Will Flanders:

Among the key findings of this report:

• Student-teacher ratios have not been negatively affected by Act 10. The number of students per teacher in Wisconsin has stayed relatively constant at about 13.2 students per teacher.
• The decrease of public sector unions has stabilized. While there was a substantial decline in the number of unions in the immediate aftermath of the passage of the law, recent declines have been far more moderate.
• Restoring collective bargaining for teacher salaries could cost districts and the state nearly $650 million annually. This number is based on the difference in the rate of growth in teacher salaries observed from 2001-2011 compared to 2011-2021.
• Eliminating employee contributions to retirement would cost districts and the state about $422 million annually. Based on inflation-adjusted comparison of retirement spending in 2009 versus 2022.
• Eliminating employee contributions to healthcare would cost districts and the state about $560 million annually. Based on inflation-adjusted comparison of healthcare spending in 2009 versus 2022.
• Numbers are conservative estimates of the total cost. This study does not take into account the costs to municipalities from repeal, nor the salary costs for non-teachers.
• An end to Act 10 would likely lead to tough decisions for districts. One Superintendent we spoke with said that ending Act 10 would likely lead to a need for larger class sizes, cuts to popular programs, and an inability to offer higher compensation for high-demand teaching positions.

Few single pieces of state-level legislation have garnered as much attention and controversy in the 21st Century as Wisconsin’s Act 10. Passed by Republican Governor Scott Walker over the strong objections of Democrats, 3 the legislation introduced several important reforms to public sector unions around the state. Twelve years later, the legislation remains controversial. Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewiczelected to the Court in 2023—has said that she believes the legislation may be unconstitutional, 4 giving new hope to those who would like to see the law off the books. In November, seven unions representing teachers and other public sector workers filed a lawsuit with that goal. 5 But what would an overturn of the legislation mean for Wisconsin and its taxpayers?

In the last decade, WILL and others have conducted extensive research that helps to answer that question. In this paper, we review the existing work on what Act 10 has meant to the state and provide updated data in some of the areas we’ve examined previously. In the end, we find that overturning Act 10 could have a devastating effect on Wisconsin taxpayers, as well as the budgets of local school districts.

——

Wisconsin’s Act 10, Flexible Pay, and the Impact on Teacher Labor Markets: Student test scores rise in flexible-pay districts. So does a gender gap for teacher compensation.

Barbara Biasi

Using employment records on all public-school teachers in Wisconsin linked to individual student information on achievement and demographics from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, I first document how teacher salaries changed in flexible-pay and seniority-pay districts in the aftermath of the reform. After the expiration of districts’ collective bargaining agreements, salary differences among teachers with similar seniority and credentials emerged in flexible-pay districts, but not in seniority-pay districts. Before the passage of Act 10, such teachers would have been paid the same. These newly emerging differences are related to teachers’ effectiveness: Teachers with higher value-added (individual contributions to the growth in student achievement, as measured by standardized test scores) started earning more in flexible-pay districts. This finding is striking considering that school districts in Wisconsin neither calculate value-added nor use it to make any human-resources decisions. School and district administrators appear to be able to identify an effective teacher when they see one.

Does Flexible Pay Attract Better Teachers?

Changes in teachers’ pay arrangements after the expiration of the collective bargaining agreements changed teachers’ incentives to stay in their district or to move, depending on the teachers’ effectiveness and the pay plan in place in their district of origin. Because flexible-pay districts compensate teachers for their effectiveness and seniority-pay districts only reward them for seniority and academic credentials, teachers with higher effectiveness should want to move to flexible-pay districts, whereas teachers with lower effectiveness and higher seniority should want to move to seniority-pay districts.

The data confirm these hypotheses. The rate of cross-district movement more than doubled after Act 10, with most moves occurring across districts of different type (flexible-pay vs. seniority-pay). Teachers who moved to a flexible-pay district after a collective bargaining agreement expired were more than a standard deviation more effective, on average, than teachers who moved to the same districts before the expiration; these teachers also had lower seniority and academic credentials and enjoyed a significant pay increase upon moving. The effectiveness of teachers moving to seniority-pay districts, on the other hand, did not change. and these teachers did not experience any change in pay.

——-

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

——

The late 1990’s Milwaukee pension scandal is worth a deep dive as well.

——-

More.

——-

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

WILL:

WILL Client, Kristi Koschkee, stated, “Act 10 is pro-taxpayer and pro-freedom. This legislation provides public employees like me the freedom to not participate in unionization, or be compelled to finance or support political speech I do not agree with. It’s critical that we stand up for this law and not undo the years of positive results produced for Wisconsin.”

Our Client: WILL Client and Defendant, Kristi Koschkee, faces significant harm if Act 10 were to be somehow repealed or scaled back. Ms. Koschkee is a public-school district employee who values the benefits the Legislature provided her via Act 10.

Koschkee does not want her local union interfering with her relationship with her employer by bargaining on subjects beyond those permitted by Act 10 or entering agreements that last longer than a year. She supports requiring unions to rectify annually, does not want to have her decision to abstain from a union certification vote work in the union’s favor, and does not want to be pressured into participating in recertification elections. Ms. Koschkee also opposes allowing unions to access employee wages directly through payroll deductions.

——

Notes and links on Act 10.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

——

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

MacIver:

Wisconsin has gotten mighty used to multi-billion budget surpluses over the past 12 years, something that was unimaginable before the passage of Act 10.

Rich Government Benefits Were Bankrupting Wisconsin 

Back in 2010, the state was facing an immediate $127 million budget shortfall and a $3.6 billion structural deficit going into the next budget cycle. Gov. Scott Walker correctly identified bloated public sector union contracts as the main culprit. Despite the left waging what we would today call a weeks-long “insurrection,” Walker and the Republican-led legislature passed a package of reforms that instantly turned around the state’s financial situation.

Bringing Government Benefits Closer In Line With The Taxpayers Who Finance Them 

Act 10 required government employees to pay 12.6% of their health insurance premiums (still less than half the usual contribution of private sector workers toward their health insurance) and half of the contributions made towards their own pensions. Previously, they paid nothing; state taxpayers picked up both the employer and employee match. For perspective, the average private sector worker pays 17% of their health insurance premiums for single coverage and 28% for family coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Act 10 also limited what public-sector unions could negotiate for. These changes were meant to give state and local governments more flexibility to identify potential savings and keep their budgets balanced. It had an immediate impact.

Much more ion Act 10, here. Further background: the Milwaukee Pension Scandal

Bill Lueders

The issue has come up in a different form before. In 2011 La Follette, at the direction of a Dane County judge, refused to publish the passed version of Act 10, the state law kneecapping public employee unions. The state Supreme Court, then as now dominated by conservatives, ruled that the judge had exceeded her jurisdiction in putting a hold on the law, meaning there was nothing to preclude La Follette from publishing the bill. Two years later, the Legislature passed a bill that stripped the secretary of state of the power to delay publication of new laws.

Loudenbeck’s campaign did not respond to an inquiry for this article asking whether she believes the statute cited by Schroeder gives the secretary of state legal authority to deny an election result by refusing to sign and whether she would have sought to use this authority to block the 2020 election result.

The third GOP contender for secretary of state on the Aug. 9 ballot, Daniel Schmidtka, also did not respond to the same query. He declares on his website that the “mission” of his campaign is “abolishing the Wisconsin Election Commission and returning oversight and certification of elections to the Secretary of State.”

Much more on Act 10, here.

MacIver

It’s been 11 years since Wisconsin Republicans led by Gov. Scott Walker passed collective bargaining reform, and the savings to taxpayers have been piling up ever since.

Known as Act 10, the reforms were designed to permanently solve a financial crisis throughout Wisconsin’s public sector. State government alone was facing a $3.6 billion deficit in its next budget. The situation was even worse for local governments (including school districts). Act 10 required all public employees to begin making contributions towards their own health insurance and pensions.

Using the same methodology that we have always used and the same public data sources, we estimate Act 10 has saved Wisconsin taxpayers at least $15.3 billion statewide at the state and local level since 2011.

Johnny Kampis:

Unions, he says, were more concerned about protecting the pensions of the old membership than in the future benefits for new members. “They weren’t fighting for the little guy. They were fighting for themselves.” 

Among the proudest accomplishments in Act 10, Walker told us, was the fight for schoolchildren. Act 10 was about a lot more than money. It made teaching a meritocracy again, he says. “They can put the best and the brightest in the classrooms and keep them there.”

Those interested in Act 10 should become familiar with the earlier Milwaukee Pension Scandal.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Ameillia Wedward and Will Flanders:

As Act 10 reaches its second decade, the 2011 collective bargaining reforms continue to prove their value to K-12 education in Wisconsin. But this does not mean that the reforms are no longer controversial, or that opponents of the law have given hope of a repeal. In such an environment, it is important to continue to highlight the ways in which public sector union reform has mattered for Wisconsin.

New research out this month conducted by Barbara Biasi, professor at the Yale School of Management, does just that. She examines whether rewarding high-quality teachers with higher pay correlates to teacher proficiency thus, increasing student achievement rates in the long run. The results are convincing.

Prior to Act 10 in Wisconsin, collective bargaining kept public school teachers confined to strict pay schemes—favoring seniority instead of work ethic or student outcomes. Using data on Wisconsin teacher workforce both before and after the passage of Act 10 (2007-2015), Biasi found that some districts took advantage to implement pay schemes that reward teacher quality over the number of years they’d worked in the district in the wake of the law. Others did not, and were content to stick with the way pay had worked for generations. Biasi found that effective teachers gravitated toward districts where they could be rewarded. And in turn, using value-added measures of student outcomes, she saw that these districts experienced higher rates of student growth than districts that stuck with outmoded systems of pay.

Rick Eisenberg & Will Flanders

However, the left is still working to say otherwise, so two prevalent myths deserve to be dispelled. The passage of Act 10 and “right-to-work” legislation — which gave employees in Wisconsin the same freedom to choose whether to be in the union as is enjoyed in 26 other states — did not increase income inequality or harm education in Wisconsin. In fact, close to the opposite is true.

Let’s consider income inequality first by looking at a common measure of the gap between the rich and the poor — the Gini coefficient. It attempts to represent, with a single number, the difference between the poorest and wealthiest individuals in a particular area. State-level Gini coefficient data collected by a Sam Houston State Economics professor shows that Wisconsin’s hasn’t changed much in terms of income inequality before or after Act 10. Indeed, the state has remained more equal than the average across the United States. In other words, the claim that labor union reforms have increased inequality is patently absurd based on the data.

Contrary to popular understanding, Act 10 did not restrict the rights of unions to advocate for their members. It did, however, restrict their ability to insist upon collective bargaining — a system in which the government is obliged to negotiate with its employees. While this may sound innocuous, in practice it allows unions to influence government decision-making in a way that citizens with competing interests — say, taxpayers — may not. Under collective bargaining, public employee unions exercise outsized power on public decision making. For example, while parents across the country became more interested in opening schools following the growing consensus that it was safe to do so, teacher unions fought to prevent it. Research from our organization and others found that COVID-19 played little role in school reopening decisions — what mattered was whether there was a strong union in the area.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

CJ Szafir:

4. Billions in savings for taxpayers: Since 2011, Act 10 has saved taxpayers over $13 billion, according to the MacIver Institute.   

5. The sky didn’t fall on public education.  A study from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which I co-authored, showed that Act 10 had little or no impact on student-teacher ratios, the number of licensed teachers, school district spending on teacher salaries, and teacher experience. Especially as Wisconsin compared to other states that didn’t enact collective bargaining reform.

Further analysis by WILL showed that districts that embraced Act 10 actually had an uptick in math test scores.

Much more on Act 10, here.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Assembly against private school forced closure.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.act 10

Scott Girard:

Take the Madison Metropolitan and Richland school districts as an example. In 2010, MMSD’s average salary was $52,022 with average benefits worth $23,536. The Richland School District, about 60 miles away, had an average salary of $45,799 but benefits worth $28,040, on average.

In the 2019-20 school year, MMSD’s average salary had risen to $60,556 with benefits about the same, at $23,376. That overall compensation increase of 11.1% still lagged the 20.7% inflation over the decade.

In Richland, while the average salary grew to $48,868, the average benefits remain well below what they were a decade ago, now at $23,767. Average total compensation in that district, then, has fallen from $73,839 to $72,632 without taking inflation into account.

Madison’s (property, income and subsidy) tax base is quite different than Richland, fueled by substantial back door federal taxpayer electronic medical record subsidies.

Redistributed Wisconsin taxpayer funds (local property taxes, redistributed federal taxpayer funds and various “grants” comprise a substantial portion of K-12 budgets):

Richland school district (1,211 students):
2010-2011: $10,165,666.73

2019-2020: $11,656,628.31 (14.66% increase)

Richland County Median Household Income (2019): $51,947

Madison school district (26,151 students, including 4k):
2010-2011: $78,310,738

2019-2020: $88,296,683 (12.75% increase)

Dane County Median Household Income (2019): $73,893 (42% > Than Richland)

Finally, K-12 school districts have received substantial new redistributed federal taxpayer (and borrowed) funds through recent legislation.

Patrick Marley and Molly Beck:

Republican legislative leaders immediately rejected the full proposal because of provisions within it that would roll back policies they enacted under a Republican governor.

“He’s not serious about governing, he’s serious about politics,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, told reporters after the budget address.

Vos said the budget proposal was full of “poison pills” that Evers knew would be opposed by Republicans and would likely be ignored while writing the next state budget plan.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, expressed a similar view, writing on Twitter that Republicans would “set Evers’ bad budget aside.”

Meanwhile, Evers concluded his speech by asking GOP lawmakers to end the seemingly permanent standoff between them.

“There’s no time for false promises of hope and prosperity with empty words that you know full well won’t match your actions,” Evers said. “You can disagree with me if you want, but don’t punish the people we serve so you can settle a score no one but you is keeping.”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When asked about Act 10, I often suggest that interested parties explore the Milwaukee pension scandal. Successful recall elections lead to the first Republican County Executive in many, many years – Scott Walker.

