The following program is a PBS Wisconsin Original
production. >> The Governor's budget is
always reckless spending that the state can't afford.
>> Following failed negotiations with the
governor. Republicans in the state legislature unveiled
their vision of the numbers for education, shared
revenue, and taxes. [MUSIC]
I'm Frederica Freyberg tonight on here. And now. We
look at the numbers from the powerful Budget Committee
and a proposal to try out wraparound mental health
support in schools. Then we zoom in on central Wisconsin
communities and the impact of federal cuts. And
finally, from addiction recovery to assistance in
the classroom, what the ruling on AmeriCorps funding
means for state programs. It's "Here& Now" for June
13th. >> Funding for "Here& Now"
is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and
Friends of PBS Wisconsin. >> Billions of dollars
separate Republican state budget provisions from the
two year spending plan. Governor Tony Evers first
introduced last night. The Joint Finance Committee
voted to increase K-12 school funding by $336
million. That's $3 billion less than Evers called for.
On special education funding, Republican budget
writers targeted $228 million, putting the
percentage of state funding going to schools for those
services at 37.5%. In the second year, far short of
the 60%. Evers and Advocates wanted. On income tax cuts,
Republicans expanded the second lowest bracket, taxed
at 4.4% to single filers, making up to about $50,000.
That's up from those making 30,000. They also included
$700 million in tax cuts for retirees with an income tax
exclusion for the first $24,000 of income for filers
67 years or older. For more on all of this, we go to
senior political reporter Zac Schultz at the Capitol
and Halzack. >> Hello, Fred.
>> So that's quite a gulf in K-12 spending between
Republican budget riders and Evers.
>> Yeah, that is a big gulf. And the question that
remains to be seen is how Governor Evers will take
this when this budget eventually gets to his desk.
We had known all along that there was going to be a big
gulf between what he wanted and what Republicans would
agree to, but this is even bigger than what we had
thought at first, simply because they're not funding
any of the per pupil aides that Governor Evers created
in his partial veto of the last budget. Remember the
400 year veto that increased per pupil funding by $325 a
kid per year for 400 years? The Supreme Court held that
up as legal, but Republicans did not put any state money
behind that, so it will be up to individual school
districts to their levy will be increased. But you have
to then decide if they want to raise property taxes to
gather all that revenue for operations.
>> On special education funding, the majority raised
the percentage of funding coming from the state from
33% to 37, and a half percent in the second year,
but that again is far short of what Evers and Advocates
wanted. >> Yeah, and we've been
covering this on "Here& Now" for quite a few years about
that shortfall in special education funding coming
from both the state and the federal government. Neither
have held up their end of the bargain for what they
promised, dating back to the 70s. And IT school districts
that are left picking up the pieces, and they're the ones
who have to figure out how do we provide the services
to these special needs kids. And often they end up taking
it out of general dollars. That would serve the rest in
all of the student body. Often that's the driver for
a lot of these districts going to referendum over the
last decade is they simply need more money to fund
don't give the money, that's guaranteed to these special
education students, they can be sued. And quite often
they have been. As more and more parents and advocates
say go fight for the rights of your child, it's the
school districts that have to find the money to make up
for it. Now, this is an increase in Republicans are
saying this is well above where it's been in recent
years and decades, and even dating back to when Governor
Evers was the secretary of education at DEI. This is
above what he was requesting, but it's still
far short of what Democrats would like to see now.
>> On tax cuts. It's $1.3 billion to expand the second
lowest tax bracket. And for retirement income tax cuts.
Now, this wouldn't seem to be something that the
governor would oppose with his veto pen. Right?
