You
Support
of Wisconsin's taxpayer funded school choice
and independent charter school programs
want the state Supreme Court to reject the lawsuit,
saying ending the program would create chaos
for tens of thousands of families
with students currently enrolled.
Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty Attorney
Rick Essenberg is on the case for school choice advocates.
He joins us from Milwaukee and thanks very much for being here.
Thank you for having me.
So what would happen if petitioners won their case
and the choice program folded,
transferring private school students back?
Well, it would be chaos for children in the program.
First of all, they would be denied an educational opportunity
that they and their parents have chosen.
There would be a massive influx of students
into public schools who are not currently set up
to receive them.
And the legal principles that would be established
by a decision against the program in this case
would have ramifications for how we finance our schools.
It would call into question equalization aid.
It would call into question a whole variety
of non-educational public programs.
It would be really a disaster for the state of Wisconsin
and something that I don't believe our courts going to do.
So in your court filing, you took great exception
to the claim that choice programs were intended to hurt
and are hurting public schools.
Why?
Well, you know, we live in a very polarized time right now
and I think a lot of people don't remember
that when school choice was initially enacted
about 30 years ago.
It was a bipartisan program in both Democrats
and Republicans realized, first in Milwaukee,
that schools were not serving all students well
and that equity and educational effectiveness
would be served by letting lower income families
have the same choice that wealthier families have.
And so this really was an effort to help kids.
You know, we often hear about, you know,
school choice somehow being a profit-making enterprise
and it's really not.
These are non-profit institutions.
Most of them are religiously based
and nobody's making money.
This really is, I think, intended to give kids an opportunity
that they otherwise wouldn't have.
It's not to destroy the public schools.
And the choice advocates realize most kids
are going to continue to go to public schools.
This isn't about sector wars.
It's just a recognition that human beings
or diverse human beings are different
and some people, some kids, will benefit
from the opportunities that choice provides for them.
Still, public tax dollars are increasingly
being diverted from public schools to private schools.
How does that not hurt the public?
Well, they're not being diverted.
The purpose of public tax dollars
is not to benefit public schools as an institution.
It's to educate children.
And there are lots of social services
that the government provides
that may sometimes be provided by government employees
and may sometimes be provided by, you know, private vendors,
you know, hospitals, adoption agencies.
There's a whole host of them.
And so what happens is when a kid
who is being educated at public expense,
we're all in favor of that, goes to a private school,
the tax money that is used to educate her goes with her.
And so there's no diversion.
There's just choice.
So with less than half a minute left,
how buoyed were used at the Governor Evers Administration
agreed with Robin Vloss that this case
should start not in the High Court but in Circuit Court?
You know, I give Governor Evers
and general call credit for this.
I know that they're not proponents of the choice program,
but they did the right thing legally.
This is an inappropriate case for an original action,
and they made the right call.
All right. We need to leave it there. Rick Hasenberg.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. That was too short.
But next time.
Well, you know, the problem with this issue
is it's very complicated.
Well, it certainly is.
I read with interest your filing as compared to the
petitioner's filing.
I thought it was very interesting,
especially the part where you were saying,
yeah, you've got the numbers wrong.
This is why this fact finding needs to go to certain.
Yeah.
And I think that's one of the reason that the Governor did what he did.
I think that this case just isn't set up to be handled in that way.
The problem, though, is that, you know,
to understand this uniformity issue,
you have to sort of understand how public school finance works.
And there may be five people in the state who do.
It's just very complicated.
And it's really a clutch.
And it's true.
Believe me, I've struggled with it for a couple of decades.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, again, thank you very much.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you.
You take care.
Bye-bye.