A few links, just before Act 10 require contemplation, as well.

2009 “an emphasis on adult employment” – retired Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman, speaking at the Madison Rotary Club..

2010, WEAC: Four (State) Senators for $1.57 million (!)

Noel Evans:

Math test scores in schools across Wisconsin have been steadily improving, according to a new study.

The study from The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), “Keeping Score: Act 10’s Impact on Student Achievement,” attributes the rise in scores, particularly in the math scores of students from kindergarten through high school, to changes enacted under Act 10.

Approved by state lawmakers in 2011 and signed by Gov. Scott Walker, Act 10 focused on a wide-range of policies to alleviate deficits in the state budget. From an education standpoint, Act 10 cut back the collective bargaining powers of public-sector unions in the state, including teacher unions.

Notes and links on Act 10.

When asked about Act 10, I often suggest that interested parties explore the Milwaukee pension scandal. Successful recall elections lead to the first Republican County Executive in many, many years – Scott Walker.

A few links, just before Act 10 require contemplation, as well.

2009 “an emphasis on adult employment” – retired Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman, speaking at the Madison Rotary Club..

2010, WEAC: Four (State) Senators for $1.57 million (!)

Recent words:

Brian Reilly:

Former Walker chief of staff Keith Gilkes, who also ran Walker’s successful 2012 recall campaign, argued that Act 10’s influence on Wisconsin’s political landscape has waned in the years since its passage, replaced by the increasing nationalization of politics.

“Yes, Act 10 was impactful in its time. But with time and distance, we’ve moved away from that,” Gilkes said. “We are moving more into a nationalized set of elections where the president is on the ballot for the midterms too. The president is now on the ballot in every election.”

Noam Scheiber, Farah Stockman and J. David Goodman:

Over the past five years, as demands for reform have mounted in the aftermath of police violence in cities like Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and now Minneapolis, police unions have emerged as one of the most significant roadblocks to change. The greater the political pressure for reform, the more defiant the unions often are in resisting it — with few city officials, including liberal leaders, able to overcome their opposition.

They aggressively protect the rights of members accused of misconduct, often in arbitration hearings that they have battled to keep behind closed doors. And they have also been remarkably effective at fending off broader change, using their political clout and influence to derail efforts to increase accountability.

While rates of union membership have dropped by half nationally since the early 1980s, to 10 percent, higher membership rates among police unions give them resources they can spend on campaigns and litigation to block reform. A single New York City police union has spent more than $1 million on state and local races since 2014.

Related:

Act 10

Four Senators for $1.57M

“An emphasis on adult employment“.

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

David Blaska:

[The contract] will boost Chicago teacher compensation — already among the highest in the nation … to nearly $100,000. (By contrast, the median Chicago household earns $52,000.)

Teachers will now be permitted to bank an incredible 244 sick days (up from 40) and claim full pension credit for those days upon retirement, creating new demands on a teetering pension system.

The deal keeps teachers’ retirement contribution at just two percent of annual salary while slashing health care copays.

The contract will cost up to $1.5 billion over the next five years, in a city whose debt burden is already a staggering $119,110 per capita.

Act 10.

Rachel Cohen:

Meanwhile, a top priority for labor has been sitting quietly on Pelosi’s desk and, unlike USMCA, already commands enough support to get it over the House finish line. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act would be the most comprehensive rewrite of U.S. labor law in decades. It would eliminate right-to-work laws, impose new penalties on employers who retaliate against union organizing, crack down on worker misclassification, and establish new rules so that employers cannot delay negotiating collective bargaining contracts. Introduced by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., in May, it already has 215 co-sponsors in the House and 40 in the Senate.

Wisconsin Act 10

2010: Influence and money: WEAC $1.57M for four (state) senators

2009:

To make matters more dire, the long-term legislative proposal specifically exempts school district arbitrations from the requirement that arbitrators consider and give the greatest weight to revenue limits and local economic conditions. While arbitrators would continue to give these two factors paramount consideration when deciding cases for all other local governments, the importance of fiscal limits and local economic conditions would be specifically diminished for school district arbitration.

An emphasis on adult employment.

Fiscal Indulgences

Will Flanders and Lauren Tunney:

“Act 10 shook the status quo for public employee unions in Wisconsin. And when workers get a say in the future of their union, the number of public employee unions in Wisconsin continues to shrink,” said Will Flanders, research director for the Milwaukee-based free market think tank. The report is titled, Democracy in the Workplace: Examining Union Recertification in Wisconsin Under Act 10.”

Much more on Act 10, here.

Related: WEAC – $1,570,000 for four senators.

Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty:

Today, on behalf of a public school teacher who has refused union membership, attorneys at WILL have filed a motion to intervene in the latest lawsuit over the 2011 collective bargaining reform law (“Act 10”). This month, labor unions revived a dormant lawsuit in federal court to bring against the Evers Administration arguing that key provisions of Act 10 are unconstitutional.

Yesterday, the Evers’ Administration indicated that they will defend the law. But WILL’s client has a direct, distinct interest in the lawsuit because, if successful, it would restore union collective bargaining rights and overturn a number of provisions of Act 10 that protect her legal and First Amendment rights.

Much more on Act 10, here

CJ Safir and Collin Roth

In Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mystery “The Adventure of Silver Blaze,” the dog that didn’t bark reveals the greater truth. The same might be said of Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’s first state budget proposal. Derided by critics as a “liberal wish list,” Mr. Evers’s budget proposes to expand Medicaid, freeze school choice, overturn right to work, fund Planned Parenthood, add more than 700 government jobs, increase spending by $7 billion, and raise taxes by more than $1 billion

Much more on Act 10, here

Mark Sommerhauser:

Wisconsin school districts ratcheted up health care costs on teachers and other employees after the state’s Act 10 collective bargaining changes, with the average district now requiring teachers to pay about 12 percent of their health insurance premiums, newly released data show.

Madison schools are near the low end of what districts now require for premium contributions, at 3 percent, according to the data, released by Gov. Scott Walker’s Department of Administration.

It’s the first time the state has released a comprehensive look at teacher health care costs in all 422 of the state’s public school districts after the 2011 enactment of Act 10.

And it’s one more example of the far-reaching scope of the law — in this case, how it paved the way for state and local workers to pay much more for benefits. The 2017-19 state budget required the Department of Administration to collect the data, which is from the 2017-18 school year.

Barry Forbes, associate executive director for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, said the figures show health care costs for school district employees generally matching “what greater society is experiencing now.”

U.S. health care spending grew 4.3 percent in 2016, reaching $3.3 trillion or $10,348 per person. As a share of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for. More. Families in high-deductible plans must pay more than $2,600 out of pocket, $4,332 on average, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Once workers have surpassed their deductibles, they pay an average $24 copay for a primary care office visit, $37 for a specialty care office visit, and $308 for a hospital admission. Sep 22, 2015

“Unsustainable” benefit costs.

Patrick Marley and MRy Spicuzzi:

“People think that unions are useless today, that we’re dinosaurs,” Bryce said in 2015, according to the book. “Well, how did that happen? We let it happen. The labor movement has become lazy, because it’s something that’s been handed to us.”

Bryce, a Democrat running for GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan’s congressional seat, said unions need to take bolder measures and raised the prospect of engaging in a general strike, according to “The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics,” a forthcoming book by Dan Kaufman.

The book focuses on Act 10, the 2011 law that all but ended collective bargaining for most public workers in Wisconsin. It also details what supporters call the state’s right-to-work law, which was passed in 2015 and ended the ability of unions and private employers to reach labor deals that require workers to pay union fees even if they didn’t belong to unions.

Much more on Act 10, here.

Patrick Marley:

The Democrats running for governor are pledging to end GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s union restrictions, while Walker is promising to veto any changes to Act 10 if he wins re-election and Democrats take control of the Legislature.

Act 10 — adopted amid massive protests shortly after Walker took office in 2011 — brought the governor national attention and helped fuel his brief presidential run.

The measure all but ended collective bargaining for most public workers and required them to pay at least 12% of their insurance premiums and half the contributions to their pensions. The changes saved state and local taxpayers — and cost public workers — billions of dollars.

Democrats view the law as a move by Walker to hobble organizations that have long backed Democrats in elections.

The nine Democrats seeking their party’s nomination in the Aug. 14 primary said they would seek to reverse Act 10, while Walker touted the savings it has brought to taxpayers.

“The far-left Democrats who want to undo it will open the door to massive property tax increases or reductions in school staffing — or both,” Walker spokesman Austin Altenburg said in a statement. “Scott Walker will not let that happen and will continue to support reforms that put more resources in the classroom to improve the education of our students.”

Walker would veto any attempt to change Act 10, Altenburg said.

Much more on Act 10, here.

Sarah Hauer:

The filing argues that Act 10 is “a content-based restriction infringing on (the unions’) rights to free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” It says the law infringes upon association rights “to organize as a collective bargaining unit by increasing costs and penalties through its recertification and fair share provisions.”

Under Act 10, public-sector unions must win, every year, support from a majority of employees in the bargaining unit, not just a majority of those voting in the certification election.

“Act 10 is constitutional and it will be upheld as it has been in the past, regardless of the outcome in Janus,” Walker spokesman Tom Evenson said.

Local 139 comprises people who perform construction, maintenance and repair work for public employers within Wisconsin. It’s headquartered in Pewaukee with other offices in Madison, Altoona and Appleton. Engineers in Local 420 operate and maintain physical plant systems and buildings in the state for public utilities and schools. Local 420 has offices in Green Bay and Oak Creek.

Much more on Act 10, here.

Molly Beck:

The polling also showed 60 percent of public sector employees favor returning to collective bargaining, compared with only 39 percent in the private sector. Nearly 70 percent of union members favor bargaining, while only 38 percent of non-union members support it. Those polled in the city of Milwaukee and Madison media markets favor collective bargaining while the rest of the state, to different degrees, do not, Franklin said.

Timing the message
“(Focusing on Act 10) would be a good primary tactic but for the general election, I don’t think so,” said Joe Heim, a longtime political science professor at UW-La Crosse. “By the general election, the union people and anybody who opposes Act 10 would know exactly where they are going. If you are trying to get some crossover supporters who generally think Act 10 was not a bad idea, but don’t necessarily like Walker, reminding them of that time is not a good idea.”

Republicans have touted how the law saved state and local governments billions of dollars, though that’s based mostly on provisions of the law separate from bargaining that required public employees to contribute to pension and health insurance premiums. Democrats say it has contributed to a statewide teacher shortage, though school districts are facing shortages across the country.

“You don’t need to remind anyone of it,” Heim said. “Time to move on and I would hope the Democrats are smart enough to look forward.”

A spokeswoman for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin did not respond to a request for comment on whether the issue will be prominent in the 2018 campaign.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Walker’s campaign cited Act 10 as the catalyst for a “Wisconsin comeback” that resulted in $5 billion in savings to local governments.

“The extreme Democrat candidates running in the wide-open field for governor have a choice: raise taxes to pay for undoing the governor’s reforms, or accept that he fixed the financial crisis their party created,” spokesman Brian Reisinger said.

Much more on Act 10, here.

Annysa Johnson

According to the report released Friday by the nonpartisan Public Policy Forum, Wisconsin still has fewer teachers than it did before Act 10, which curtailed collective bargaining for public school teachers and most other public employees. However, overall turnover has diminished, and the supply of new teachers is sufficient to fill those slots, the report says.

Still, the report noted a troubling trend: a rise in the number of teachers who leave the profession before retirement age, particularly in the first five years.

In Wisconsin and especially Milwaukee, the departure of teachers in their 20s, 30s and 40s is growing steadily and accounts for the largest share of teacher turnover, according to the study — a trend that over time could put a greater pressure on teacher demand than that already created by shortages in the teacher pipeline.

Much more on Act 10, here.

David Madland and Alex Rowell:

This issue brief examines the impact of the law on Wisconsin’s K-12 public education system and state economy. While this brief focuses on Act 10’s impact on Wisconsin teachers based on the data available, the same forces driving changes in the teaching workforce can also affect the broader public sector.3 Proponents of Act 10 insisted that reducing collective bargaining rights for teachers would improve education by eliminating job protections such as tenure and seniority-based salary increases. As Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) argued, “We no longer have seniority or tenure. That means we can hire and fire based on merit, we can pay based on performance. That means we can put the best and the brightest in our classrooms and we can pay them to be there.”4 However, the facts suggest that Act 10 has not had its promised positive impact on educational quality in the state.
The authors’ analysis using data collected by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) finds that since the passage of Act 10, teachers have received far lower compensation; turnover rates have increased; and teacher experience has dropped significantly. Importantly, the harms from Act 10 extend beyond public-sector workers to all Wisconsinites, as current research suggests that student outcomes could be negatively affected by the law as well. Rather than encouraging the best and brightest students to become teachers and to remain in the field throughout their career, the law appears to have had the opposite effect by devaluing teaching and driving many teachers out of Wisconsin’s public schools.

Much more on Act 10, here.

Dan Benson & Julie Grace:

Savings that Wisconsin taxpayers could have realized through implementation of Act 10 in 2011 — sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single district — were lost because federal regulations penalize school districts that find ways to spend less money.

The Oostburg School District in Sheboygan County, for example, experienced a “huge reduction in expenses for the special education fund” following the passage of Act 10, says Kristin DeBruine, the district’s business manager.

Special education programs, however, are funded with federal as well as local tax dollars — and full, ongoing federal funding continues only if local and state funding remains constant or increases from year to year.

In order to avoid a federal funding cut, the Oostburg district spent the Act 10 savings in other ways, including almost $60,000 to install an elevator in its middle school. At the time, and to this day, the school does not have any students who use wheelchairs. So the elevator sits largely unused, DeBruine says.

While installing the elevator also helped the district meet federal disability compliance rules, “We would not have put it in without the required use of the money, as it is only used for after-school activities, and the cost would not have allowed us to do it otherwise,” DeBruine says. “That simply just doesn’t make sense at all.”

