators,” Thornton said.

Of those laid off, 354 are certificated teachers.  Thornton said the district was prepared to weather losing $100 million in stimulus funding, but not the loss of tens of millions of dollars in state funding.  He said as a result of the layoffs, class sizes will be larger, there will be fewer textbooks and fewer summer opportunities.

“The children are being caught in the middle of this,” he said.

Thornton anticipated some of the district’s financial problems earlier this year and, at that time, asked the union for a 1.5 percent pension contribution.  The union said no.

“We must have our union partners at the table,” Thornton said Wednesday. “Yes, we want to keep more teachers on the job, but I am also thinking about our kids.  If we can retain more teachers, we can prevent class sizes from increasing.”

Although the union was not willing to give on the issue of pension contributions, it did direct the district to lay off the most recent hires.

“District administrators worked closely with the teachers’ union to identify candidates for layoff by seniority, following the terms of the negotiated contract,” said Roseann St. Aubin, MPS communications director.

That contract, negotiated last fall, already will ‘save’ the district $94 million over the next two years, according to the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association.

“We call on community stakeholders, particularly the business community, to step up and help solve the district’s immediate budget crisis by matching the $94 million,” said Bob Peterson, MTEA president.

MTEA places the blame for MPS’s financial problems solely on Governor Scott Walker and Senator Alberta Darling, co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee.  Darling is the subject of a recall election in July.  The other co-chair of the committee, Representative Robin Vos, is not named in the union’s press release. He is not facing a recall election.

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[Milwaukee...] In March, it was announced with much fanfare that the Milwaukee teachers’ union was dropping it’s controversial Viagra lawsuit against MPS.

However, the MacIver News Service has learned that the effort to force MPS to provide coverage for erectile dysfunction treatments has arisen again, albeit in a different venue.

The Milwaukee Teachers Education Association’s (MTEA) decision earlier this year came just eight months after filing their August of 2010 suit in Milwaukee County Circuit Court wherein they argued  that the board’s policy of excluding erectile dysfunction drugs from their health plan coverage was discriminatory against men.

In December of last year MPS employee Henry Sampson filed a complaint with the Equal Rights Division of the State of Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development, arguing that excluding coverage for the gender-specific diagnosis of erectile dysfunction violated the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act (WFEA).

At this time it is unknown whether union officials were aware of Sampson’s pending complaint with the State when they dropped their lawsuit in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.

On May 4th, the Equal Rights Division found that there was probable cause to believe the Milwaukee Board of School Directors violated the WFEA and discriminated against Sampson on the basis of his sex.

“The Equal Rights Division found reason to believe there is sufficient information to hold an administrative hearing,” the DWD wrote in their determination letter.

A hearing before an Administrative Law Judge is pending in the matter.

The 49-year-old Sampson is a teacher at MPS who, according to the WIOpenGov.org online database, saw his compensation package rise by more than $9,000 this past year. Sampson made $72,913 in 2010. Along with a benefits package valued at $46,411 his total annual compensation is $119,324.

According to the probable cause determination, MPS argued that the ED drugs are marketed to enhance sexual performance, rather than to treat underlying physiological conditions.  Further, MPS argued that both men and women can have sexual dysfunction so not covering drugs for that condition does not show bias.

The stakes are high for Wisconsin’s largest school district.

Documents on the case show that MPS claimed that their costs more than doubled for ED related medication between 2002 and 2004. By that year the Milwaukee Public School District was spending in excess of $200,000 a year on the drugs for its employees, a cost they said they couldn’t afford to keep up.

MPS is currently in the process of laying off upwards of 400 teachers for budgetary reasons.

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By Christian D’Andrea
MacIver Institute Education Policy Analyst

The Joint Finance Committee passed an omnibus school choice motion Thursday night that will expand educational opportunities for students across southeastern Wisconsin. Students across Milwaukee and Racine will have unprecedented access to quality schools thanks to a growing voucher system.

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program – America’s first modern school choice legislation – moved closer to arguably its largest expansion ever, and definitely the most significant increase since 1996. New regulations will open the existing program to more families and more schools while establishing a companion voucher system 25 miles south in Racine. Several new provisions, including the removing the student cap in Milwaukee, raising the family income limit for qualifying students, and opening the program to schools regardless of location make this one of Wisconsin’s most significant education reforms in 15 years.

The impact of this policy will be substantial. Students in Milwaukee or Racine that meet the new family income requirement – no more than 300% of the Federal poverty limit, or $67,050 for a family of four – will be eligible for a voucher of $6,442 to attend a private school. For families with married couples, this threshold will be reduced by $7,000.

Private schools must first register with the state and adhere to specific standards in order to be eligible to receive these students. Unlike in past years, there is no limit to how many students can receive vouchers to attend the school of their choosing.

While student eligibility will be limited to the residents within Milwaukee and Racine, a new frontier of school eligibility has been reached. Changes adopted by the Finance Committee erase an artificial geographic limitation of the program. As a result, institutions outside of city limits will be eligible to accept voucher students regardless of their location. A parent’s right to pursue the best education for his/her child will no longer be arbitrarily limited by the government because the location of that school

The Racine expansion is a bold step in extending the state’s voucher system, and a potential test program for future developments going forward. The city’s program will start in 2011-2012 with 250 students before expanding to a cap of 500 students in 2012-2013. There will be no limits on student enrollment in the years following that.

Rumored expansions to Green Bay and Kenosha were not included in this version of the budget. However, opportunities still exist to potentially reach these cities as legislation continues.

Another key tenet of these changes to the MPCP will deal with how families are treated within the program. The program will now include a “Once In, Always In” clause that will ensure that students that qualify for the program will be eligible to receive a voucher throughout the course of their education. As a result, parents won’t have to worry about taking a higher-paying job that would bump them over the program’s income limit, since their children will not be at risk of losing their voucher as a result.

These expansions still have to be passed in the Assembly and Senate before becoming law, and will likely be heard at the Capitol in the coming weeks. If the motion passes, it will have a significant impact on the 102,034 public school students in Milwaukee and Racine. For children with no choice but to go to a failing neighborhood school, it means a new opportunity to learn. For families in two of Wisconsin’s largest cities, it means a new source of hope for their future.