Legislation to force teachers may be in the offing
The Chicago Teachers Union is voting on returning to classrooms beginning as early as this week. Madison’s public schools? Not a budge.
Blaska last week proposed withholding state aid for every day a school district does not make in-classroom education available to all its students as of a date certain. State Sen. Steve Nass is said to be trying to interest other Republican legislators in penalizing public schools, like Madison’s, that refuse to reopen for in-classroom education.
“Steve is working with other members to do exactly what you suggest,” his chief of staff told the Werkes. “The problem is too many Republicans are not wanting to pick that fight because they argue the Gov will veto.” To which Blaska says, dare Evers to do just that!
Iowa’s Republican Governor signed just such a bill into legislation last week.
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
Madison teachers base their decisions on science, obviously the rest of world doesn’t.
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No, Madison teachers base their decision on themselves, and whatever the union tells them to do. Screw the children.
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Agree, Squire: Legislators should make the effort -and it would highlight our emaciated & angular governor’s tuned-out response to this educational nightmare.
BTW, since Covid’s existence, 476,000 Americans have died. That said, around 170 deaths were juveniles. American Academy of Pediatrics: “Children were 0.00%-0.26% of all COVID-19 deaths, and 11 states reported zero child deaths.”
Hard to say if “SCB” comment above was tongue-in-cheek (?).
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Our Wisconsin legislators don’t even show up for work. When they do all that happens is the taking away of Evers powers. Then bitch that he isn’t getting anything done.
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The human gene pool benefits from extra chlorine from time to time; the natural way.
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No, Normwegian you are so wrong about Madison teachers. I have had several of my son and daughters go through the Madison school system. I have contact with countless numbers of teachers at elementary, middle school, and high school attended parent-teacher conferences and served on school-sponsored committees.
Every teacher I have met based their decisions on what was best for children, not themselves.
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You’ll be meeting them on Zoom soon. MMSD is imploding.
Rightfully so.
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If that were the case, in-person school would have happened months ago especially when you understand the harm that this will cause poor and minority kids in terms of health, earning potential, and wealth gap for the rest of their lives. Scientists will be studying this failure for years. https://www.medpagetoday.com/blogs/vinay-prasad/90658
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As long as the paychecks keep coming why go back? Private school teachers and administrators figured out they need to be in person a long time ago as they don’t benefit as much from the government cheese.
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I am 63 years old and work in a health care clinic. (Just as an aside, I am not a provider, I am support staff.). Each and every day I go to work in a downtown clinic where people can and do have Covid-19 and I am exposed to that. So far, knock on wood, I have not gotten Covid.
Every day I come in contact with people of all ages, races, genders, occupations and so on. It is my JOB to make sure that the building I operate is the best that it can be.
If these teachers are soooo worried about getting Covid then here is my suggestion.
Take all the teachers who are 40+ and have them remote into the classroom from their homes. Have younger teachers do the teaching from the classroom to help the students learn. In this manner you will teach both the students their lesson plans but also bring up and train the next generation of teachers in the real world of the classroom. This will be done at very, very little risk to both the students and the student teachers.
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Please. You are setting a logical and common sense approach to the problem, on a direct collision course with union workplace rules. Guess who wins.
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NORMWEGIAN AND SHEPPY:
My wife and I have had several kids go through the Madison school system and that has NOT been our experience at all. We have found in attending countless parent-teacher conferences, school committees, and sporting events that every teacher we had had contact with to be caring and wonderful professionals. I wondered where you get your information.
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My oldest daughter graduated from Memorial HS in 2007 and I agree that there are some excellent teachers in the district. However, the current union leadership and many teachers do not want to go back to school, yet still are collecting full pay and benefits because the money keeps flowing. Why would they want to deal with the constant behavior issues, disruptions and lack of support from administration when they can host classes on line from the comforts of home? Private schools don’t have that luxury and have figured out how to make things work with in person learning. If they don’t, they are out of a job as there is no revenue to pay them. Do you believe the kids attending public schools in Madison are getting the same quality learning experience through on line learning? I will argue that nearly a complete generation of kids has been set back learning wise via on line learning and most won’t recover. This is not about safety, it’s the MTI flexing muscle while their members enjoy staying home, getting paid while doing it. My source for this? Another one of my kids is a grade school teacher in another state that is having in person instruction
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Such heart warming stories from a lifetime ago when MMSD put Academics and Achievement over Diversity and Grievance Studies. The district is toast and their union is doing these kids that come for disadvantaged homes no favors. It is broken school district. Moved out of Madison for that very reason, why would I pay more in property taxes and actually get less in return for my child.
Sacrificing much so my child will get a private education free from the Mularkey that has been implemented there over the last 10 years.
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Given there is virtually no competition, hence no leverage, is anyone surprised at the lack of motivation of any teachers union to head back to the classroom?
Food for thought:
Republicans should support recreational marijuana in WI. It is inevitable and to shrug it off as political musings is bad policy. Need to change the thinking paradigm on this.
The requirement, and primary amendment to such a bill, would be explicit funding for freedom of choice in ‘school choice’. At worst, perhaps, every student attending Private or Charter schools would see a matching funds of the state per student rate in any particular district. In addition, there would be aid for low income families or innumerable metrics could be applied to who/where qualifies – schools with abysmal metrics (unfortunately, that may be a vast number), graduation rates, etc.
In addition, there should be clear funding for post high school ‘education’. Meaning, that funding for non-collegiate ‘educational’ opportunities, should be created. The state throws hundreds of millions of dollars at our state colleges, when in fact, that ignores a significant number of youth who either cannot afford college, are simply not a good fit for college, or have failed in the public school system. Why there is no direct, encouraged, funded, or formal path to technical schools, trades, as a viable alternative to ‘college’? This is criminal. In a ‘no child should be left behind’ era, we are likely leaving more kids behind than we are sending to college.
EVERY individual leaving high school should have a path and opportunity to employment and self sufficiency. This would provide an opportunity and means for countless who are simply falling of the grid with significant social/economic consequences.
I have known, and seen, too many kids who are pushed to college and fail when such viable alternatives exist. However, high schools loathe presenting trades/skilled labor as options. They may deem this as failure of their system. To a degree, it certainly is, but it reflects myopic and elitist thinking that only those who have collegiate ‘potential’ are valuable to our society.
Admittedly not knowledgeable of funding processes but I would think there are a host of alternatives to doing nothing.
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