Alan Borsuk::

But there is a lot more at work than Act 10 when it comes to attracting and keeping people in teaching.

The roots of the shortages were showing up before 2011. For example, it was already getting challenging to find math and science teachers.

The number of people in college-level programs to train teachers has fallen sharply, but the drop began before Act 10. And, the percentage declines in some other states, where there was no Act 10, are higher than in Wisconsin.

It is hard to pin down numbers of how many veteran teachers have quit or retired early because of Act 10. Some years, in some places, turnover has been high. But teachers quit for many reasons.

Much more on Act 10 and the attempt to reduce Wisconsin’s weak teacher content knowledge requirements.

Bruce Vielmetti::

A lawyer for 90 retired Germantown teachers asked a jury Monday to award them more than $9 million in damages from their former employer, who the retirees say took their affordable long-term care insurance in a political power play after passage of Wisconsin’s Act 10 law.

The district’s attorney urged jurors to reject liability under all three of the plaintiffs’ theories. “They ignored it (a warning that the insurance plan could terminate) and now they want to blame the school district,” Kevin Pollard said.

The lawyers’ closing arguments came after a weeklong trial, but it took the jury just an afternoon to decide the district owed nothing to the retirees.

The district added the benefit in 1998 but terminated its contract with WEA Trust in 2012. By then, the plaintiffs had been paying their own monthly premiums toward a paid-up policy after 30 years. Some came up with lump sums of $35,000 to $40,000 to pay up the policies, but 46 others did not, and forfeited about $200,000 in premiums for no coverage.

The retired teachers saw the right to continue paying the group-term rates as a vested benefit yanked out from beneath them.

Much more on Act 10, here.

Molly Beck:

A spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said Act 10 has been an “undisputed victory for Wisconsin taxpayers.”

“Wisconsin’s declining union membership since the passage of right-to-work legislation only reflects that workers now have the ability to make their own decision about the costs and benefits of union membership,” said spokeswoman Myranda Tanck. “Senator Fitzgerald maintains that the heart of this issue is a simple matter of individual freedom.”

Nationally, according to Thursday’s BLS report, about 14.6 million workers were members of unions in 2016 — down by 240,000 members, or 0.4 percent, from 2015. By comparison, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, or 17.7 million workers, in 1983.

UW-Madison economist Steven Deller said the level of union membership nationally has been declining for years — a trend that is likely to continue with large-scale, labor-intensive manufacturing being replaced with smaller-scale technology that requires more capital but less manual labor. Large-scale manufacturing companies tend to be unionized and their replacements are more likely not to be.

Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results.

Act 10.

An emphasis on adult employment.

WEAC: $1.57 million for four senators.

K-12 Tax & Spending growth.

Madison schools 18k per student budget, up from about 15k in 2010.

Dave Umhoefer:

“If you really want to drain the swamp, as Trump says, that would be a way to do it,” Walker said in an interview.

Walker added: “It’s the work rules, the seniority, all those things. If they could tackle that in a similar way to what we did, long term it would be a major, major improvement.”

Most federal employees only have bargaining rights over working conditions. Wages and benefits were not part of bargaining, unlike in Wisconsin, where until Walker’s 2011 legislation public-sector unions had full bargaining rights.

Two federal unions sounded ready to fight to hold their ground.

Trump has some good ideas, but if he targets working people after promising to “drain the swamp,” it will be the biggest bait and switch ever, said Randy Erwin, national president-elect of the National Federation of Federal Employees.

Much more on Act 10, here.

Dave Umhoefer:

Dave Weiland, an Oconomowoc school district teacher and local union leader, thinks the state union was stuck in a 1920s mentality.

“The gravy train was running, and they didn’t see the curve,” he said.

Indeed, two years prior to Walker’s election, the path appeared to be moving in a different direction.

Bolstered by union might and money, Democrats swept to control of the state Capitol, then opened 20,000 more jobs to union representation and repealed limits on teacher compensation.

One group that got the power to organize: Home child-care workers — at a time when their industry was under scrutiny for fraud that cost taxpayers millions.

Two years later, Republicans were in charge.

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Chris Rickert:

An increasingly diverse Madison School District student body will see at least 55 new teachers of color next year — a major increase in minority hiring from the year before.

If those concerned about the district’s long-standing racial achievement gaps are looking for people to thank for this improvement, they might as well put Gov. Scott Walker on their list.

Much more on Act 10.

OGECHI EMECHEBE:

At the direction of the Legislature, the UW System recently created the new Office of Educational Opportunity to oversee the creation of charter schools in Madison and Milwaukee without oversight from local school districts. How do you react to that?

I’m opposed to the concept. I find it objectionable that the state has allowed one person to essentially make decisions that our local community can make through school boards and allow that person to authorize who can operate a school that’s not accountable to the public but has a call on our resources. I find that offensive. It’s repugnant that they think it’s acceptable policy when I think most people in Madison would say it’s unacceptable policy.

The best defense is a good offense and having our public schools be the best public schools we can is certainly one of the strong directions that we need to emphasize. We’re fortunate to have really good schools in Madison but I think we need to do even more to bring in staff voices and parent voices into the schools to have the public own them even more. If we see proposals coming in for non-public charter entities, we can actively organize an opposition to those sorts of things if we’re concerned as a city that we don’t want to have our public dollars controlled by non-public entities without any oversight.

There have been mixed reactions to the district’s new Behavior Education Plan. What have union members said about the BEP?

Much more on Madison Teachers, Inc., here.

Mitch Henck video.

Molly Beck:

The bill that later became Act 10 launched the largest protests ever in Madison, including a temporary occupation of the Capitol; legislative chaos highlighted by Democratic senators fleeing to Illinois to forestall a floor vote; and Walker’s historic recall victory.

The days, weeks and months after Walker’s Feb. 11, 2011, announcement were among the most dramatic in Wisconsin’s history.

Years later, Act 10 continues to influence the state’s political, economic and social landscape. And it will continue to reverberate years into the future.

Today, the Wisconsin State Journal explores five impacts of Act 10 on the five-year anniversary of its introduction.

Much more on Act 10, here.

Mitch Henck. much larger forces are at play on Madison’s monolithic “we know best” K-12 world.

Mitch Henck:

This is Madison. I learned that phrase when I moved here from Green Bay in 1992.
It means that the elites who drive the politics and the predominate culture are more liberal or “progressive” than backward places out state.

I knew I was in Madison as a reporter when parents and activists were fighting over whether to have “Sarah Has Two Mommies” posters in a grade school library. Concerned parents weakly stated at a public hearing that first-graders were too young to understand sexuality of any kind.

Activists at the public meeting said the children needed to understand tolerance. One conservative parent said: “Why don’t we vote by secret ballot?” An activist said, “No, we want a consensus.”

The Madison School District official who was presiding agreed, and the controversial posters stayed on the library walls. This is Madison.

Now we have the Madison School Board. It has been historically run by the teacher’s union. The same was true after Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 was passed, strictly limiting collective bargaining for public employees.

Three weeks before the state Supreme Court would rule on the constitutionality of the law, the union-owned School Board rushed through a teacher’s contract that largely ignored Act 10. Unlike any other school district in the state, the contract made sure Madison teachers were not required to share the cost of their health insurance premiums. Unlike any other school district, Madison collects union dues from teacher paychecks for its leader, John Matthews.

By the way, I would not want him in a dark alley with me.

The problem is the Madison School District has a projected budget shortfall for 2015-2016 of $12 million to $20 million, according to last week’s State Journal. About $6 million could be saved by making aggressive health care costs, including requiring staff to contribute toward insurance premiums, renegotiating contracts with health care providers, and making plan changes. That’s according to Michael Barry, assistant superintendent of business services.

In fact, the district spends about $62 million on employee health care costs, which are expected to grow by 8.5 percent next school year. Shockingly, Madison School Board member Ed Hughes said: “If we’re talking about taking not a scalpel, but a machete to our programs given the cuts we’ll make because we’re the only school district in the state that’s unwilling to ask employees to contribute to their health insurance, I think that would be an impression that we would deservedly receive ridicule for.”

Even board member Mary Burke said: “We would be irresponsible to the community where basically 99 percent of the people pay contributions to health care” if the board made up the savings with cuts to staff and heath care.

So now what? The contract expires in June 2016. Conservative blogger David Blaska sued to force Madison to live under Act 10. A local judge ruled last week Blaska did have standing as a taxpayer to carry out his lawsuit as he is joined by The Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty.

Madison teacher’s union leader John Matthews said by making employees contribute to health care premiums, the district is effectively asking them to pay for iPads and administrators. Huh?

Todd Berry of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance told me 90 percent of state cuts to education were covered by savings offered to school districts under Act 10 by changing work rules, by employee contributions to retirement and health insurance premiums, and by altering health plans.

That might fly for the rest of the state, but then again, this is Madison.

Much more on benefits and the Madison School District and Act 10.

A focus on “adult employment“.

Pat Schneider:

The conservative legal group Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has brought suit against Madison’s public schools through a plaintiff who does not have standing to bring the “scandalous” allegations of violations of teachers’ rights included in its complaint, school district officials claim in a court filing.

Plaintiff David Blaska, a conservative blogger, “is not a teacher in the district nor an employee of the District and he therefore lacks both standing and a factual basis on which to assert those allegations,” school officials say in their answer to a lawsuit brought last month against the Madison Metropolitan School District, the Madison School Board and labor union Madison Teachers, Inc.

In pleadings filed in Dane County Circuit Court last week, school officials and the union asked the court to strike portions of the complaint referring to union dues, fair share payments and other issues regarding employees, calling them “immaterial, impertinent and scandalous.”

WILL, not Blaska, is actually the “party in interest,” or entity that would benefit from the suit, Madison public school officials assert.

The lawsuit filed last month challenges the legality of labor contracts for Madison teachers and other school district employees that were negotiated and entered into after the 2011 enactment of Act 10, Gov. Scott Walker’s signature legislation curtailing the collective bargaining power of public employees.

Edmund Henschel & Russell Knetzger

In its Sept. 17 editorial about Gov. Scott Walker’s second term agenda, the Journal Sentinel Editorial Board said, “Act 10 was a mistake” (“Gov. Scott Walker’s second term? Same as the first,” Our View). Act 10 virtually ended collective bargaining for many, but not all, state and local public employees.

It was not a mistake and should be followed up with Act 10.2 and Act 10.3. One would address the expensive early retirement feature included in the Wisconsin pension plan for all state and local public employees, and the other would bring in police and fire personnel, left out in Act 10. Police and fire together amount to about 60% of most local budgets, leaving only 40% covered by Act 10.

Wisconsin was the first state in the Union to allow public employees to bargain collectively, and, by the 1970s, unionization was showing its worst feature. That feature was, and will always remain, that unions cannot resist the temptation to try to control both sides of the bargaining table. They do this by being politically active in electing union-sympathetic public officials and in de-electing taxpayer sympathizers. The state teachers union was the first to consistently apply this power both in local and state elections and was very effective at both levels.

Wisconsin, having first created public collective bargaining, rightfully should be the first state to remove it. Indiana was slightly earlier, but the Indiana public at referendum put it back in place. That action, and the current race for Wisconsin governor, shows just how much unions are fighting to regain this power.

Early public employee unions recognized that public employee strikes did not sit well with the public. In exchange for removing the right to strike, unions were given arbitration, a power that likely gained more for unions than striking. The problem with arbitration is it becomes an averaging of the surrounding lowest and highest wages.

As the wealthier tax bases raise their wages and benefits, over time the lower tax base communities rise to the previous average of the higher base. If they both can rise faster than inflation, which they have done by a ratio of 2.5-3 to 1, in only a few successive contract periods the lower tax base pay equals the former high base levels.

Much more on Wisconsin Act 10, here.

The Neenah Superintendent wrote a letter to Madison School Board Member & Gubernatorial Candidate Mary Burke on 19 September.

Ms. Burke recently apologized for her Act 10 remarks:

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke has apologized to the superintendent of the Neenah school district for comments she made on the campaign trail.

Burke had been citing the district as an example of negative effects she says have been caused in Wisconsin schools by the law known as Act 10 that effectively ended collective bargaining for teachers.

District administrator Mary Pfeiffer said Friday that Burke reached out to her on Wednesday and apologized by phone. Pfeiffer says Burke agreed not to use Neenah as an example again.

Neenah Superintendent Dr. Mary Pfeiffer’s letter to Mary Burke, via a kind reader (PDF):

Neenah Joint School District
410 South Commercial Street
Neenah, WI 54956
Tel: (920) 751-6800
Fax: (920) 751-6809

Burke for Wisconsin
PO Box 2479
Madison, WI 53701
September 19, 2014

Dear Ms. Burke,

On behalf of the Neenah Joint School District I would like to express my disappointment regarding your use of our District as an example of your perceived negative impact of Act 10 on education as reported by John McCormack in the Weekly Standard and at least one additional news publication in the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

In your position as a Madison school board member, I’m sure you’ve seen that Act 10 has created a variety of challenges for school districts across Wisconsin, but I’m sure you’ve also seen plenty of positives as well. It is unfair and misleading to claim that Act 10 is the primary reason why one specific candidate chose to accept a position in Minnesota over an opening in the Neenah Joint School District. There are many reasons why candidates choose to work in other districts and certainly some effects of Act 10 may factor into those decisions. However, to make a blanket statement that Act 10 is the reason why teachers are leaving school districts in Wisconsin (in this case the Neenah Joint School District), especially by citing only one candidate’s decision to go elsewhere, is an unfortunate exaggeration at best.

We are extremely proud of our schools in Neenah and incredibly proud of the staff we have assembled both prior to and since the passage of Act 10. We have never settled with an inferior candidate to fill a position and will never do that to our students or families.

Since you have not reached out to me to learn more about our District, I will provide to you some data points that you might find revealing about why we continue to be a high performing District in Wisconsin.