>> No. These tax cuts definitely feel more in line
with what Governor Evers has proposed over his first four
budgets versus what Republicans have passed in
their first three budgets, which were targeted toward
higher end earners in Governor Evers vetoed all of
those. This time around, if you remember, back in
December, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said he wanted to
know for sure what Governor Evers would sign into law
for tax cuts rather than see a veto come out. When
Republicans propose their budget. He wanted to pass a
separate bill. That didn't happen, but they did enter
into negotiations that went on for apparently nearly a
month between the upper leadership of Republicans
and Evers and his staff. And it has the feeling of the
result that comes into this budget feels sounds like
what Governor Evers may have agreed to. I spoke to some
staffers for Democrats, and the negotiations, but they
got the sense that this was in line with what Governor
Evers had said. So if that's the case, Republicans went
into negotiations, found out what Evers could support in
terms of tax cuts on his end, put it in the budget,
and now they're not giving Evers what he wanted in
terms of education and basically daring him to say,
veto this budget, if you will. But it does have a
little more money for cuts that, in theory, fit
more with who you want to see tax cuts go for.
Typically lower income people.
>> So next week the Joint Finance Committee is taking
up corrections and the UW system. How big ticket are
those. >> Well those could be very
big ticket. UW has not received nearly as much in
recent budgets as they have asked for. They continue to
ask for hundreds of millions of dollars. And Republicans
have not been giving it to them. Could they see more of
this time? We don't know. Corrections. Obviously,
Governor Evers has asked for a lot of money to completely
rearrange the corrections down the green Bay facility
eventually. We don't know what that will look like.
And there's one more. The Department of Children and
Families, which could include any child care
subsidies that could go out providers and parents. That
was one of the things that Evers and his team were
negotiating. So we don't know where that will fall is
left. So some big ticket items that could include
some money or might include nothing, we don't really
know, but we are keeping on track for having this budget
get done. Near the end of June.
budget writers have made this document veto proof? Do
you suppose? >> Well, nothing's veto
proof because Governor Evers can still lower dollar
amounts and make these tax cuts smaller or eliminate
entire sections, as he likely will for some of the
provisions that are put in there. But they're going to
make it much more difficult for him to create new
language, as he did with that 400 year veto. We were
talking about in education from the last budget.
>> All right, Zac Schultz, thank you so much for
joining us. >> My pleasure.
>> Governor Tony Evers declared 2025 the year of
the kid and his two year budget called for more than
$300 million in direct spending on school mental
health treatment and staffing. Last night, the
Joint Finance Committee approved $20 million in
One-Time funding to expand K-12 mental health programs.
Meanwhile, a bill in the legislature calls for a two
year pilot program in two schools in Wisconsin
providing wraparound, school centered mental health
services. Even through the summer break. Senate. Author
of the bill, Republican Senator Jesse James of
Thorp, joins us with more. And thanks a lot for being
here. >> So you've said that
advocacy for youth Mental health is your number one
priority. Why the urgency on that?
>> So, well, it comes from my personal life. It comes
from my outside career of this building. As a law
enforcement officer, as well as what I've seen with and
heard from constituents from my district and from across
the state. The impacts that we've seen in our mental
health, behavioral health crises that our youth have
been experiencing across our state. Have have been on the
rise. And I've dealt personally more with more
youth in crisis than I have adults in my law enforcement
capacity over the last five years where I work as a part
time police officer in the village of Cadott. So that
that raised some concerns for me. And, you know, our
state does okay when it comes to these crises,
whether it's an adult or youth, but I think trying to
get our youth the services, resources, education,
prevention, coping strategies, everything that
they need as a youth that they can mature and grow
into, into the young adult life will set them up for
success in the future as they continue to reside in
our state. >> So the school centered
pilot program proposed would provide wraparound mental
health services in two schools. What would that
look like? >> So in two schools, one
would be urban, semi-urban school, and the other one
would be a rural school. You know, the things that happen
up in the village of Cadott happen in the city of
Milwaukee. And I think the key element to this is the
data collecting. There will be a report that will be
have to be submitted from whoever were to receive the
grant. Funding for this, and they have to provide a
report back. And that's some of the issues that we have
in our state is the lack of information sharing. We the
schools, do a good job tracking it, but at the
state level, none of that information is shared. So we
would have to personally go to each of our school
districts to find out what's going on with mental health.
