Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction election, 2021

• Ensure Success for All Students through Equity with Excellence
  • Reopen our Schools NOW
  • Close racial achievement gaps
  • Laser focus on literacy and numeracy skills with defined outcomes for all kids
  • Ensure success for every student by creating schools that prioritize character education, with rich social-emotional and mental health supports
  • Create strength-based pathways for all kids that provide career AND college opportunities
  • Require rigorous and relevant learning opportunities that culturally reflect the real world and the needs of our learners, so that all kids are well prepared for success in life after high school

• Innovate and Personalize Learning for All Students
  • Our Wisconsin Promise - where every student will be known by name, strength, passion and need and graduate prepared for the future they choose
  • Deliver child-centered personalized learning with innovative experiences and opportunities taught by learner responsive educators
  • Eliminate digital divide & access to robust internet, especially in rural areas and underrepresented communities
  • Provide staff and parents professional development with digital tools to meet the needs of all learners
  • Foster and celebrate innovations in our Wisconsin schools

• Engage Families and Communities as Partners
  • Aligning resources to ensure that all children and families are well served
  • Find creative ways to engage families as valued partners in supporting their children’s learning
  • Elevate all children and families to break down barriers to ensure access and opportunity
  • Foster partnerships in our respective school communities to serve as catalysts for a world-class education

• Lead with Strength and Respect, and Honor all Stakeholders
  • Support continuous improvement and expect increased student achievement and accountability from all schools and opportunities taught by learner responsive educators
  • Honor our teachers, staff, administrators, school boards, business, and community leaders
  • Tell the great education stories of all kids in our Wisconsin educational system, and retain our students as life-long Wisconsin citizens
  • Promote the profession to recruit the best and brightest to work in our schools

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• Early Childhood and 4K Programming for All Students: All Day, Everyday

Fitting with “every child, every day,” I am a strong believer in a healthy start for all kids by offering universal all day/every day 4K and optional 3K programming. All kids need to have the same strong start to schooling with literacy and math exposure, behavior interventions, and support for kids with special needs, including mental health needs. I also strongly believe that early intervention, and investing in children early will help close the achievement and opportunity gaps in Wisconsin. I also know that investing in our kids will help with graduation, long term educational outcomes, health outcomes, and help end the school to prison pipeline for many of our black and brown children, and children who grow up in poverty.

We must make Wisconsin a national leader in early childhood education again. Not that long ago, as a young mom, I searched for preschool programming for my two children who were 19 months apart at a rate that I could afford. What a near-impossible quest. Because I could not afford it, either I had to choose which child got to go to a high-quality program, I had to settle for something subpar so they both could attend, or I had to keep them home and educate them myself until they were eligible for full-day programs. This is not something that parents should have to choose because they live far away from a good program, or because they cannot afford a high-quality program.

And as we’ve learned in this pandemic, it’s often the mom who leaves the workforce to care for young children or to stay home and educate them, therefore exiting the workforce and having long-term consequences for their family’s economic future. It’s not just about mothers, though, as it is proven that high-quality early childhood education is critical to lifelong successes. Every school district must have high-quality programming and they need to offer it every day, because otherwise it becomes uneven. Parents need to feel confident that if they want to send their child to a program, they can also return to the workforce if they so desire. We have so much research on what works, yet we will not do any of it because of the upfront cost. Instead, we put that responsibility on parents, and what you find is that those who can afford it or have access to it take advantage of it, setting up their children for lifetime success. However, for those who cannot afford or access it, their children head down a road of greater inequity—a loss for all of us. Every parent wants the best for their child. Parents should not have to choose between paying a mortgage and putting their child in daycare or private preschool. If all kids had access to early intervention services and strong early childhood programs, can you imagine what their elementary experience would be like? Can you imagine a world where all children received a strong start complete with early interventions for speech, language, reading, and other learning needs? Can you imagine the possibilities for our economic future when we set all kids on the path to graduating from high school career- and college-ready? If they had a strong early childhood program that set them up for a lifetime of success? I am a firm believer that we need to invest in our kids in the beginning of their lives rather than pay for social services or corrections when they are adults.

Early childhood programming is a proven program that lifts all children up and benefits our entire state—and economy—for a lifetime. In Pecatonica, I started after-school programs, a full-day summer program, and a full-day, every day 4K program for this explicit purpose. We needed to ensure our kids were receiving early intervention, and we did so, even if it meant a small loss in revenue that was not reimbursed by the state. Our school board shared my belief that it was best for kids. I want to bring these programs to all public schools in the state, and in a time of COVID-19 recovery, these programs will be needed now more than ever before.

• Fair and Full funding for our Public Schools

Our public schools are facing a funding crisis. The system of funding our public schools primarily from local property taxes isn’t working and we need to fix it.

Currently, the state reimburses only 30% of the cost for special education and only 4% for English Language Learners which causes significant budget shortfalls for schools that have a high number of students in either category. A lot of Wisconsin’s schools do not have school nurses, reading specialists, gifted and talented coordinators, or school psychologists because they cannot afford them. Many schools are facing crumbling infrastructure. Meanwhile, schools in areas with higher property values and growing populations are building cathedrals to learning with beautiful athletic “complexes” and industrial arts centers. All kids deserve all of these things, but our current system of school finance certainly creates a system of winners and losers, and it’s simply not right. Public schools are supposed to be the great equalizers and we have to take action to fulfill that purpose.

