Virtual School Families Should Go to the Mattresses
By Deb Jordahl
Winston
Churchill said, “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”
If
the families and supporters of Wisconsin’s Virtual Academy study the
history of school choice, they will follow Sonny Corleone’s lead and go
directly to the mattresses.
Last week more than a thousand WIVA students and parents traveled to Madison to save their school after the teacher’s union and State School Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster sued to have WIVA shut down, kicking three thousand kids from all over the state head-on to the curb. According to the State’s attorney, this remedy was appropriate because the school, which is staffed by certified public school teachers and union members, relied too heavily on parent volunteers to help educate students.
WIVA’s per pupil cost to taxpayers is $5,845 --- more than $3000 less than the average per pupil cost in Wisconsin public schools, and less than half what we pay for every student enrolled in Milwaukee’s failing public schools. And WIVA’s standardized state test scores rival those in other successful state school districts like Middleton.
But none of that matters to WEAC and the Democrat establishment in Madison. What matters to them is that virtual schools allow for a greater teacher –student ratio than traditional public schools, and that means fewer dues paying members for WEAC.
So while the Republican Assembly was rushing to address issues raised in the union law suit, State Senate Democrats were proposing legislation to cut WIVA’s funding in half, a move certain to devastate the school. The legislation’s chief sponsor is Senator John Lehman of Racine. Lehman, who accused WIVA’s corporate sponsors of profiteering, is apparently fine with Racine Unified Schools spending more than $10,000 per pupil while ranking at the bottom academically. For Lehman, at the end of the day it’s not what students know, its how many dues paying union members are being paid to teach them that counts.
Rewind to 2005 when over 2000, predominately African American and Hispanic Milwaukee school choice supporters traveled to Madison to implore Doyle and the legislature to lift the cap on school choice enrollment. Doyle --- who promised to support efforts to lift the cap when he was a candidate in 2002 --- couldn’t be bothered to address the group or even poke his head out of the office door to say hello.
The rally was followed by another year of Doyle and his top aides negotiating with school choice advocates in extremely bad faith. Each attempt to reach a deal ended with Doyle making demands for increased public school funding he knew the legislature could never accept.
In January of 2006, faced with intense pressure from the Catholic Archdiocese, the Milwaukee Business Community, and a series of hard hitting television, radio and newspaper ads, featuring kids who said the Governor was destroying their dream, Doyle agreed to expand the enrollment cap from 15,000 to 22, 500 students, just in time to avert the train wreck facing choice schools. Apparently Doyle, now up for re-election, didn’t like being compared to racist southern segregationists, or taken to task by the Milwaukee business community that had largely given him a political pass until then.
But if the battle to save school choice teaches us anything, it is that the only thing politicians understand is pain ---- the sharper the better.
2008 is another election year, and tax weary voters will not be amused to learn that their State legislator wants to shut down a successful public school that costs $3000 less per student than the average public school, especially considering the state is already facing a structural deficit of over a billion dollars and an immediate revenue shortfall of over $120 million.
Virtual school families are everywhere. They are well educated, technologically savvy and easily mobilized, and they won’t have to explain why tax dollars are going to private schools. WIVA is a public school with public school teachers. Their friends, neighbors and local media will likely be receptive to their cause, and it will be much more difficult for legislators and Governor Doyle to simply dismiss them.
Go the mattresses. Take off the gloves. Leave a severed horse head in Senator Lehman’s bed if that’s what it takes. Inflict the same kind of pain on the education establishment and their friends in the Capitol as they’ve’ inflicted on the rest of us for years. Don’t count to ten or wait for cooler heads to prevail.
Go to the mattress now!