Since Act 10, we have faced, and met, the difficult challenges necessary to support student learning while retaining our excellent staff.

we have significantly reduced an unsustainable $184 million unfunded liability regarding our Other Post Employment Benefits (OPEB). Meanwhile, we still provide all of our most veteran employees a $100,000 retirement benefit. New employees are also provided OPEB benefits and that is something most districts have eliminated. As you are aware, this is in addition to the state retirement benefit.

we have reduced class sizes and increased the number of our certified staff.

we have had no certified staff (teacher) layoffs since Act 10.

our school board has supported pools of dollars for 2% salary increases (above the CPI) and 2% one-time stipend awards every year for all employee groups for a total of4%.

over the past two years, 57 certified staff members have received a $5,000 or more increase in their salary.

more than 33% of certified staff received a 3% or higher salary increase in 2013-14,

with 6% of them receiving a 6% increase or higher.

our insurance costs are the lowest in our area.

we have no long-term debt.

our mill rate remains the lowest in our area at $8.53 and a decrease for the third consecutive year.

I respectfully ask that you stop using Neenah as an example of the negative ramifications of Act 10. This request has nothing to do with my personal feelings or political stance. It is about a dedicated staff that is proud to work in Neenah. I would be p1eased to speak with you further about this issue.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Dr. Mary Pfeiffer ~
Superintendent of Schools
Neenah Joint School District
Copy: Neenah Joint School District Board of Education Members

Act 10 notes and links.

Neenah plans to spend $80,479,210 for 6,226 students (DPI) during the 2014-2015 school year, or $12,926 per student (PDF Document). Ms. Burke’s Madison School Board plans to spend more than $15,000 per student during the same period, 16% more than Neenah.

“Plenty of Resources“.

Dave Zweiful:

Last Sunday’s Wisconsin State Journal carried a front-page story about a new phenomenon in our public schools that’s a fallout from Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 — the teacher as “free agent.”

According to some, Act 10’s virtual destruction of teachers unions unleashed good teachers from the shackles of their union contracts so they can now peddle their expertise to districts that can come up with a better deal.

In fact, the story informed us, teachers with expertise in special disciplines like technology and engineering are being offered bonuses, higher salaries and better fringe benefits to jump ship — apparently sort of a mini-version of what Prince Fielder did to the Brewers a few years back.

Some districts are able to offer higher salaries to those with expertise in hard-to-fill positions because Act 10 has freed up money that had been going to teachers under union contract for pensions and health benefits.

Notes and links on Act 10, here.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Governor Walker’s signature legislation, the 2011 anti-public employee, anti-union Act 10, which took away nearly all the bargaining rights of public employees, is once again on the front burner for those represented by MTI. MTI had initially challenged the legislation and gained a Circuit Court decision from Judge Colas that Act 10 was unconstitutional. This ruling allowed MTI and the MMSD to bargain Agreements for the 2014-15 and 2015- 16 school years. Now that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has overturned Judge Colas’ decision and upheld Act 10, certain portions of Act 10 are now applicable to MTI, specifically the Act 10 requirement that public sector unions undergo a certification election to determine whether the union will maintain its status as the “certified representative” of the workers covered by the union. Under Act 10, this will have to be done each year.

Given the above, MTI has filed petitions with the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC) for recertification elections for each of MTIs five (5) bargaining units (Teachers, Educational Assistants, Supportive Education Employees, Security Assistants and Substitute Teachers). The elections will be conducted in November, 2014.

Unlike political elections which require that the prevailing candidate win the majority of votes cast, Act 10’s recertification elections require a public sector union to win 51% of all eligible votes in order to remain the certified agent. This means that “non-votes” are considered “no” votes. If this standard were applied to any United States political election, with low turnout rate, no candidate would be seated (for example, Governor Walker won only about 30% of all eligible votes during the 2012 recall). Fortunately, the experience has been much different for union recertification elections in Wisconsin. During recertification elections held in 2013, over 500 local Unions representing over 56,000 teachers, secretaries, aides, bus drivers, custodial workers and other school employees resulted in a 70% turnout statewide. And an overwhelming 98% of those voting, voted to recertify their Union. But even knowing this, MTI needs every vote possible.

Much more on Act 10, here.

Edgar Mendez:

The goal in Wauwatosa was to better attract and retain top-flight educators; the method was to change the way teachers are compensated.

A new compensation model, approved in February, calls for teachers to earn anywhere between $40,000 and $80,700 a year, based largely on their performance.

But teachers had concerns: Would principals alone determine the initial salary they’d start at in the new model? Did years of service matter at all anymore? Or was everything based on performance evaluations?

Those concerns still linger as Wauwatosa and other Wisconsin districts roll out new teacher compensation models this fall, thrusting the issue of teacher pay back in the spotlight.

The new compensation models are a result of Act 10, the legislation passed three years ago that limited collective bargaining and allowed districts to untether themselves from salary schedules in union contracts that called for pay increases based solely on years spent teaching and on higher-education credits.

Some districts, such as Hartland-Lakeside and Cedarburg, were early adopters of new performance-based models resembling what people often see in the private sector.

But many more districts are debuting new models this year. The timing coincides with a new statewide educator evaluation system rolling out this year.

Janesville Gazette:

Is it good policy? Perhaps Act 10 was an overreach with its union-busting provisions, but it addressed a fiscal need in Wisconsin and the school districts and municipalities that receive state aid.

Public employee benefits had become overly generous and burdensome on employers, and Act 10 addressed that by requiring employees to contribute their fair shares. The result has saved the state and local governments millions of dollars. Those savings have helped those local governments address state aid cuts and ongoing budget challenges.

Now that the legal questions surrounding Act 10 are resolved, let’s move forward with a clear understanding that the law is here to stay and that public employers and employees still must work together to ensure that quality workers continue to provide quality services.

Sly Podcasts – Madison Teachers, Inc. Executive Director John Matthews.

Alan Borsuk:

With freedom comes responsibility.

This is one of the important lessons most parents hope their children learn, especially teenagers. OK, you got a driver’s license. You’re hot about all the things you can do. But there are an awful lot of things you shouldn’t do, and won’t do if you’re smart.

So what will teens learn from school leaders all across Wisconsin in the next few years? I’m hoping they’ll learn that with freedom comes responsibility, and I’m even somewhat optimistic that, overall, they will. That won’t be universally true. There are always the kids who just can’t resist flooring it when the light turns green.

But in most school districts, the freedom school boards and administrators were given in 2011, when Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans in the legislative majorities won the battle of Act 10, has been used with restraint and good judgment. A lot of superintendents and principals, and even teachers, are seeing pluses to life without the many provisions of union contracts.

I don’t want to overstate that — there are also a large number of teachers still feeling wounded from the hostility toward educators that was amped up by the polarizing events of 2011. Many teachers are anxious about how the greater freedoms their bosses now have to judge, punish and reward will be used. There also remain serious reasons to worry about who is leaving teaching and whether the best possible newcomers are being attracted to classrooms.

David Blaska:

More mystifying is why The Capital Times would do a story focusing solely and entirely on that minority dissent. (“Act 10 is ‘textbook’ example of unconstitutionality.”) Can’t expose its tender readers to the majority opinion, apparently.

Local government here in the Emerald City has done its best to evade the law, extending union contracts into 2016. County Exec Joe Parisi likes to say the union has saved the county money. At the very least, AFSME costs its members dues. There is nothing to prevent county managers from working cooperatively with employees to determine best practices. That is Management 101.

Ditto the teachers union, plaintiff in the just-decided Supreme Court case. The teachers union — as we argued in “Hold your meetings where there is beer” — runs the County Board. Now Mary Burke’s complicity with succoring MTI — she’s got their endorsement — becomes the lead issue in the governor’s race.

If you are a Madison public school teacher who doesn’t want to make fair share payments, let me know. We’ll bring suit. Post a private message on Facebook.

Much more on Act 10, here.

Steve Strieker, via a kind Michael Walsh email:

My first teaching contract 19 years ago at a Midwest Catholic high school grossed $15,000. My retirement benefits consisted of a whopping $500 401K. Cutting into my take-home pay was a $1500 annual premium for an inadequate health insurance plan with a high deductible and 80-20 coverage on remaining family medical bills.

Money aside, I was a good Christian soldier. I taught a full load with 3 or more preps, moderated the school newspaper, ran the service program, coached baseball, drove the school bus to athletic events, and volunteered for all kinds of school activities.

Considering money, I was a naive Christian soldier. I did not think finances mattered all that much. After growing up on the lower rim of the middle class, the $15 grand I grossed in my first year of teaching felt like a million dollars. When the family budget tightened as college loans came due and the family grew, I practiced my own personal “no excuses” policy and doubled down on work by milking cows in the evening and on weekends, painting houses in the summer, and working a variety of odd jobs. While many Americans were “moving on up” during the 1990’s, my wife (also an educator) and I shuffled funds around trying to survive on less-than-professional pay.

In these conditions, my teaching suffered. My professional goal of getting my masters degree by age 30 came and went. I recycled the same lesson every year. Innovation was limited to what I could concoct late at night or each morning before school. I was a resourceful teacher, but not a developing educator.

In the midst of this mess, one of my kids became seriously ill. She did a few tours in the hospital before some highly skilled and professionally-priced specialists got a handle on her condition. The medical bills mounted. Things became desperate.

So I made a desperate move. I sold my soul and left teaching for a year. I searched for funds in other fields. In the midst of this despair came some soul-saving, professional advice from my brother teaching in Wisconsin. He coaxed my wife (also an educator) and I to move to his neck of the woods, where we could earn professional pay and benefits by teaching in Wisconsin’s public school system.

Much more on Act 10, here.

Erin Richards:

acing reduced membership, revenue and political power in the wake of 2011 legislation, Wisconsin’s two major state teachers unions appear poised to merge into a new organization called Wisconsin Together.
The merger would combine the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union, and AFT-Wisconsin, a smaller union that includes technical college, higher education and state employees, according to new draft documents.
At the same time, a national educators group that promotes itself as an alternative to unions — and has the backing of some conservative-leaning organizations — is picking up new members in Wisconsin.
The developments underscore the changing landscape for Wisconsin teachers unions since the passage of Act 10, which limits collective bargaining and makes it more difficult for unions to collect dues.
After Act 10, WEAC has lost about a third of its approximately 98,000 members and AFT-Wisconsin is down to about 6,500 members from its peak of approximately 16,000, leaders of both organizations have reported.
According to their most recent federal tax filings, WEAC collected about $19.5 million in dues in 2011, and AFT-Wisconsin collected about $2 million. Both have downsized staff and expenses.
The initial governance documents of Wisconsin Together, which include a transition document, constitution and bylaws, have been posted on AFT-Wisconsin’s website for members of both organizations to peruse. A final vote on whether to merge will be taken at a special joint assembly in Green Bay on April 26.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Last Monday’s Supreme Court hearing, scheduled for 90 minutes, went almost four hours, given numerous comments and questions from the Justices – all seven participating to some degree. The resultant responses caused tension, such as Attorney General Van Hollen’s response to Justice Ann Walsh Bradley’s comment, “aren’t the parties’ arguments like ships passing in the night?” Van Hollen retorted that the two ships, “… are on a collision course” and “the State has a bigger ship and we shall win!”
As The Progressive editor Ruth Conniff wrote of the exchange, “That pretty much sums up the Walker Administration’s attitude toward the teachers, janitors, clerks, and municipal employees it seeks to disempower through Act 10. The state is bigger and stronger, Walker, Van Hollen, and their allies argue, and will not be deterred by public outcry, mass protests, or even the courts.”
MTI legal counsel Lester Pines, when presenting the Union’s argument resurrected the ship analogy, telling Van Hollen that, “The Titanic was a big ship too, compared to the relatively small iceberg that caused it to sink.” Pines added that the administration’s Act 10, like the Titanic, has hit an iceberg, and that the iceberg in this case is the Wisconsin Constitution.
In his argument, Pines told the Court that the fundamental argument came down to Constitutional rights. Pines’ claim led to Van Hollen claiming, “There is no constitutional right to collective bargaining.”

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Bettner Kamholtz:

In February 2011, Governor Walker, as he described it, “dropped the bomb” on Wisconsin’s public employees, the birthplace of public employee bargaining, by proposing a law (Act 10) which would eliminate the right of collective bargaining in school districts, cities, counties, and most of the public sector. Collective Bargaining Agreements provide employment security and economic security, as well as wage increases, fringe benefits, and as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Holmes said many years ago, an effective voice for employees in the workplace. Unions had achieved these rights and benefits in a half-century of bargaining. Ostensibly proposed to address an alleged budget shortfall, the Governor’s proposed Act 10 not only called for reductions in economic benefits for public employees (e.g. limits on employer contributions toward pensions and health care), but prohibited public employers from bargaining with nearly all public employees over any issue, other than limited wage increases, under which no employee could recover losses due to the increase in the Consumer Price Index. For example, under Act 10, teacher unions can no longer bargain over issues of school safety, class size, planning and preparation time, and health insurance; educational assistants can no longer bargain over salary progression, insurance coverage or training; clerical/technical workers can no longer bargain over work hours, vacation benefits or time off to care for sick children; and state workers can no longer bargain over whistle-blower protections. The intent of the Governor was to silence public employees on issues of primary importance to them and those they serve, and to eliminate their political activity. His stated extreme, no compromise, “divide and conquer” approach was to gain full power over employees. That resulted in MTI members walking out for four days to engage in political action. Soon thereafter thousands followed MTI members, resulting in the largest protest movement in State history.
MTI legally challenged Walker’s law and in September, 2012, MTI, represented by Lester Pines, and his partners Tamara Packard and Susan Crawford, prevailed in an action before Dane County Circuit Court Judge Juan Colas, wherein Colas found that most of Act 10 is unconstitutional. In ruling on MTI’s petition, Colas agreed that Act 10 is unconstitutional as it violates MTI members’ freedom of association and equal protection, both of which are guaranteed by the Wisconsin Constitution. This enabled MTI to bargain Contracts for its five (5) bargaining units for 2014-15. MTI’s are among the few public sector contracts in Wisconsin for 2014-15.