How many students are impacted by it, whether it's
elementary, middle school, high school, and without
that data, it's very hard for us as a legislature to
make decisions moving forward. We can just say,
yeah, there's a problem, but we just throw money at it
with no data reporting or collecting. That's that's a
foolish that's a foolish decision in my opinion.
>> And so what would those wraparound services look
like? >> Well, it's huge in. The
key element to this is that the parents are involved in
then also the community buy in is there as well with the
partnerships and collaboration. But the
wraparound, it's a year long process. It's not just
during the school year where when the children are in
crisis, they're receiving the services and resources
available to them. This is a year long process. Yvonne
continues on through the summertime to where those
continued treatment options are available to the youth
and the family. >> So I understand that an
agency like Lutheran Social Services could hold the
contract to provide the program, and there are
estimates there that it would cost about $850,000
over two years. In the end of those two years, if this
proves super successful, how could it be paid for in more
schools than 2 across the state?
>> Well, that's that's a good question. I think we're
still waiting to see what's happening at the federal
level, with all the decisions being made there.
You know, this is our attempt at at the state
level to implement something so that we can see the
figures, we can get the data. Once we get that kind
of reporting done, and we as a legislature in the
stakeholders are interested in this topic, this issue,
we can bring forth further decisions, further funding,
further modifications that would need to be taken
place. I mean, this is going to be a continued work in
progress. >> Is there is there some
concern on the part of lawmakers that just a lot of
money is thrown at these, you know, at mental health
programs? Again, without the return of the evidence based
success? Is that kind of what's partly driving the
idea here? >> 100%. So last session,
I've had superintendents in my office during budget
talks this this spring and summer. Here to where last
session, they just funneled out a whole bunch of dollars
to our school districts. One school district received
$4,000. That's not going to pay for staff. That's not
going to, you know, get what that school district may
need to provide mental health services to their
students. Now, I did share options with them, but for
example, that school district, they had a guest
speaker come in and talk to the students. So we can do
better in with that funding. They didn't have. They
didn't have to report back on what they use that money
for. So and that was every school district in our
state. There's something wrong with that. We need to
know how our dollars are being spent, the impact that
it's having in our schools, especially when it comes to
our youth. So there's things that we can do. It's all
about communication, negotiation and compromise.
>> All right, all right. Well, we leave it there.
Senator Jesse James, thank you so much for joining us.
>> Thank you for having me. Have a great day.
>> You, too. Amid budget news and federal spending
cuts, it can be easy to lose sight of real life losses.
Families are encountering in Wisconsin, with 57% of its
residents living just above or at the poverty level. The
small community of Nekoosa relies on programs like
AmeriCorps and the 21st Century Community Learning
Centers for things like food assistance and childcare.
“Here& Now” reporter Aditi Debnath sat down with Tracy
Vruwink, who oversees these programs, to talk about what
these cuts mean for Nekoosa families.
>> You oversee the 21st century Community Learning
Center grant, which supports this Boys and Girls Club of
Nekoosa program. Can you talk about what that support
looks like in terms of what services you offer?
>> Yeah. So after school or actually it's before and
after school. So we open at 630 in the morning until
school starts. We do enrichment activities. We
feed the kids sometimes breakfast depending. A lot
of kids come to school, you know, hungry after school.
They come, we do activities. They go outside, they go to
the gym. We do homework help. We do career launch.
We do snack. And again, there's a lot of these kids
that come in here and have snack, and then they don't
eat again until they come back in the morning. So
which is very unfortunate. But we have, you know, food
to provide them. And we help support the backpack program
where the kids get to take home food for the week
weekend so that they have food to eat.
Community Learning Center grant was taken away, what
would that mean for your program?
>> We would probably have to scale it back immensely,
because the funding for this program is what. Helps the
kids. And if we don't have that funding, we'd have to
find the funding from somewhere else, or the Boys
and Girls Club would have to run it themselves. And I
don't believe we would be able to run a morning
program at that point. It would be strictly afternoon.
All the things that they do would be cut back because we
wouldn't have the funding to do that. So it would just it
would make a huge difference. We might be able
to even take less kids, and that would be an enormous
shock for the community. >> What would that mean for
the families who bring their kids here?
