Neillsville District Administrator Talks State Budget and Public Education, Part 4 Home Schooled Children in Public School Sport
Thursday, July 30th, 2015 -- 11:38 AM
-With the passing of the state budget recently, many people are not happy with the lack of support for public education, especially for small, rural schools.I spoke with Neillsville District Administrator John Gaier about the budget with regards to public education. Mr. Gaier talked about a new initiative in the budget that allows home schooled children to play public school sports.
"I think this is a perfect example of a special interest group or a few that have a special interest in allowing their kids to play or allowing some kids to play sports in their public high schools. The question becomes, what do you believe extra curricular activities are in the school? We don't call them extra curricular activities, we call them co-curricular activities because we want to use our activities to support what we're teaching in the classrooms. We want them to be extensions of the classrooms. We want to teach character issues in our co-curricular activities."
"This just allows kids to come in and play. There is no oversight by the school district of the home schooled child. All the parent of the home schooled child has to do is sign that they are in good standing and we have to accept it. To me, one of the greatest benefits that we have in our public education systems are our co-curricular activities. They build tremendous character in our kids and, I think, if we start moving away from the real point of why we have co-curriculars, it's not to win championships, it's to build character, it's not just to play, it's to build good citizens, hard working citizens, then we might as well go to more of the European model where we don't offer any co-curriculars in school and if kids play, they play on a club team. The problem with that is those become exclusive. Those become costly. But I think it's a bridge too far, honestly, in this case.
Mr. Gaier also brought up a couple items we had not already touched on including Wisconsin's place in the nation with regards to education and special education funding.
"One, with this budget, Wisconsin, who has been a national model for public education in this country, is now below the national average in their investment in public school children. Special education. The amount of money that we will get for special education has now been frozen for 8 years. We are now, for special ed students, at the lowest reimbursement rate in the nation. We will be reimbursed about 26% of the cost. Which means, that the other 74% of the cost of educating our special needs kids has to come from other parts of the budget. Those are mandated programs. They are good programs. They are programs worth investing in, but we have been frozen for 8 years. Those are some real problems that I see in this budget."
Coming up on Friday, Mr. Gaier will offer his final thoughts on the state budget in regards to public education.
For More:
Part 1, Overall: http://cwbradio.com/news/?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=14701
Part 2, Funding and Vouchers: http://cwbradio.com/news/?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=14709
Part 3, Testing: http://cwbradio.com/news/?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=14716
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