Ruth Conniff:

When Dane Country Circuit Court Judge Juan Colas held officials in Gov. Scott Walker’s administration in contempt this week, he was pushing back against a level of unchecked lawlessness by this administration that is “practically seditious,” says attorney Lester Pines.
Colas had already ruled a year ago that parts of Act 10 — the law that ended most collective bargaining rights for most public employees — were unconstitutional. This included Act 10’s requirement that unions hold annual recertification elections. But commissioners at the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission decided to ignore that decision. They went ahead and prepared for recertification elections for more than 400 school district and worker unions in November.
“The commissioners knew full well” they were flouting the court, Colas said, despite their cute argument that the word “unconstitutional” applied only to the specific plaintiffs in the case — teachers in Madison and city workers in Milwaukee.
As John Matthews, executive director of Madison Teachers Inc., put it, Colas’ decision “is one of the most important decisions not only in public-sector labor history, but also in democracy.”
The principle here is simple. If a law is unconstitutional on its face, it’s unconstitutional in every case. That has always been understood in Wisconsin courts. And, Judge Colas pointed out, the Walker officials understood it, too.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Jeanie (Bettner) Kamholtz email (PDF):

Collective bargaining was restored for all city, county and school district employees by a Court ruling last week through application of an earlier (9/14/12) Court decision achieved by MTI. Circuit Court Judge Juan Colas found that Governor Walker’s appointees to the WERC, James Scott and Rodney Pasch, were in contempt of court “for implementing” those parts of Act 10 which he (Colas) previously declared unconstitutional, which made them “a law which does not exist”, as Colas put it.
The Judge told Scott & Pasch to comply with his finding of unconstitutionality or be punished for their contempt. They agreed to comply.
Judge Colas made his ruling on unconstitutionality on September 14, 2012. MTI was represented by its legal counsel, Lester Pines.
In the contempt claim, in addition to MTI, Pines represented the Kenosha Education Association and WEAC. The latter was also represented by Milwaukee attorney Tim Hawks, who also represented AFSCME Council 40, AFT Wisconsin, AFT nurses and SEIU Healthcare, in last week’s case. Also appearing was Nick Padway, who partnered with Pines in representing Milwaukee Public Employees Union Local 61 in the original case.
Judge Colas specifically ordered the WERC to cease proceeding with union recertification elections, which in his earlier ruling were found to be unconstitutional. Act 10 mandated all public sector unions to hold annual elections to determine whether union members wished to continue with representation by the union. Act 10 prescribed that to win a union had to achieve 50% plus one of all eligible voters, not 50% plus one of those voting like all other elections. The elections were to occur November 1.

Jeff Simpson:

Marshfield School District has been in the news lately, This time they have shown us the consequences of ACT10.
First this story from the Administrators where they praised ACT10:

Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty:

Today, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty – along with Education Action Group – have launched a website that will make it easier for teachers in Wisconsin to exercise their rights. A new website, TeacherFreedom.org, helps teachers opt out of their public unions.
After filling out a short questionnaire on the website, an opt- out letter is automatically created. The teacher then must mail the signed letter to his or her union officer. “TeacherFreedom.org serves as a tool to enable teachers to leave their union if they so choose,” explains Rick Esenberg, WILL President and General Counsel.
“Under Act 10, teachers can resign from their labor union and choose to stop paying union dues, saving money in the process. For the first time, teachers are free agents and not bound to the rigid union employment rules,” he continued.

Madison Teachers, Inc., via a kind Jeannie Bettner email:

MTI prevailed last year in a Circuit Court decision in which Judge Juan Colas found much of Act 10, what Governor Walker referred to as his “bomb” on public employee unions, to violate the Constitution. That decision is on appeal to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the Walker administration and his appointed Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission has simply thumbed their nose at Colas’ ruling and vowed to continue forcing unions to conduct annual elections, wherein a union is decertified if it does not receive 50%+1 of those eligible to vote, not just 50%+1 of those voting as in every other election.
In a September 17, 2013 ruling, Judge Colas told Governor Walker and the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission’s commissioners that a Circuit Court decision, while they may not like it or agree with it, is precedential and must be followed throughout the State. Colas said, “The question here is not whether other courts or non-parties are bound by this court’s ruling. It is whether the defendants are bound by it.” WERC was a named defendant in MTI’s suit, so as all defendants to a lawsuit are, and in a case in which the statute was found facially unconstitutional, they (WERC) are barred from enforcing Act 10 under any circumstances, against anyone.

Erin Richards:

The union representing Kenosha teachers has been decertified and may not bargain base wages with the district.
Because unions are limited in what they can do even if they are certified, the new status of Kenosha’s teachers union — just like the decertification of many other teachers unions in the state that did not or could not pursue the steps necessary to maintain certification in the new era of Act 10 — may be a moral blow more than anything else.
Teachers in Milwaukee and Janesville met the state’s Aug. 30 deadline to apply for recertification, a state agency representative says. Peter Davis, general counsel for the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, said the Milwaukee and Janesville districts will hold recertification votes in November.
To continue as the recognized bargaining unit in the district, 51% of the union’s eligible membership must vote in favor of recertification, according to the controversial Act 10 legislation passed in 2011.
With contracts that were in place through the end of June, teachers in the three large southeastern Wisconsin districts were protected the longest from the new legislation, which limits collective bargaining, requires unions to hold annual votes to be recognized as official entities, and mandates that teachers and other public employees pay more out-of-pocket for their health care and retirement costs.
…..
“It seems like the majority of our affiliates in the state aren’t seeking recertification, so I don’t think the KEA is an outlier or unique in this,” Brey said.
She added that certification gives the union scant power over a limited number of issues they’d like a voice in.
Sheronda Glass, the director of business services in Kenosha, said it’s a new experience for the district to be under Act 10.

Terry Flores

Contrary to some published media reports, however, the union did not vote to decertify.
In fact, no such election was ever held, according to KEA Executive Director Joe Kiriaki, who responded to a report from the Conservative Badger blog, which published an article by Milwaukee radio talk show host Mark Belling, who said he had learned that just 37 percent of the teachers had voted to reauthorize the union.
In a prepared statement, Kiriaki criticized the district for “promoting untrue information” to Belling.
Union chose to focus on other issues
Kiriaki said the union opted not to “jump through the hoops,” such as the recertification requirement, created by Act 10, the state’s relatively new law on collective bargaining.
The law, among other things required the annual re-certification of unions if they want to serve as bargaining representatives for teachers and other public workers. It also prohibits most public employees from negotiating all but base wages, limiting them to the rate of inflation.
Kiriaki cited a ruling by a Dane County Circuit Court judge on the constitutionality of Act 10, saying he believed it would be upheld.

Interestingly, Madison School District & Madison Teachers to Commence Bargaining. Far more important is addressing Madison’s long standing, disastrous reading results.
In my view, the unions that wish to serve their membership effectively going forward would be much better off addressing new opportunities, including charters, virtual, and dual enrollment services. The Minneapolis Teachers Union can authorize charters, for example.
Much more on Act 10, here.
A conversation with retired WEAC executive Director Morris Andrews.
The Frederick Taylor inspired, agrarian K-12 model is changing, albeit at a glacial pace. Madison lags in many areas, from advanced opportunities to governance diversity, dual enrollment and online opportunities. Yet we spend double the national average per student, funded by ongoing property tax increases.
An elected official recently remarked to me that “it’s as if Madison schools have been stuck in a bubble for the past 40 years”.

Bill Glauber:

ines helped spearhead the legal challenge against Act 10, which curtailed collective bargaining for most public sector workers. In a case involving Madison Teachers Inc. and Public Employees Local 61 in Milwaukee, a Dane County circuit judge struck down portions of the law.The case now goes to the state Supreme Court.
In another case involving Pines and Madison Teachers Inc., a Dane County judge struck down a portion of a law that gave Walker the power to veto rules written by the state schools superintendent. The case is now before the 4th District Court of Appeals in Madison.
Pines, representing the League of Women Voters, successfully argued in front of a Dane County judge that the state’s voter ID law violated the Wisconsin Constitution. The decision was overturned by the 4th District Court of Appeals, and the league has petitioned the Supreme Court to review the ruling. The voter ID measure remains on hold because of a ruling in a separate case.
“I believe that my law firm — because of the position we’re in and because of the work we’ve done — has disrupted the (Walker) agenda by using appropriate means and calling on the third equal branch of government (the court) to stop the majoritarian and authoritarian impulses of this Legislature,” he says.
The outcome of the cases is far from certain. But one thing is clear: Pines will keep up the fight.

Much more on Act 10, here.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Bettner email:

Base wages, in all MTI/MMSD Collective Bargaining Agreements, have not increased since the passage of Act 10 in 2011. Act 10 also removed the benefit for the members of all MTI bargaining units of the District paying the employee’s share of the mandated deposit in the Wisconsin Retirement System. This in itself caused a 6.2% reduction take-home wages. MTI had negotiated in the early 1970’s that the District pay the WRS deposit. This part of Act 10 caused a loss in earnings of $11.7 million last school year and another $12.9 million this school year for District employees.
All employees do not automatically move up on the salary schedule each year. Members of the clerical/technical bargaining unit, for example, receive a wage additive based on months of service. These “longevity” payments begin at the 49th month of service, with the next one beginning at the 80th month of service.
There are similar increments between the increases in longevity payments. Last year, 199 individuals remained at the same salary, while this year, there were 70 who received no increase in wage.
Members of the educational assistant and school security assistant bargaining units, for example, receive a longevity increase after three years of service, but not anotheroneuntilafter12yearsofservice. Lastyear,282 individuals remained at the same salary, while this year there were 321 who received no increase in wage.
The teachers’ salary schedule requires that a teacher earn six credits each four years and receive his/her principal’s recommendation to be able to cross the salary barrier. This is at each four-year improvement level. For incentive levels, beginning at level 16, one progresses only every two years, and then only if he/she earns three credits and receives his/her principal’s recommendation. Last year, 941 individuals remained at the same salary, while this year, there were 701 who received no increase in wage.

Related:

Madison Schools’ Budget Updates: Board Questions, Spending Through 3.31.2013, Staffing Plan Changes.

Bruce Vielmetti:

A group of veteran Neenah teachers has sued to restore early retirement benefits that could amount to $170,000 each.
The suit was expected since February, when the School Board denied a group of teachers’ demand to restore them to the original early retirement deal eliminated last year after Act 10.
The named plaintiffs are six “distinguished teachers,” but the suit, filed Monday in Winnebago County Circuit Court, seeks to represent a class including more than 250 teachers who had been eligible to participate in the former early retirement plan.
Their attorney, Charles Hertel, said Neenah Joint School District administrators used the plan for years to recruit teachers, and to induce them to accept lower-than-market salaries. Many teachers’ retirement planning was based on the expectations of the later payouts, he said.
The lawsuit asserts four claims: that the district must be held to promises on which teachers relied, that cutting the plan amounts to unjust enrichment for the district and negligent misrepresentation and strict responsibility.
The suit seeks compensatory damages, costs and enforcement of the retirement plan.

Retired High School Teacher Rose Locander:

The public schools in Wisconsin are some of the best in the country. Over the years, businesses have moved into this state knowing their employees will be able to feel confident sending their children to the local public schools.
What will happen as the years go by and the public schools in this state lose their ability to meet the expectations of excellence in education? Exactly what will attract businesses to this state when the public schools are no longer quality schools? Are we going to woo companies with the promise of our wonderful weather?
Too many of us have taken our public schools for granted. From early childhood through high school, we have become used to well-trained, dedicated teachers, quality educational programs, identification and early intervention of learning issues and a host of other resources found only in the public schools. We expect this of our public schools, but with Act 10, these opportunities that were of great value to all of our children will continue to disappear.

Related: www.wisconsin2.org

Erin Richards:

Unions actively reorienting themselves – even in states without Act 10-like legislation in place – are mobilizing teachers around curriculum and instruction issues. That could mean organizing teachers to champion what’s working best in the classroom by bringing new ideas to the school board, or working to get the community to support specific practices.
It means working more collaboratively, and offering solutions.
But collaboration can break down over ideological differences regarding what’s best for kids. Or teachers.
For example, while WEAC has supported a statewide evaluation system for educators in recent years, it has resisted emphasizing test scores in such evaluations. Others argue that robust data on test-score performance can say a lot about a teacher’s quality and should be used to make more aggressive decisions in termination or promotion.
Asking teachers to take a more active role in their union could also become an additional stress.

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter:

MTI’s September 14 Circuit Court victory, in which significant portions of Governor Walker’s union busting legislation (Act 10) were found to be unconstitutional, has gained world-wide attention.
Recognition has been noted twice in The Wall Street Journal, along with articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, in Great Britain, and numerous newspapers throughout Wisconsin. It has also been the subject of daily TV and radio coverage. Announcement of the decision received a standing ovation at the Fighting Bob Fest, and at the Osaka, Japan Social Forum. Public employees in Osaka are suffering from Act 10-like legislation.
MTI Executive Director John Matthews hailed Judge Colas’ decision as restoring the basic rights of collective bargaining to Wisconsin’s public employees. He said, “This is the ticket to restoring employees’ equal voice in the workplace, and the means of assuring justice for those not only represented by MTI, but by numerous other Wisconsin public sector unions.” MTI has requested that the Madison Metropolitan School District timely engage in collective bargaining with MTI to establish contract terms for MTI’s five (5) collective bargaining units, for the 2013-14 contract term.
The State has asked Judge Colas to stay (delay) implementation of his decision pending appeal.

Educators are waking up all over Madison this morn able to concentrate on students like it’s Jan 2011. It’s beautiful. #bargainingworks

— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) September 25, 2012

Fan of #publiced in Madison? Support students & educators? Email board@Madison.k12.wi.us. Tell them to bargain on Monday.

— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) September 23, 2012

Historically, teachers have appeared at school board meetings to urge action on this or that matter.

Pat Schneider:

CT: What about the training and capabilities of Madison school teachers and how they deliver in the classroom day to day — is there room for improvement there?
JM: Well, there’s always room for improvement — there’s room for improvement in what I do. I can only say that the Madison School District has invested all kinds of things in professional development. One thing teachers tell us if they have time to work together, they can make strides. I found early in my career if I’m having a teacher identified as having a performance problem, ask the principal who is the best at doing what they want this teacher to do. Then you go to that teacher and say: “You have a colleague who needs help, will you take them under your wing?” I don’t have access to any of what they talk about, management doesn’t have access to that — it’s been a remarkably successful venture.
CT: In discussion of the achievement gap in Madison I’ve heard from African-American parents up and down the economic spectrum who say that their children are met at school with low expectations that really hamper their performance.
JM: I’ve heard that too. The Madison School District has an agreed-upon mandatory cultural course that people have to take. But there are people in society who don’t like to be around other races. I don’t see that when teachers are together. And we have a variety of people who are leaders in MTI — either Asian or Indian or black — but there are people who have different expectations from people who are different from them.
CT: Does the union have a role in dealing with teachers whose lowered expectations of students of color might contribute to the achievement gap?
JM: The only time MTI would get involved is if somebody was being criticized for that, we’d likely be involved with that; if someone were being disciplined for that, we would be involved. We’ve not seen that.

Mike Ford:

In other words, MPS had a surplus of teachers because older teachers were not retiring so as not to lose state pension benefits. Hence, a second pension to offset any loss was created. However, since 1982 the early retirement penalty for teacher has been reduced or eliminated, turning the second pension into an additional benefit which MPS states it had “no intent to establish.”
The survival of the second pension long past its justifiable usefulness is a result of a collective bargaining process that rarely gives back established benefits (see, for example, MTEA’s 2011 rejection of concessions that would have saved teacher jobs). Former MPS superintendent Howard Fuller, school choice advocate George Mitchell, and former WPRI staffer Michael Hartman did a good job documenting in a 2000 book chapter (see figure one) the dramatic growth of the MPS/MTEA contract from an 18 page document in 1965 to a 232 page document in 1997. The most recent published contract? 258 pages.

Much more, here.

Steve Gunn, Victor Skinner:

Not so long ago, the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), the state’s largest teachers union, sported the motto, “Every child deserves a great school.”
The irony of that motto was not lost on school administrators, particularly in more recent years, as they struggled to balance budgets while local WEAC unions refused to accept financial concessions that would have helped maintain quality programming for students.
In school district after school district, layoffs have occurred, class sizes have increased and student programs have been cut, partially because many
unions refused to accept temporary pay freezes, or pay a bit more toward their own health insurance or pension costs.
This was happening all over the state, even before Gov. Scott Walker was elected and his biannual budget slowed the rate of state aid to schools.
The problem is not difficult to understand. Most public school administrators tell us they spend between 75-85 percent of their total budgets on labor costs, mostly for salaries and benefits for union teachers. If a budget crisis hits and spending cuts are needed, school boards will logically look at the biggest part of the budget.
But under the old collective bargaining system, local teachers unions had broad legal power to reject cuts in labor costs, and frequently did so. With 80 percent of the budget often untouchable, school boards had little choice but to cut from the 20 percent that has the most profound effect on students.
Something is definitely wrong with that picture, if you believe that schools exist primarily to benefit children.

MD Kittle:

While there is no disputing the divisiveness and political bitterness Act 10 has created, the law that redefined collective bargaining in Wisconsin has made a dramatic difference for the state’s financially struggling school districts, according to a report slated for release this week.
But superintendents tell Wisconsin Reporter they worry about the long-lasting emotional scars left by the contentious reform battle.
Wisconsin school districts have realized significant savings either through the implementation of collective bargaining changes or the threat of them, according to an analysis by the Michigan-based Education Action Group Foundation, known as EAG, a nonprofit research organization promoting school spending reform.
The pointed report, titled “The Bad Old Days of Collective Bargaining: Why Act 10 Was Necessary for Wisconsin Public Schools,” devotes plenty of its pages to applauding the collective bargaining reforms led by Republican Gov. Scott Walker, but it backs up the assertions with some telling numbers.

Alex Tabarrok:

In my 2011 book, Launching the Innovation Renaissance, I wrote:

At times, teacher pay in the United States seems more like something from Soviet-era Russia than 21st-century America. Wages for teachers are
low, egalitarian and not based on performance. We pay physical education teachers about the same as math teachers despite the fact that math teachers
have greater opportunities elsewhere in the economy. As a result, we have lots of excellent physical education teachers but not nearly enough excellent
math teachers. The teachers unions oppose even the most modest proposals to add measures of teacher quality to selection and pay decisions.

As I wrote, however, Wisconsin passed Act 10, a bill that discontinued collective bargaining over teachers’ salary schedules. Act 10 took power away from the labor unions and gave districts full autonomy to negotiate salaries with individual teachers. In a paper that just won the Best Paper published in AEJ: Policy in the last three years, Barbara Biasi studies the effect of Act 10 on salaries, effort and student achievement.

Compensation of most US public school teachers is rigid and solely based on seniority. This paper studies the effects of a reform that gave school districts in Wisconsin full autonomy to redesign teacher pay schemes. Following the reform some districts switched to flexible compensation. Using the expiration of preexisting collective bargaining agreements as a source of exogenous variation in the timing of changes in pay, I show that the introduction of flexible pay raised salaries of high-quality teachers, increased teacher quality (due to the arrival of high-quality teachers from other districts and increased effort), and improved student achievement.

We still have a long way to go but COVID, homeschooling and open-access voucher programs have put a huge dent in the power of the teacher’s unions. There is now a chance to bring teacher pay into the American model. Moreover, such a model is pro-teacher! Not every district in Wisconsin grasped the opportunity to reform teacher pay but those districts that did raised pay considerably. Appleton district, for example, instituted pay for performance, Oshkosh did not. Prior to the Act salaries were about the same in the two districts:

After the expiration of the CBAs, the same teacher could earn up to $68,000 in Appleton, and only between $39,000 and $43,000 in Oshkosh.

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Wisconsin’s Act 10, Flexible Pay, and the Impact on Teacher Labor Markets: Student test scores rise in flexible-pay districts. So does a gender gap for teacher compensation.

If not to teacher salaries, where is this money going?

More on Act 10 and the related Milwaukee pension scandal.

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More. “Important insights into the impact of flexibility in teacher pay schemes on student outcomes.”

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The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Mitchell Schmidt:

The Legislature argues Act 20 is the mechanism that empowers the state’s GOP-controlled budget committee to directly fund the literacy programs with dollars already approved in the state’s biennial budget, which Evers signed last summer. The committee has not yet allocated the $50 million in state funds.

“Act 100, as passed by the Legislature, does not set aside, authorize, or require the expenditure of any funds,” the lawsuit states. “Instead, it allows (the budget committee) to move the $50 million appropriated and earmarked in the budget bill to DPI.”

Because the bill was improperly vetoed, the budget committee cannot allocate the funds set aside in the budget for DPI’s new literacy programs, attorneys continue.

A memo from legislative attorneys notes the legislation “creates appropriations” for DPI’s new literacy office created under Act 20.

In a partial veto message to SB 971 on Feb. 29, Evers wrote that he struck portions of the bill because he objected to “overly complicating the allocation of funding related to literacy programs in Wisconsin by creating multiple appropriations for what could be accomplished with one.”

The governor also noted that he removed from the bill a “proposed appropriation structure” that would have repealed spending in 2028. Evers said the change creates additional flexibility “to invest in literacy programs for as long as the state has funding available and as long as decisionmakers invest in improving reading instruction in Wisconsin.”

Evers also wrote that he objected to signing a bill “with an apparent error” that specifically benefits private choice and independent charter schools by allowing those entities to be eligible for both grant funding and an ongoing increase in per pupil aid.

“As drafted, either intentionally or inadvertently, these entities could also receive an increase in per pupil funding because the bill does not contain standard provisions to exclude the newly created categorical appropriation from the indexing formula used to increase per pupil payments for private choice, independent charter, Special Needs Scholarship, and open enrollment students,” Evers wrote.

“Consequently, a private choice or independent charter school could receive both a grant for curriculum and an ongoing increase in per pupil funding,” the governor continued. “Contrastingly, no such funding increase would be provided to public school districts under the bill.”

The lawsuit is the second this week challenging the governor’s partial veto power.

Lawsuit PDF.

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Corrinne Hess:

Evers’ partial veto, known as Act 100,  struck language allocating  money for school boards and charter school compliance in the early literacy program.

The lawsuit argues the changes “will allow DPI to treat any money directed to it as money that can be used by the Office of Literacy for any literacy program that office deems fit.”

On March 7, DPI submitted a request to the legislature to release the funds set aside in the biennial budget in accordance with the partially vetoed version of Act 100.

Lawyers argue the Joint Finance Committee “can’t be assured the money will be specifically spent on literacy programs created in Act 20.” 

“Instead, any money directed for that purpose might (but should not) be treated by DPI as well as its Office of Literacy as a blank check to do as it pleases, believing that it is under no statutory obligation to fund either a literacy coaching program or the grant program to offset the cost of purchasing new literacy curriculum,” the lawsuit states. 

Commentary. More.

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Then Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Evers use of teacher mulligans to evade the Foundations of Reading early literacy content knowledge requirements (see also MTEL).

Leglislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

Committee to unleash prosperity:

The firm Cover & Rossiter (certified public accountants) has estimated that the tax code and the regulations now total 35 million words. That’s more than 6 times as many words as War and Peace, the Bible, the entire Harry Potter series, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Les Miserables, the Hunger Games series, Atlas Shrugged, the Twilight series, Gone with the Wind, and The Brothers Karamazov – combined.

And those were interesting readings. Can we PLEASE get a flat tax?

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More.

Interesting take by Will Flanders of WILL on WISN this morn: DPI head Jill Underly could have easily (and more honestly) spun the new study as ‘WI is doing better in retaining teachers than other states’.
Instead, she spun out an attack on ACT 10 and underfunded schools.

Wisconsin Institute for law of liberty:

Recently, Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction released a report on the teacher shortage in the state.  The report claims that nearly 40% of teachers leave the profession within the first five years, and blames declines in teacher compensation over the past decade for the shift.  While the problems identified in the report are legitimate, the causes and solutions offered are more representative of traditional liberal talking points than an honest effort to make improvements for the teaching workforce in the state.  In this explainer, we identify a number of issues with DPI’s report. 

Consistent with National Patterns 

Despite attempts to blame Act 10 for the decline in teacher retention, in reality this is a problem around the county. Indeed, based on the numbers reported by DPI, Wisconsin may actually be better than average. A 2018 study estimated that 44% of teachers nationwide leave the profession within five years  And this data was pre-COVID–there is extensive evidence that turnover has increased since then.  To illustrate this, consider a recent Chalkbeat analysis looked at teachers leaving the profession across four states.  Each of these states saw an annual turnover rate of more than 10% during the 2022 school year.   A figure from that report is reproduced below. 

Figure 1. Annual Teacher Turnover in Four States (Chalkbeat) 
——

Rep. Barbara Dittrich:

I have supported getting more teachers in the classroom, but several of our efforts (including my bill with Sen. Knodl, SB 608) have been vetoed. Let’s hope we can work together in more constructive ways next session.

———

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Will Flanders and Corrinne Hess:

It is true that total teacher compensation has declined since 2010, but more nuance is needed.

1) A significant portion of that decline is in fringe benefits, which Act 10 mandated teachers contribute to as most all private sector employees must. (1/2)

Quinton Klabon:

This is true, but here are my 4 quick analyses.

1. Teacher supply has gone up, which pushes pay down. We have 1,805 more teachers than 2010 but 48,458 fewer students. The same ratio as “the good, old days” would free up funds to give every teacher a $5,368 raise.

Sarah Shaffer:

Coming together around the question ​“What could we win together?” this broad cross section of Minnesota’s working class decided to go on the offensive, developing a set of guiding principles over months, made possible in turn by years of relationship building through street uprisings and overlapping crises.

Shortly after we spoke that day, Villanueva and her colleagues felt that collective power manifest: reaching a tentative agreement with their employers after months of bargaining. The strike they’d authorized to begin March 4 would not be necessary: they won a 17% increase in base pay, an improved healthcare plan, more paid time off, and their first-ever paid holidays on Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

The next day, the building security workers who were negotiating nearby on the same property, also reached an agreement, one that included pay raises of up to 27%, employer-paid 401Ks, and a Juneteenth paid holiday. 

This broad cross section of Minnesota’s working class decided to go on the offensive, developing a set of guiding principles over months, made possible in turn by years of relationship building through street uprisings and overlapping crises.

What is happening in the Twin Cities could be a powerful model for the working class everywhere: a movement ecosystem whose members show up in deep solidarity across differences, that thinks strategically and builds for the long term while maximizing its current power. That understands workers are also renters, neighbors, people who want a livable city and climate — and that they can exponentially amplify their power by acting together. 

“We have learned over and over again,” Local 26President Greg Nammacher explained, “when we try and push for justice in each of our own separate lanes, we are not as successful as if we push for justice together across our different organizations.” 

——-

Act 10.

The Milwaukee pension scandal and political implications.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

AJ Bayatpour

As MPS (Milwaukee Public Schools) asks taxpayers for $252 million in April, I asked Supt. Keith Posley about national testing data (NAEP) that show Milwaukee 4th graders have been scoring worse than the average big city district for more than a decade.

—-

and:

For reference, 10 points is about the equivalent for one year’s worth of learning. In 2022, Milwaukee was 20 points lower than the average big city district in 4th grade reading and math results. The gap has worsened over the last decade:

——

Plus:

When the media reports that spending in MPS has “fallen far behind inflation,” they are cherry-picking one year of data to make the claim: pre-Great Recession. Real $ over time has largely kept up with inflation, and districts saved billions with Act 10.

