Gregg Schneider

02/22/2021

 

Act 10 is a decade old. The impact on education in Wisconsin is devastating. It immediately cut teachers paychecks and their bargaining rights.  In the first six years of Act 10, the number of people entering college to be come teachers dropped by 33.4% according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. 

 

Act 10 dealt with the teacher shortage by creating ways for people who have no training or are in training to act as teachers. That doesn't mean that they are bad teachers but they do not have the educational background.  Do we want to have 1-4 years of students be their training ground?  

 

Act 10 also allows school districts to hire new teachers at what ever salary they choose to. Unfortunately, the district is still bound by the same spending cap as before. If someone gets paid more, the money has to come from somewhere else.  

 

Act 10 was followed up with Act 32 which cut 1.6 billion dollars from K-12 school districts and it reduced the amount districts could spend. Before Act 10, Wisconsin was the 12th highest state on educational spending increases. By 2018, Wisconsin fell from 12th to 49th in the country on spending increases. From 2011 and 2018, Wisconsin had a 4.3% increase in state spending compared to the national average of 18.9%, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. The impact on school districts can be seen in the almost 2,000 referendums between 2008 and 2018; most of which were not for special or building  projects but to keep the district afloat.

 

Rural districts and districts with large populations of students eligible for free and reduced lunch are the districts that are hit the hardest. Beloit is one of them. With ever-decreasing budgets, Beloit is asked to do more with fewer resources. The more we ask teachers to do, the less time they have to teach our students. For example, the more time they work with disruptive students or spend monitoring cell phone use, the less time they have to work with the rest of the class.  After all, isn't that why we hired them --  to teach?

 

It is time for Act 10 to go. It did what Gov. Walker wanted it to do; balance the state budget, rebuild the rainy-day fund and pay for the tax cuts to the wealthy and the big corporations and break the teacher and public employee unions; to the detriment of our children and our future.