Neillsville District Administrator Talks State Budget and Public Education, Final
Friday, July 31st, 2015 -- 9:24 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. To end our interview, Mr. Gaier provided these final thoughts.
"To me, there seems to be a growing disconnect between what citizens want and what government is doing. If you look at polls, 78% of people polled wanted more funding for public education in this budget and public education was frozen to a point where they will get reduced."
"The other things that's important is that facts don't seem to matter. The Association for Equity in Funding funded a study about the disparity in funding for kids that have special needs, kids that are English language learners and kids that live in poverty. The legislature has that study. The Assembly did a study on rural schools in Wisconsin and found out what those needs were. They have information, but, unfortunately, we seem to put political ideology above the facts. And that's problematic, I think, for the citizens of Wisconsin."
"With that being said, I think it's vital that, for Neillsville, we stay optimistic for our kids. We've got a great community. We've got a great, experienced board of education, we've got a great staff and, most importantly, we have great kids. And we still have some level of local control. That may be a referendum in order to exceed the revenue cap so we can spend a bit more on our kids in the future. So, I think it's important for us to stay optimistic even though this budget will make it much more difficult, in the words of Senator Luther Olson, much more difficult to operate a public school over the next two years."
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
Part 4, Home Schooled Kids in Public School Sports and More: http://cwbradio.com/news/?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=14721
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