More:

This is an interesting outtake from @CBS58’s Milwaukee Public Schools referendum story!

In contrast, here is Miami’s former superintendent in 2015, post-recession, in the midst of making Miami America’s best big district, closing gaps, spending $7,500 less per child than MPS.

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Patrick Mcilheran

Wisconsin’s largest school district is planning to ask its voters to approve a $252 million annual increase in its revenue — and, consequently, spending — in an upcoming referendum.

That district, Milwaukee Public Schools, has seen a sharp increase in spending in the two most recent years of state data after nearly a decade of spending that mostly kept up with but did not exceed inflation.

That, in turn, followed years of steady increases in spending above the rate of inflation and, then, coinciding with the Walker-era Act 10 reforms that coupled a cut in state school aid with tools to allow districts to save money on benefits costs, a sharp drop in spending.

MPS’ referendum is set for April 2. It will ask voters whether MPS can exceed its “revenue limit” permanently. The increase would phase in over four years, starting with what MPS says would be $140 million in new annual revenue in the 2024-25 school year and ramping up to $252 million a year by 2027-28.

District officials say that state funding is inadequate because it has not kept pace with inflation.

Rob Manning:

In case you hadn’t noticed, teacher strikes are back. 

This past fall, Portland teachers went out on a strike that canceled 11 school days and stretched the capacity, knowledge, and patience of my team in unprecedented ways.

The Newton, Mass. teachers were the latest — the fifth recent strike in the state. 

As an education editor, teachers strikes are something you may be called on to cover. 

As with anything, there are better and worse ways to go about it. 

——

Related: Act 10

WEAC: $1.57M for four state senators.

David Blaska:

Here in Madison, the proponents of one-size-fits-all government monopoly schooling are rewriting history to cover their misdeeds. The occasion was the recent passing of barely remembered Daniel Nerad, superintendent of Madison public schools between 2008 and 2012.  

Capital Times publisher Paul Fanlund marvels that the same problems that beset Nerad a dozen years ago plague the city’s public schools today — those being a yawning racial achievement gap and disparate disciplinary problems. Indeed, the numbers have not budged. Only 8% of the district’s black students can read and write at grade, compared to 64% of white students. 

Back in 2011, nationally renowned education reformer Kaleem Caire offered Madison an escape hatch — a charter school called Madison Prep that would hold longer school days on an almost year-round calendar and suffer no race-shaming excuses. But the school board sent him packing.

Today, former school board president Ed Hughes, incredibly, blames Scott Walker’s Act 10 for supposedly tying the district’s hands because, Fanlund quotes Hughes to say:

“The district could not as a practical matter alter the collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union.” 

We’re still paying for MTI’s self interest

—-

2011: On the 5-2 Madison School Board No (Cole, Hughes, Moss, Passman, Silveira) Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School Vote (Howard, Mathiak voted Yes)

——

Meanwhile, decades go by….

——

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Patrick Mcilheran:

Huge taxpayer savings are at risk, but beyond that is the question of who controls government, voters or organizers

The unions’ lawsuit to overturn Act 10, Wisconsin’s 2011 labor reform, isn’t primarily about money.

Money is involved. When the Legislature and then-Gov. Scott Walker took away most of the control that public employee unions exerted over state and local governments, they said it was to arrest overspending by reducing employee benefit costs.

AP

Seven unions representing teachers and other public workers in Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Thursday attempting to end the state’s near-total ban on collective bargaining for most public employees.

The 2011 law, known as Act 10, has withstood numerous legal challenges over the past dozen years and was the signature legislative achievement of former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who used it to mount a presidential run.

The latest lawsuit is the first since the Wisconsin Supreme Court flipped to liberal control in August. But it was filed in a county circuit court — unlike other major cases that have gone directly to the Supreme Court since its ideological shift — and will likely take more than a year to make its way up for a final ruling.

The Act 10 law effectively ended collective bargaining for most public unions by allowing them to bargain solely over base wage increases no greater than inflation. It also disallowed the automatic withdrawal of union dues, required annual recertification votes for unions, and forced public workers to pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits.

Andrew Bahl:

The decision to file the case in Dane County court means it could be months or longer before it winds up before the state Supreme Court, if the high court even decides to take the case.

In March, Protasiewicz told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she believed Act 10 was unconstitutional but also said she might recuse herself after signing a petition to recall Walker over the issue.

Without Protasiewicz, the court could deadlock at 3-3 on the issue, raising questions about what the outcome of the case might be.

——-

WILL:

WILL President and General Counsel Rick Esenberg, stated, “For the better part of the last 12 years, no piece of legislation has loomed larger in public policy debates in Wisconsin than Act 10, the collective bargaining reform law passed in 2011. The ‘Budget Repair Bill,’ introduced by Governor Scott Walker in the first weeks of his first term, represented a fundamental break with the past and a new era for state and local governments in the Badger State and the country. Since then, WILL has been on the forefront of examining the impact of Act 10 on education, the teaching workforce, and puncturing the myths that persist about the law. Now with a new lawsuit, we stand ready to defend the law in the court of law and in the court of public opinion. Because make no mistake, an end to Act 10 would have a devastating effect on the budgets of school districts, municipalities, and Wisconsin’s overall fiscal stability.”

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Scott Girard:

“Wisconsin’s Teacher Pay Predicament,” published today by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum, says it’s likely to get more challenging for districts to match the rising cost of living, even as many of the largest school systems gave out record wage increases ahead of the 2023-24 school year.

That includes the Madison Metropolitan School District, which gave staff an 8% increase in base wages — the largest allowed by the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. School Board members and Madison Teachers Inc. said it was necessary to keep employees amid an ongoing teacher shortage.

“After years of declines in real wages, teachers and public school advocates may welcome the recent raises for school staff, but the increases also leave a difficult path ahead for district finances,” the Policy Forum report notes.

The nonprofit’s report finds that in 2009, the median gross teacher pay was at $51,069. In 2023, that had risen to $59,250 — but that was over $8,000 less than what it would have been if tied to inflation.

The Forum suggests there are a mix of factors at play, including the exodus of experienced teachers in 2012 after the Legislature and then-Gov. Scott Walker passed Act 10, which limited union collective bargaining rights. Teachers who left their jobs were largely replaced by younger, lower-paid teachers, which reduced the median salaries.

“With Wisconsin teachers leaving the public school classroom at an average annual rate of 8% from 2009 to 2023, this factor has likely held down salaries,” the report states, and adds that “constraints in district spending and in actual increases in teacher salary also clearly impacted these numbers.”

Wisconsin Policy Forum

Other factors either cushioned or exacerbated this impact. Act 10 required teachers to pay greater health care and pension contributions, which limited staff compensation but helped balance school budgets. Starting in 2016, school districts increasingly turned to referenda asking voters to increase local property taxes beyond their revenue limits.

Declining student enrollment, however, has further tightened the limits for districts over these years. In particular, the decrease in student enrollment (-5.8% from 2009 to 2023) occurred without a decrease in the number of teachers (+0.3% over the same time period), leaving some districts stretching fewer overall dollars than they would otherwise have across largely static personnel

———

Teachers should be well paid and address things like the Foundations of Reading. Massachusetts increased compensation when implementing MTEL.

Madison K-12 healthcare $pending.

Also, union fees are not mentioned.

Related:

The world’s third-richest person, worth roughly $161 billion according to Forbes, will also ditch Washington State’s hefty taxes, likely saving him billions of dollars over the long term, according to securities filings, tax lawyers and accounting experts.

People will use this to argue for more public-school spending. But the reality is we spend more on schools in real dollars than we did in 2000. What has happened to teacher pay is what has happened to all of us-massive inflation under @JoeBiden https://t.co/3otkibbXz0

— Will Flanders (@WillFlandersWI) November 30, 2023

Ameillia Wedward:

Janet Protasiewicz’ recent confirmation as a member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court earlier this month has conservatives worried about the possible end of a decade of conservative reforms, from Act 10 to voter ID laws. But another concern receiving less attention is the prospect of challenges to Wisconsin’s school choice programs.

School choice has stood against challenges in the past, but now that it’s at stake in state court, taxpayer dollars are on the line.

While there are several cases and laws that reaffirm Wisconsin’s choice programs from a religious angle — and Wisconsin’s own governor signed into law increases to choice earlier this summer — the current concern is that school choice will face scrutiny from a financial standpoint: Can the state fund both school choice and public schools simultaneously?

Currently, under the Wisconsin constitution, local funds must be used for local schools. Although the state finances the choice program, when a student leaves the public school system to participate, the state subtracts that pupil’s funding from their respective district, which then has to make up the revenue loss by increasing property taxes. In other words, to fund both systems, taxpayers end up paying twice: once to fund the school choice program and again to pay the district’s tax hikes.

Some have argued that this violates the state constitutional requirement that property taxes fund “common schools.” But concerns like this ignore a plausible funding mechanism that could appease school choice and public school advocates alike while sparing the taxpayer’s wallet. By decoupling private choice funding from property taxes and funding students instead, the state could reduce costs for local taxpayers. Under a decoupling plan, students that use school choice would be financed fully by the state, and all property tax implications would be removed.

This isn’t a new idea. By the 2024-25 school year, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program will be funded directly via the state. By the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty’s conservative estimations — before the new law and under the old voucher amount — if the state followed the same model, decoupling would cut property taxes over $168 million statewide.

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Patrick Mcilheran

Among the winks and nudges offered by Janet Protasiewicz on her way to the Supreme Court was that Act 10, the Gov. Scott Walker labor reforms, are toast.

Fist holding different denominations of US currency against a blue background.
“I marched at the Capitol in protest of Act 10,” she said.

Would she appropriately sit out a relitigation?

“Maybe.”

Wink, wink.

Democrat-friendly media spelled out that this isn’t just about public-sector unions at issue in Act 10, but a raft of policies that includes “an anti-union right-to-work law,” as a New York Times columnist put it.

Only 7.1% of Wisconsin employees are union members nowadays. But given how progressives, soon in majority on the Supreme Court, apparently see it as a free-range editor of laws they don’t like, Wisconsinites’ legal ability to be uninterested in joining a union is endangered. So what are unions like?

Let’s look to the federal agency they more or less own, the Department of Labor, which has an online primer, “Unions 101.” Across the screen is the welcoming portrait of the labor secretary and a line of people — all brandishing fists. As everyone saw during the 2011 progressive freakout over Act 10, unions love fist imagery. The thug vibe isn’t a stereotype; it’s branding.

Notes and links on act 10.

Elizabeth Beyer:

The Madison School Board voted 6-1 in June to adopt the district’s $561.3 million preliminary budget for next school year, which included the 3% base wage increase.

Negotiations began in May with MTI requesting the 4.7% increase — the annual inflationary amount and the maximum allowed in bargaining under state law. The district offered a 2% increase — not including additional wage increases tied to experience and educational attainment, known as steps and lanes.

In the budget adopted by the district in June, that base wage increase offered by the district had grown to 3% for all staff through bargaining, along with a 2% increase specifically tied to experience and educational attainment for teachers.

Scott Girard:

The salary schedule change must occur through the Employee Handbook revision process, which is technically a unilateral decision by the School Board. The district and MTI have a committee to “meet and confer” on potential Handbook changes, but it is not considered a bargaining session, and therefore allowed under Act 10.

“Since Act 10, MMSD has voluntarily participated in meet-and-confer collaboration with MTI,” Oppenheimer wrote. “Only in the last few years has MMSD begun to circumvent the meet-and-confer process for resolving issues outside the scope of legal bargaining.”

LeMonds said in a phone interview Wednesday afternoon that the district believed it needs to finalize the base wage increase to avoid “bargaining” on the Employee Handbook change as the two wage changes become conflated.

“​​We can’t do those simultaneously because it gets pulled into the negotiation,” LeMonds said. “The negotiated piece, which is base wage, has to be finalized before we can move on to that.”

District general legal counsel Sherry Terrell-Webb told board members that Wednesday’s vote “officially closes out negotiations on base wage,” and suggested that the administration could now prepare a recommendation for the board on the salary schedules.

“I know some believe that we should have continued negotiating with MTI,” Terrell-Webb said. “However, because the board has indicated that 3% was its best and final offer, to continue to negotiate knowing that we would not be able to make a change to this offer could be considered negotiating in bad faith.”

The board also approved the “steps and lanes” increases at Wednesday’s meeting, which reward staff for longevity and educational attainment. That amounts to a 2% increase for the average employee, the district says, but MTI has pointed out that it means zero increase for some.

In recent years, the district has either agreed to the maximum increase early or waited until closer to the final budget approval to get board approval for the change.

In 2019, the district included an increase up to 1.5% in its preliminary budget in June but continued negotiating with MTI. In a September vote ahead of the final budget approval in October, the board increased it to the maximum 2.44%.

In 2020 and 2021, the final base wage increase offer vote took place in October and September, respectively. In three prior years — 2016, 2017 and 2018 — base wage approval came earlier, but it was at the maximum allowed percentage under law.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Scott Girard:

While there is a large influx of federal COVID-19 relief funding, officials have expressed hesitancy at using that one-time money for ongoing operational costs like salaries.

“You’re going to hear no argument from us that our teachers and our staff deserve better,” LeMonds said at one of MTI’s rallies in May. “The fiscal reality is, we are looking at a very regressive state budget and it has put us in a position where — I know our superintendent has mentioned this on several occasions — we’re needing to choose between what is right and what is right.”

Many other districts in the state, however, have already agreed to the 4.7% number, including the other four districts that along with MMSD make up the “big five” largest districts.

MTI has also asked for a $5 an hour increase in the salary schedule for special education assistants and school security assistants, who are hourly employees. That salary schedule is part of the Employee Handbook, which has changes approved by the School Board.

It cannot, however, be directly negotiated between MTI and MMSD under Act 10, which limited the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions.