>> It would be devastating for them. It truly would.
Parents have to work, and a lot of parents can't be home
until, you know, after 6:00 at night. So without this
program, those kids are going to have nowhere to go.
And they need somewhere to go. And I think our
programs, all after school programs, help those kids to
be able to feel like they're safe and they're cared for.
They have food to eat, they're learning. There's no
learning loss. They don't have someone to help them.
They're not going to succeed. A lot of our
families rely on us to cover the cost of child care,
because the Boys and Girls Club, we can't charge a fee
here because of the grant. So that's free childcare,
which is saving families anywhere between 150 to $200
a week just for care for one child. Losing the after
school programs would exacerbate existing
inequalities in access to education and opportunities,
particularly for these kids, because 99% of them are low
income. It would reduce community engagement. The
kids come here and they just hang out. If they had to go
home after school by themselves, they would
probably be getting into trouble. When they're here,
we know they're safe. We keep them out of trouble.
They learn a lot of things. In the ten years that you've
been in this job, has it always been so uncertain?
>> Never. We've gotten the CLC grant to five year terms
in a row now. So funding goes away. I really,
honestly don't know what we're going to do. Like I
said, it would probably be on a smaller scale, but then
we probably won't be able to serve the 200 children that
we serve now, because, you know, the funding just won't
be there to do that. >> You also oversee the
AmeriCorps program, which helps the this community
Nekoosa get food on their table. Can you talk about
that program and how it came about?
>> We were contacted by the Wisconsin Partnership
Program, which is a grant, and they offered for us to
write a grant to get an AmeriCorps staff here in our
district. So we did that, and we got Nikki. She came
in and it's all about like the food insecurities. Nikki
started a food pantry, so we went from servicing three
families. We're up to 21 families now. We have a
couple of churches who do some fundraisers, and they
donate money so that we can buy groceries to donate to
the families. When AmeriCorps was cut out by
the federal government cutting the funding, we had
to stop doing that. We had nobody to do it. Well, then
we found a different way to go around it. Nikki's now
employed by the YMCA, and she is able to run the food
pantry through the Nekoosa School District because we
are a partner with the district. So she's still
able to, you know, service those families.
>> And what did that mean for that? You know, week
where Nikki was no longer your employee and that.
>> She volunteered that week, basically just so that
we could keep the families eating.
pantry, what would those families be experiencing?
>> They would have to find a means to get to Wisconsin
Rapids, to the food pantries there. A lot of them don't
have a means to get there. We don't have a bus system
here. It's generally if they can get a ride or something
like that. reinstated that. The
programing. Does that give you any relief?
>> Not really. Who's going to want to apply for a job
that they're not really sure if it's going to keep going
or not? You know, it's you need to have an income. You
need to support your family, even though the AmeriCorps
income is small, it's still something. And you can't
just not have that. That income. I've been doing this
grant for ten years. I've had an AmeriCorps staff
every year at this school and at the elementary
school. Some years. That staff is so beneficial to
helping the kids. They help them with their homework.
They help them with their reading. They're like an
extension of the teachers day because they're there at
the end of the school day, and then they're working
with them on their homework. It's just they're so
beneficial. I, I just honestly think that they're
important for every school to have. AmeriCorps is where
it needs to be. >> Wisconsin was among
states that sued over the Trump administration's
nearly $400 million cut to AmeriCorps. Subsequently, a
federal court issued a temporary injunction
restoring its programs and funding in Wisconsin. About
$14 million goes to AmeriCorps programs and
schools, health care clinics, and in nonprofits.
Where does all this leave the program? In Wisconsin,
we turn to the executive director of Serve Wisconsin,
a state agency that partners with AmeriCorps to recruit
and train volunteer workers who receive stipends for
living expenses. Jeanne Duffy joins us now. And
thanks very much for being here.
>> So how welcome was the news that the court issued
this temporary injunction? >> Oh, it was very welcome.
It was a joyous moment. It was just a reaffirm
affirmation of our work, what we do, and that the
rule of law still stands, that you cannot illegally
terminate grants. >> How disruptive, though,
to the programs was the elimination of the grant?
>> Oh, it's been a roller coaster. And as you know,
it's a lot easier to break things than to bring things
back. We had almost 400 members serving in April
when we got notice that the grant terminations, the
grants were terminated, and many of those people are,
you know, between ages and 20 and 25, so they can't sit
around and wait for another six weeks to see if they are
going to be brought back to service. So a lot of our
members have already moved of our programs kept their
members on and service, and many so they can instantly
return to service, but it's a hard row to hoe to bring
things back. >> What is the purpose of
AmeriCorps? >> Yes, AmeriCorps is a
lovely program, so I would say that. But our mission is
to bring people together through service, and we
serve some of our most vulnerable citizens and
communities, and we help connect people in service to
build civic engagement and empathy amongst our our
citizens and our young people. So every year we
have over 1000 young people primarily serving across the
state from, you know, superior down to Kenosha.
And they are doing a variety of things. And through their
service, they are gaining essential workforce
development skills, leadership skills,
communication skills, and learning how to bridge
divides and becoming engaged citizens.
and where in the state are they?
>> Yeah, so like I said, we are statewide. We have
members serving at youth shelters statewide, and
they're helping homeless and runaway youth. Over 1000
every year get back into safe housing. And what's so
sad about that is it often means not going home. We are
AmeriCorps members, are primarily known for working
in schools, and every year we help over 17,000 students
through tutoring, after school programs, or getting
into college. Summer is a prime time for AmeriCorps.
We have conservation programs working across the
state, doing improving over 600 acres of our lands,
removing invasive species, planting trees, doing flood
mitigation and work such as that.
>> Wow. A lot of different kinds of programs that
people are working in. >> If there's a community
need, there's probably an AmeriCorps member serving
there. >> So at this point,
notwithstanding, the young people, the volunteers, the
members, as they're called, having possibly left, have
services returned to normal. >> Yes. So we have many
programs that staff summer camps, such as Easter Seals
and Boys and Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee. So Easter
Seals runs two summer camps to help people of all
abilities have a, you know, a quality summer camp
experience. Like many kids love and AmeriCorps members
are being returned to service to help staff those
programs in the Milwaukee area. You know, people,
parents count on summer camps for child care during
the summer. And we have over 50 members who serve in
summer camps in the Milwaukee area. So the Boys
and Girls Club are bringing those people back to help
staff the summer camps. >> At this point, what is
the status of the court process?
>> So we had the grant terminations April 25th and
then shortly after the state of Wisconsin joined a
multi-state lawsuit for suing against the illegal
termination of the grants. We have an injunction. And
that was last week. And right now the injunction is
standing, and the federal government has not appealed
the injunction, but they have up to 60 days to file
an appeal. time, while waiting really
for a final resolution, where does that uncertainty
leave people in the program? Both those who work for it
and those who are recipients of it?
>> Yeah, no. Like I said, it's a roller coaster and
many people don't want to take the risk because
AmeriCorps is a cost reimbursement program. So
these nonprofits, they have to expend the money before
they get reimbursed by the federal government. So they
by bringing members back, they're putting their own
financial security at risk and hoping that they'll get
reimbursed by the federal government. The state of
Wisconsin, you know, is providing the assurances
that we can. But it is a risk. And also, we've
committed to members to and so members have to know
that, you know, these are primarily young people.
Maybe they're in college, maybe they're not. But, you
know, they're counting on this for their summer
experience. So if it gets terminated, it could disrupt
their plans too. >> All right. Well, we will
be watching. Jeanne Duffy. Thanks very much.
>> No, thank you for having me.
>> For more on this and other issues facing
at PBS Wisconsin. Org and then click on the news tab.
That's our program for tonight. I'm Frederica
Freyberg. Have a good weekend.
[MUSIC] >> Funding for "Here& Now"
is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and
Friends of PBS Wisconsin.