Hey, good afternoon.
Thank you very much for being here
today as assembly Republicans talk
about some of the proposals they'll
be bringing up and announcing for
the fall.
Assembly Republicans have had a
long tenure of leading in the
Capitol on issues that are important
to the state.
We really had a good summer.
I hope most of you enjoyed your
summer break.
For those of us in elected office,
we got to go and spend a lot of time
with our constituents. We heard a
ton of positive feedback about
the budget that we passed, focusing
on making sure more money is in the
pockets of Wisconsinites, ensuring
that we have the resources for the
priorities of the state in child
care and education, and also doing
it in a way that actually got it
signed into law.
Our hope is that we have a good
agenda you're going to hear about
today that will also have the same
kind of track record, working
together trying to find consensus
and hopefully having those bills
move forward between the spring and
the fall session.
So with that I'm going to start by
calling who's going to talk about
our series of bills and then we'll
have the authors first talk about
our education ideas.
And then we'll talk about some
speaker task forces that are going
to be announced later today too.
Hope you have a good day.
Well, thank you.
You know, we'll talk a little bit about
our education agenda.
Um, and Wisconsin, first of all,
still continues to have very good
public schools that the most recent
U. S News and World Report survey
ranked us as sixth best in the
country. But there's still
a lot of room to improve.
And our our gap achievement gap
between black and white students in
Wisconsin is the worst
in the country.
The most recent 2024
NAEP scores show that
78 percent of students
are below proficient in math,
65 percent are below efficient
in reading, and nearly 45
percent of high school seniors
are below basic in math
which is the highest rate
since this current test was first
implemented.
Last session, we
passed Act 20 to address our
reading crisis, and even
though Governor Evers' illegal use
of the partial line item veto
delayed implementation fully
and delayed the funding, we're
still getting great reports back
from the field on the success of
Act 20.
And we'd like to use a similar
approach in addressing
our math deficiencies.
A bill will be introduced soon
that will follow the approach of Act
20 in using screeners
to catch struggling students
early and put them on an
individualized plan to catch them
back up like we did in Act 20.
This bill is not going to be the
full solution to the problem, but I
think it's a very good first step
in addressing a very serious
problem. In this last
budget, we significantly increased
the budget for the
Office of School Safety and added 13
new permanent positions.
In building on that, we've had some
complaints around the state of
drones flying over schools, so I'll
be introducing a bill very soon that
will make it illegal to fly a drone
over a school.
Without the consent written consent
of the administrators.
This is both a safety and a
privacy issue Finally
we have some very disturbing
demographics trends in Wisconsin
that are going to going to need
to be looking at in the future
While Wisconsin is the only
Midwestern state that is not seeing
declining population overall
We are seeing a very rapid decline
in our student population
It's dropping by at a rate of 1%
per year for the foreseeable future.
And just since 2013-2014
school year we've seen a decline of
53,000 students.
And this decline is
attributed mostly to declining
fertility rates.
The decline is especially severe in
rural areas and right now 70%
of the districts statewide are
seeing a decline in population.
So right now we have 421
districts across the state.
If we're going to continue to
provide opportunities for students
and a great quality
education, that number is going to
have to drop and if we're gonna be
able to continue to afford to
provide those opportunities.
So right now we will be introducing
a package of bills very soon and I'm
going to introduce Representative
Ned Weske to go into further detail
on that.
Thank you representative kitchens.
Good afternoon everyone.
I'm going to talk to you a little
bit about school consolidation
and shared services.
So as representative kitchens
mentioned, many schools across the
state are being impacted by
declining enrollment.
And like he said, we have lost
53,000 students over
the last decade because student
enrollment is the primary driver
of our state school funding
formula.
Districts experiencing declining
enrollment receive less money
in state aid.
So to make up for this many
districts go to referendum and
they raise local property tax bills
to pay for increasingly empty
buildings.
The already heavy burden on
taxpayers will only get worse over
time thanks to the governor's
400-year veto that
will bring us a four-century
Democrat property tax
increase. So the status
quo is not sustainable,
and that's why we've been taking
input from school administrators
both urban and rural
educators and DPI on
legislation that would provide
financial incentives to school
districts to voluntarily
consolidate or share services
in areas where The circumstances
might be ripe to gain efficiencies
and reduce wasteful spending.
Our partners in public education
have been sharing their interest in
consolidation and they
have also been sharing what they
perceive to be obstacles to
combining.
So our legislation will potentially
address concerns regarding the
reorganization process for school
districts, the cost to
determine feasibility of
consolidation, and how
to address the local tax impact
when two or more districts join into
one and they may Thank you very
much.
Significantly different mill rates.
So that's just a few of the things
we've been discussing that are on
the horizon with this bill package.
By providing school districts with
some additional tools to consolidate
or share services,
districts won't just realize the
financial benefit but they will also
unlock opportunities.
To benefit students academically.
So the Consolidated School District
has more opportunities to offer more
students.
The savings that they realize,
particularly from reducing
administrative bloat and redundant
services, will provide
districts with more resources for
the classroom, whether it's
increasing teacher pay,
expanding access to AP courses
or tech ed courses,
or increasing special education
services. Those are all things we've
been hearing from our administrators
around the state.
Consolidation has long term
positive effects on both
students and taxpayers.
So we need to stop the
cycle of never ending referendums.
Now, Democrats might argue that the
solution is simply to throw more
money at the problem, but it does
not solve the issue that there are
just less kids being born today
than there were 20 years ago.
It's a birth rate issue.
Enrollment continues to
decline especially in smaller rural
districts many schools will face
difficult decisions and our
goal is to provide support
and give tools remove
barriers and create incentives
for voluntary consolidation
so that schools can find
efficiencies and communities can
stop the cycle of referendums.
As an example, in my district,
in Kenosha County and a little bit
of Walworth County, I have seven
single school K-8
school districts and two
single school districts that are
high schools.
That's a lot of administrative costs
and a lot redundant services and...
Money being spent that could be
going to teachers and into the
classroom.
So many of them have gone to
referendum over the last couple of
years. Some have been successful,
some have failed, but we're seeing a
failure rate increase.
And consolidation cases like these
could lower overhead, reduce
costs, and allow schools to serve
students more efficiently and
more effectively.
This package will be about helping
schools adapt to changing realities
while protecting taxpayers and
ensuring that Wisconsin students
continue to receive a high
quality education.
And with that, I'm going to turn
things over to Representative
Rodriguez for an exciting talk
on federal tax credits.
Good afternoon, thank you,
Representative Nidwesky.
Recently, the federal government
created the National School of
Choice Tax Credit,
which allows donors to
receive a dollar-for-dollar
tax credit on any donations that
they make to non-profits that
provide student scholarships.
In order to participate,
the state needs to opt in.
And so my proposal would require
that the governor and his
administration would notify
the federal government that
Wisconsin will participate in the
federal tax credit program.
This will allow donors to
support Wisconsin students while
receiving a federal benefit.
Without opt-in-in, Wisconsin's
donors' contributions could go
to students who are educated
outside of our state.
By opt- in-in we ensure
that these dollars stay here
and directly
benefit our Wisconsin kids.
This program isn't about
one educational
school.
Instead, it helps public,
private, charter, and even
homeschool families access
the tools they need to help their
kids succeed.
These scholarships can be used for
things like tutoring,
transportation costs, or
for supplemental courses that
directly support children in
the classroom.
This opportunity comes at no
cost to Wisconsin taxpayers.
This is completely voluntary
and it is entirely funded
by private donations and
it does not touch our state budget.
So this is something that would be
really good for all of our children
in our state.
Up next is
Representative Murphy who will talk
about dual enrollment.
Thank you.
Good afternoon.
As the chairman of the Committee on
Colleges and Universities,
I spent the past spring
and summer diving deep
into dual enrollment.
These programs let our high
school students earn credits
before they even
graduate from high school.
I've heard from parents across
Wisconsin about how
tough it can be for their kids
to get into UW-Madison.
Let me tell you.
Students with dual enrollment
credits have a real
edge.
But here's the thing.
Wisconsin's dual enrollment system
is complex, it
lacks clear direction,
and has regulations that
sometimes hold us back.
I've met with K-12 schools,
DPI, parents,
students, and leaders from the
technical colleges.
Thank you. Wisconsin's independent
colleges, and
the UW system, and
we all agree.
That there's work that we need to do
on this and we are
collaborating to fix it.
So how can we do this?
Number one, we can expand
access for all students.
We need to make dual enrollment
available to more kids,
especially those in rural
communities here in Wisconsin.
And
many principals
and administrators, superintendents
from rural schools have
you know voiced their
concern for being able to
provide the
appropriate opportunity for their
students for dual.