Officials indicated during a discussion earlier this month, however, that they were looking to find some increase, with the full $5 an hour increase estimated to cost about $3.3 million.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Alexander Shur:

The company insured the vast majority of school districts before former Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 in 2011 blocked unions from negotiating over benefits, which led school districts to shop for cheaper alternatives, resulting in a stark revenue loss for the company. Conservatives heralded the change, saying it saved school districts tens of millions of dollars around the state.

“For years taxpayers across the state were getting a raw deal,” Walker said in a 2012 press release. “Collective bargaining stymied competition for benefits in the health insurance market, and instead directed property tax revenue to those affiliated with big government union bosses,” adding taxpayers were saving millions with the changes he enacted.

WEA Trust has since expanded to cover state, county and municipal workers.

WEA Trust spokesperson Steve Lyons said Act 10 had nothing to do with the company’s decision to pull out of the health insurance market in Wisconsin.

2014: 25.62% of Madison’s budget to be spent on benefits.

Charles Mitchell and Scott Walker:

The goal of Act 10 was to remove unfair powers wielded by government union executives over state budgets, education policy, and politics.

A recent study from the Commonwealth Foundation found that Act 10 saved Wisconsin taxpayers nearly $7 billion in 2018. Other analyses from a free-market think tank in Wisconsin suggested it helped resolve a $3.6 billion deficit without raising taxes, while the savings produced by Act 10 enabled future tax cuts that helped create 42,000 new jobs — including 20,000 jobs in manufacturing. Thanks to the reduced influence of government unions over state education policies, the number of low-income children benefiting from Wisconsin’s school choice program has increased nearly thirtyfold, to almost 15,000 students.

“As seen in Wisconsin, where public-sector labor reform leads, prosperity follows.”Charles Mitchell and Scott Walkernone

Pennsylvania and other similarly situated states could benefit from following Wisconsin’s example. The Keystone State has more government union workers than any other state except California, New York, and Illinois. Most of these workers lose a chunk of their paychecks each month to pay union executives who often prioritize a political agenda ahead of the workers they claim to represent. And look at what those government unions are achieving: Pennsylvania has the country’s fourth-highest unemployment rate and the second-highest business tax rate, while ranking 45th in economic performance.

As was the case in Wisconsin before Act 10, government unions are the largest campaign contributors in Pennsylvania. Since 2007, these groups have spent more than $150 million on politics, with 90% of campaign contributions going toward Pennsylvania Democrats. These government unions lobby for more government spending, against reforming the state’s pension system, for a government-run liquor monopoly, and against educational options for children and families.

Pennsylvania is not alone. A recent analysis showed that during the last academic year, the nation’s largest teachers’ union spent more on politics than on representing its own members.

Those interested in the rise of Scott Walker might find the Milwaukee County Pension Scandal illuminating.

Jackie Mader:

First grade in particular — “the reading year,” as Miller calls it — is pivotal for elementary students. Kindergarten focuses on easing children from a variety of educational backgrounds — or none at all — into formal schooling. In contrast, first grade concentrates on moving students from pre-reading skills and simple math, like counting, to more complex skills, like reading and writing sentences and adding and subtracting numbers.

By the end of first grade in Texas, students are expected to be able to mentally add or subtract 10 from any given two-digit number, retell stories using key details and write narratives that sequence events. The benchmarks are similar to those used in the more than 40 states that, along with the District of Columbia, adopted the national Common Core standards a decade ago.

“They really grow as readers in first grade, and writers,” Miller said. “It’s where they build their confidence in their fluency.”

But about half of Miller’s class of first graders at Doss Elementary, a spacious, bright, newly built school in northwest Austin, spent kindergarten online. Some were among the tens of thousands of children who sat out kindergarten entirely last year.

More than a month into this school year, Miller found she was spending extensive time on social lessons she used to teach in kindergarten, like sharing and problem-solving. She stopped class repeatedly to mediate disagreements. Finally, she resorted to an activity she used to do in kindergarten: role-playing social scenarios, like what to do if someone accidentally trips you.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Aaron Churchill, via a kind reader:

Many teachers are paid according to salary schedules that reward seniority and degrees earned, the result of state laws that require school districts to follow this rigid compensation scheme. Unfortunately, this method fails to acknowledge other factors that legitimately should influence teachers’ wages, including their classroom effectiveness, professional responsibilities, or demand for their labor.

But what if these constraints were loosened, so that school leaders could pay teachers in a more flexible way? A recent study by Yale University’s Barbara Biasi looks at what happened in Wisconsin after lawmakers passed reforms via Act 10 in 2011 that allowed districts to ditch the traditional salary schedule and adopt flexible pay policies. Roughly half of Wisconsin’s districts leveraged these new autonomies to negotiate salaries with each employee, much like many businesses do. The other half maintained a traditional seniority- and credentials-based salary schedule that applied to all teachers.

Her analysis reveals several eye-opening findings about the Wisconsin districts that switched to a flexible pay structure. These districts:

Offered higher salaries to early career teachers. To give an example, Green Bay—a flexible pay district, post Act 10—paid teachers with less than five years of experience anywhere between $42,000 and $55,000 per year. In contrast, Madison, a district that stuck with a traditional salary schedule, set salaries for less experienced teachers within a narrower range of around $38,000 to $45,000. The higher salary ceiling in flexible pay districts allowed them to attract talented early career teachers (see next point).

Attracted high-performing teachers, especially younger ones. Flexible pay districts drew teachers with significantly higher value-added scores, especially among those with less experience. The same was not true for traditional pay districts. They didn’t experience an influx of highly effective teachers. The analysis also indicates that teachers with lower value-added scores were more likely to exit flexible pay districts. Due to these entrances and exits, flexible pay districts saw an increase in the overall quality of their instructional staff.

Rewarded instructional quality. In flexible pay districts, a one standard deviation increase in teachers’ value-added scores was associated with a 0.4 to 0.7 percent higher salary. No such correlation between wages and value-added existed among traditional pay districts. Even though Wisconsin districts didn’t receive value-added scores during this time period—those were calculated by the author—they were still able to identify quality teachers and modestly boost their pay.

Increased performance among all teachers in the district. In addition to improvements linked to teacher mobility, the new compensation structure incentivized higher performance among all educators in the district. After the switch to flexible pay, the average value-added score of teachers in flexible pay districts rose more rapidly than in traditional pay districts. The prospect of higher wages under a system that rewards performance and effort, rather than longevity, could explain those results.

Moved the needle on student achievement. Given all this, it’s not surprising to see students reaping the benefits. In Wisconsin’s flexible pay districts, student achievement on state exams rose by 0.06 and 0.05 standard deviations in reading and math, respectively—which, according to the author, is equivalent to about one-third of the effect of class size reductions. In traditional pay districts, however, achievement was flat. The bottom line, as Biasi puts it: “These tests indicate that changes in the composition and effort of teachers in flexible pay districts following the change in pay schemes led to a sizable increase in students’ test scores.”

Will Flanders:

Governor Tony Evers’ 2021-23 budget includes a Christmas tree for teachers unions in the form of higher spending and no requirements to get kids back into the classroom. But it also represents a renewed assault on the state’s high-performing school choice and charter programs. Below are three school choice takeaways from the governor’s budget proposal.   

Enrollment Caps on Choice Programs  

The budget proposal includes an enrollment cap on all of Wisconsin’s school choice programs—Milwaukee, Racine and statewide. These programs serve students whose families are low-income—under 300% of the federal poverty limit in Milwaukee and Racine and under 220% of the limit statewide. The cap would begin in fiscal year 2023, using the enrollment from the 2022 school year. While an enrollment cap can sound innocuous, the practical effect would be to prevent additional students from accessing the program. Make no mistake: this freeze would make the programs unviable for many schools that participate.     

Currently, enrollment in the statewide program (Wisconsin Parental Choice Program) is capped at 5% of district enrollment. This number is set to increase by 1% per year until the caps come off in 2025, when the programs reach 10% of district enrollment. Setting an enrollment cap next year would limit choice enrollment to 6% of district enrollment. This would make it impossible for school choice to flourish like it has in Milwaukee, where many schools exist to primarily to serve low-income students who would not otherwise be able to afford private schooling.   

Parents clearly want educational options. Enrollment in the statewide program has grown from 499 students in 2013-14 to 11,740 students this year—an increase of more than 2200% over just eight years. This is likely because school choice has a track record of improving outcomes. WILL’s annual Apples to Apples study has found higher achievement on the Forward Exam for students in the state’s choice programs relative to traditional public schools, a finding that is supported by national data. This provision can be seen as little else than protecting public school enrollment counts.   

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When asked about Act 10, I often suggest that interested parties explore the Milwaukee pension scandal. Successful recall elections lead to the first Republican County Executive in many, many years – Scott Walker.

A few links, just before Act 10 require contemplation, as well.

2009 “an emphasis on adult employment” – retired Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman, speaking at the Madison Rotary Club..

2010, WEAC: Four (State) Senators for $1.57 million (!)

Libby Sobic:

1. The recent referendum will not be enough to prevent serious fiscal issues in the next five years.

Milwaukee voters approved an $87 million annual operational referendum in April. Despite an existing annual budget of over $1 billion and the recent referendum, MPS (Milwaukee Public Schools) is still projected to have a $139.4 million annual deficit and $304 million in accumulated debt by 2024 in school operations alone.

2. The board is expanding pension benefits amid financial uncertainty.

The board approved the extension of the district’s Early Retirement Window, which gives any employee of the district, both teachers and other district staff, hired before 2013 access to early retirement at age 55 if they have 20 years of service and at least 70% of sick time reserved. The program will require the district to pay board subsidies to retired employees while also paying new employees to fill the positions.

This program was part of the district’s pension benefits to employees prior to the implementation of Act 10, but the program was eliminated in 2013. The board reinitiated the program in 2017. Between 2017 and 2019, 889 employees were eligible to utilize the Early Retirement Window, but only 31% actually retired.

Related: Tax base and government income decline.

Scott Girard:

Madison Teachers Inc. has filed a complaintagainst the Madison Metropolitan School District related to a survey sent out to staff last week.

The Prohibited Practice Complaint was filed Monday with the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission and seeks an immediate cease and desist of the survey and asks that the district be made to destroy any records related to the responses before reviewing them.

The survey was only two questions long, but one of those questions asked staff how they would prefer the district deal with an anticipated $5 million to $9 million in additional budget cuts for the 2020-21 school year. The two options were to freeze most compensation increases currently in the budget, including base wage, or to eliminate 92 full-time equivalent positions while keeping wage increases intact.

Related:

Act 10

Four Senators for $1.57M

“An emphasis on adult employment“.

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Logan Wroge:

Madison’s teachers union is shifting its stance on school-based police officers and is now advocating they be taken out of the city’s main high schools — but only if 33 additional support staff are hired.

In a statement Sunday, Madison Teachers Inc. said it backs the removal of school resource officers, or SROs, stationed inside each of the Madison School District’s four main high schools — a move local activists have demanded of the district for years.

“We see the systematic racism that exists in our current structures and join the voices of our students and our community in calling for dramatic change in how we educate and interact with all of our students, especially those most marginalized in our schools and society,” MTI president Andy Waity said in the statement.

The major caveat, though, is MTI will only support the removal if certain positions at the four main high schools are staffed at recommended levels by the American Civil Liberties Union.

According to MTI, achieving those levels at each high school based on the ACLU’s “metric of equitable staffing” would require additional hires of:

One counselor, one nurse, one psychologist and four social workers for East.

One counselor, one nurse, one psychologist and five social workers for La Follette.

Two counselors, one nurse, one psychologist and five social workers for Memorial.

One counselor, one nurse and seven social workers for West.

“If we remove police officers from our schools, but do not adequately staff those same schools with social workers, nurses, counselors, and psychologists, we are perpetuating harm upon our most vulnerable young people,” the statement said.

2005: Gangs & School Violence Forum audio / video.

Related:

Act 10

Four Senators for $1.57M

“An emphasis on adult employment“.

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Logan Wroge:

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Health insurance costs have long been an issue in the Madison School District.

Administrators warned that benefits were unsustainable in 2014.

Steven Malanga:

Government-union membership fell again in 2019, continuing a decade-long decline. Workers in public-sector unions now number 7.066 million, representing a drop of nearly 100,000 in one year and the smallest government-organized labor membership in 20 years. Since 2009, when the ranks of government-union members peaked at 7.896 million, public-labor groups have lost more than 10 percent of their membership. The percentage of government workers belonging to unions has dropped to 33.6, the smallest proportion of the government workforce since 1978. The most recent numbers illustrate how government unions continue to suffer from the hangover of the recession of 2008-2009, in part because of a slow rebound in government employment during the economic expansion that began in 2010. The numbers may also reflect some losses that unions have suffered in the wake of the 2018 Supreme Court Janus decision, which gave public-sector workers the right to opt out of joining a union or paying fees.

The trends are particularly ominous for public unions because 2019 should have been the year that they started bouncing back. In the tenth year of an economic expansion, state tax and local collections grew robustly, increasing by 9 percent in the second quarter and 5.6 percent in the third quarter, according to government surveys. States and municipalities subsequently hired more workers. The number of local government employees, for instance, jumped by nearly 100,000 in 2019, to 14.573 million. But these gains haven’t translated into increases in union membership, particularly in municipal government, the largest segment of public-sector employment. The total government workforce in America has returned to its pre-financial crash levels, but union headcount has failed to follow suit.

Related: Act 10.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Mike Antonucci:

With 310,000 members, more than 400 employees and $200 million in annual revenue, the California Teachers Association is a large-scale enterprise. It wields great influence at the statehouse, but its presence is felt in the smallest communities throughout the state. Nothing happens in education or fiscal policy without a CTA hand in it.

We have fundamental knowledge of how the organization is run and what it believes, but we can still find some surprises as we dig through the mammoth 497-page CTA Organizational Handbook. We have embedded it here, but it’s not something you’ll keep on your nightstand. I’ll hit a few highlights.

The path to Wisconsin Act 10.

Wisconsin State Journal: