The
Petitioners in a lawsuit challenging Wisconsin's private school choice program, a white word
from the State Supreme Court, whether it will take their case.
They want the court to end the program, arguing it violates the state constitution, saying
the legislature has created a cancer that's killing public schools.
Tonight, we hear both sides of this case, starting with a lawyer who filed the school
choice lawsuit, Frederick Mounds.
He joins us from Menacua, and thanks very much for being here.
Oh, thank you.
So why are you asking the Supreme Court to take this as an original action, rather than
taking your lawsuit to circuit court first?
Well, there are a number of reasons.
The primary reason we're taking our supreme, our petition directly to the Supreme Court
is, I mean, efficiency.
Ultimately, this case winds up there anyway.
We start in the circuit court.
We win.
We lose.
We appeal to the, you know, to the appellate courts.
We win.
We lose.
We appeal the other side appeals and we're in the Supreme Court.
So ultimately, this just saves two and a half to three years of litigation for everyone.
And a lot of what we are arguing has not been decided upon before by the Supreme Court.
These are matters of first impression.
So they were there also generally the most, they're the most appropriate court to be ruling
on these, on our issues as well.
How disappointed were you that the Evers administration joined Robin Voss in saying
it should, in fact, not start in the high court?
You know, we were certainly disappointed, but, you know, the Evers administration and
Ms. Blumenfeld have, you know, their own agenda that they need to fulfill.
And I guess that's what they're doing is unfortunate that that is the route they took.
But it is, they're a defendant.
They have every right to defend together.
They're a respondent.
They have every right to defend against our petition.
So your lawsuit says that school voucher programs were, quote, designed to destructively
defund public schools.
But isn't that true?
Weren't they designed and started in the kind of early 90s in Milwaukee to offer private
school choice to low income students and their families?
So the programs we have now, outside of Milwaukee anyway, are significantly different
than that Milwaukee program.
And what they do is for every student who takes a voucher outside of Milwaukee, the state
deducts the entire value of that voucher, which is for high school student, almost $13,000
from their local school district state aid.
And in a lot of these districts, these, you know, the state, they're only getting about
$2,000 per student.
So for every voucher school in the equalization aid, so for every voucher student you lose
to a voucher school, you're losing, you know, six or seven students worth of state aid in
many districts.
And then you have to either make that up through the local tax levy or, or yours, you know,
your students don't give them the resources they're supposed to have.
What, I mean, this has been felt particularly hard and we're seen where something like one
out of every $3 if their local property taxes is used effectively just to backfill the money
taken in state aid to fund the voucher program for received students.
So I think that's, it's close to $45 million that the received property taxpayers are being
asked to, to put up to make up for the aid reduction from the voucher program.
So in fact, in the last school year, the private school choice program cost nearly $450 million
state dollars.
What would you say that is doing to the public school system?
Well, I mean, that's, that's money being directly removed from the public schools.
That's money the public schools are supposed to have.
You know, the state options when they chose how to fund this program and they, they chose
the one that was most destructive to the, to the traditional public school districts.
And it's our contention that this was intentional and it was an intentional effort to defund and
to ultimately damage public educational Wisconsin.
You say the private voucher schools don't have adequate oversight or educational standards,
which their advocates dispute in their filings and otherwise.
But why would parents then choose these schools?
So I mean, I think there are some pretty solid marketing efforts on behalf of these
schools to suggest that they are a better choice.
And while they may be a better choice for some students, it's certainly not the majority
of students.
I think if you, if you look to the recent, the most recent testing data we saw across
the state that voucher students scored significantly worse on average than public school students.
So then in most cases, these are not public schools or any of these are not, these are
not quality schools.
And we, if you look back, you know, throughout the, the history of this program, something
like 40% of them have closed their doors already.
It's only a 30 or 30 year old program saying 40% failure rate.
And then they leave these kids stranded who then have to, you know, find a public school.
This has not been a good program.
All right.
We need to leave it there, Mr. Mounds.
Thanks very much.
We'll be watching this case as it progresses.
Thank you.
Sorry, we could have talked about a lot of other issues.
Sorry for the short duration there.
But thank you.
Yeah.
No problem.
Thank you for having me on.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
Again.
Thank you.
And happy holidays, sir.
Thank you.