Contact: Aaron Collins, 608-266-2254
Promises made, Promises broken by Assembly Republicans
MADISON — In his official response to Governor Evers’ State of the State address, Representative Robin Vos (R-Burlington) stated, “We can increase our investment of K-12 education to two-thirds funding.” Then on May 22nd, in a press conference announcing the Republican education budget, Vos said, “I am proud to say that, with the investments we are planning to make we will again reach 2/3rds funding provided by the state with the balance provided by the local and federal governments.” Assembly Democratic Leader Gordon Hintz (D-Oshkosh) released the following statement:
“Promises made, promises broken by the Republican legislature when it comes to public education. Promising 2/3rds funding was a nice soundbite to distract from inadequate public school funding. It should come as a surprise to no one that Wisconsin Republicans failed to adequately fund public education in their version of the state budget. The disappointing thing is there was enough revenue to make the investments to actually get to 2/3rds. But rejecting the Medicaid expansion funding and raiding the general fund to pay for transportation came at the expense of our public schools.”
The comparative summary of changes between the Governor’s budget and the version passed by the Joint Committee on Finance (JFC) shows the lower level of funding under the Republican plan. It states on page 398 that, ‘With the changes to K-12 school finance adopted by Joint Finance, it is estimated that state support of partial school revenues under the traditional definition would be 65.1% in 2019-20 and 65.5% in 2020-21.’ Under the Governor’s budget, ‘State support of partial school revenues would increase from 65.4% in 2018-19 to approximately 66.7% in 2019-20 and 68.6% in 2020-21.’
