courtesy of us taxpayers.
Blaska is back in kvetch mode today. Madison public schools will do it every time. The district is giving away more free stuff to its employees: 12 weeks — 60 days worth — of taxpayer paid parental leave for every teacher, custodian, lunch lady, and bureaucrat. Price tag: $1.2 million/year.
No other school district in Wisconsin offers this generous bennie — not Milwaukee, Kenosha, Green Bay, or Racine. Do you get 60 days of paid parental leave at your job? University of Wisconsin employees and City of Madison workers get half that. Parental leave for state government employees is unpaid.
Just the same, generous paid leave felt “long overdue” to school board president Savion Castro, research fellow at UW-Madison School of Education and project assistant at its Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives. (Yeah, Madison’s school board is incestuous.)
What rankles is that the Metropolitan Madison School District pleaded poverty just last November to finagle taxpayers to authorize an additional $100 million in school operating revenue into infinity (and beyond) — that, on top of $507 million in one-time school construction money. Combined with city and county taxes, Madison homeowners averaged an 11.2 percent hit on their property tax bills in just one year.
At the same time, MMSD superintendent Joel Gothard is pretty please asking Democrats to reconsider their vote turning down extra money for special education. (“The check is NOT in the mail.”)
You can see the University of Wisconsin campus from MMSD Doyle administration building. UW-Madison is closing a pair of libraries to meet a campus-wide budget cut goal of around 5% to 7%. Tighten belts? Not Madison’s public schools!
For Democrats like Francesca Hong and Kelda Roys, school spending is never enough. Did not stop them from sabotaging their own governor’s bipartisan $600 million school funding bill, which would have brought $25 million to MMSD. Democrats did so on the grounds that the money wasn’t permanent and largely went for tax relief (Yuck!), not the teachers union. Republicans didn’t mandate two months worth of paid parental leave, either. A Democrat(ic) legislature will do so, watch and see.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: The teachers union endorsed this school board — as it has Sen. Roys (D-Madison teachers union) for governor. They’re getting returns on their dollars. Judging by MMSD’s anemic reading test scores — less than half students passed DPI’s Forward test — students and their parents are not.
13 responses to “Flush with cash, Madison schools hand out more free stuff”
The federal government is flat broke and Dementia Don keeps handing out cash. So; no need to get upset about this. Go to DC, punch a cop and you can get money for your taxes. Why no outrage about this or are you still trying to blame it all on Biden?
Try to stay on topic, ok??
Amazing how many of these “sh%^hole countries have better benefits than us. RFK JR mandated better food for school lunches than cut funding. Dept of ED cut funding. They cut funding then pee it away on trump’s nonsense.
He’s perfectly on topic. The topic is wasting tax dollars, and if so much ink is being spilled over the cost of paid parental leave, my-oh-my the host and readers would be outraged over the theft of billions of dollars of tax money by T! Since nothing is being written about that, it’s incumbent upon others to inform you about it.
Conservatives aren’t finding the courage to talk about the dumpster fire that they brought upon us. I’m sure you do want everybody to put their head in the sand and only talk about the approved topic list. How else can you convince voters to back spineless R candidates that kiss T’s butt? This fake concern among so called conservatives about fiscal conservatism is getting moldy, everyone can see that it’s just an act – give it up!
There will never be enough money for MMSD no matter what the test scores are. NYC public schools pay over $40K per student and have test scores of 33% math and 28% reading (NY Post article 8/30/25). MMSD has a way to go.
Did you see the article in the Cap Times which states that MMSD, despite declining enrollments, is in dire need of a new elementary school, the cost of which will likely provoke yet another referendum (which will, of course, pass overwhelmingly)? The swill in Madison’s public trough just keeps magically multiplying, like the oil in the widow’s lamp.
Maybe I missed something. Did the MMSD stewards of the public purse simply give Madison Teachers Inc a new benefit without negotiating a concession?
Seen on Monroe Street, probably:
“In this house, we support teachers.
And our poop still doesn’t stink.”
Or on any other street in Madison. How cluelessly self-regarding do you have to be to think that strangers passing by your house give a rat’s bloody arse what your “values” are? I hereby confess to having ripped more than one of those signs off lawns in my neighborhood and tossed them in the middle of the street. Felt better all day.
As a non-parent I find this policy offensive and discriminatory. I hope they get sued for it. Childless people should be given similar leaves for their own purposes. And it should be limited across the board. 2 or 3 leaves max.
So you want a free benefit without the work? Did your red hat burst into flame?
Ha you old socialist it’s not free.
And what exactly is the “work” that is being done? It’s the parents choice to have kids. Not saying it’s easy but they do it in pursuit of happiness/fulfillment. Why shouldn’t childless adults be subsidized in their pursuit of happiness?
“subsidized happiness”? go somewhere and start a bar tab.