I was an invited speaker for the Blue Ribbon Commission in 2018, and I shared how the current school finance system has created more inequity between our public schools since 1993. As State Superintendent I would work with the legislature and our school boards association and use the recommendations in the 2019 Blue Ribbon Commission on Education Funding as our plan for fair funding. We will increase reimbursements for special education and English language learners in addition to re-examining how we distribute per-pupil finding.

• Mental Health Support for Students, Families, and Staff

In the last 30 years, poverty has increased in Wisconsin, and nationally, 1 in 6 children live in poverty, making them the poorest age group. Anxiety and depression are rising among our students too, and the pandemic did not help curb either of these.

My goal as state superintendent is to work with our school administrators and our different professional organizations and private-public partners in mental health to bring more training to our staff, but also provide more on-site mental health services for our students and families. In a rural area especially, where there are shortages, the needs are critical. As our children and staff weather this pandemic, the need is greater than ever before.

Across our state, there is a shortage of mental health providers, and there are limitations in Wisconsin as to which providers can work in schools. I would work with the legislature to change the rules to allow individuals who are trained professionals to leave private practice and work in the public schools. In addition, I would advocate with educator licensing programs in the UW System throughout the state such as Platteville, La Crosse, Superior, and Eau Claire to revisit their social work programs and offer master degree programs. In this case, we should allow school social workers to start with a bachelor’s degree and work toward a masters degree to advance in their career.

Next, we need to provide the allocated school mental health funding directly to schools in the form of personnel instead of making funds available as competitive grants. Again, my agenda focuses on equity, disrupting those factors that create generational poverty, and disrupting the cycle of poverty that inequity in our society exacerbates. Due to unmet mental health needs, children in middle and high school are introduced at a young age to the criminal justice system, and unmet mental health needs factor into Wisconsin’s very active school-to-prison pipeline.

We need to review how we staff our schools in general, and this would be a great place to start. For example, can we agree that every school building needs to have a school nurse, a social worker, and a mental health professional? Then let us move forward from there. Again, this would come back to the revision of the school finance formula to ensure we make these positions a reality. In this COVID-19 pandemic, we see that these professionals are needed more than ever. The commitment from the state would come in the form of funding but also in reviewing and revising our educator licensing for school pupil services personnel. DPI would need to make minimum staffing recommendations and perhaps allocate more resources to our school districts with the lowest local financial resources specifically for mental health needs.

• Voucher School Program

I’ve been asked what my position is on the expansion of taxpayer-funded private school vouchers, and whether or not I would be supportive of the program’s expansion.

The short answer is “NO.”

• I am strongly against the expansion of taxpayer-funded private school vouchers.
• I strongly believe that the public should be investing their public dollars to make public schools better and meet the needs of all public school kids, versus placing public dollars in private schools.

Further, I think that most people in Wisconsin have no idea how much voucher expansion has cost them as taxpayers, and how much of the funding for vouchers has come from the aid that is general school aid that used to go to public schools. I have nothing against private schools, and they serve a purpose, of course, in the general fabric of what makes Wisconsin schooling great, but I do not believe that private schools that take funds from public schools should be funded with tax dollars.

As state superintendent, I would implement the law as it is written; however, I advocate that public money go to improve public schools and their programs that improve equity and student achievement instead of expanding private school vouchers.

I think that private schools that accept public dollars should be in the same accountability system as public schools. Their teachers and administrators should have the same licensing requirements, and they should have the same accountability report cards as public schools and districts required for all of their students. I would take it a step further: those private schools that accept federal dollars like Title I and Title II should also be a part of the federal accountability program and identification process. In addition, I would like to see an item on our tax bills that shows the amount that is provided for the local public school tax levy, and then the amount that is removed from the levy that goes to both voucher schools and independent charter schools.

Taxpayers deserve transparency in where their money goes, particularly when they are approving referendums for their public schools, while private vouchers and 2R charters never have to go to referendum and take their funding off the top of the equalized aid distribution.

• Educational Equity for All

Our history is one of progress, but also of the reality that kids have been denied opportunity based on skin color, gender, ability, orientation, and socio-economic status. It’s past time to tackle the inequity plaguing our public schools.

My vision for PK-12 public education in Wisconsin is rooted in equity. I want to solve problems of inequity, and that starts at the beginning of a child’s life and then at the start of their public schooling career. When people have asked me “why” I want to run for State Superintendent, my response is, “I want to disrupt the systems of inequity that plague our public schools.”

We have inequity and that translates to what people commonly call “achievement gaps.” However, when we call it an achievement gap we put the onus or blame on the lack of achievement on our kids. In reality, it is not our childrens’ fault that they live in a state or within a system that penalizes them for where they live, their zip code, who their parents are, or what their race, gender, or socio-economic status is. What we have are opportunity gaps. There are children in our state who are afforded more opportunities and they will achieve more as a result.

My platform is rooted in equity and the game-changers that can disrupt these systems of inequity and afford all children the opportunities that will set them up for a lifetime of success:

• Fully funded early childhood programming that is full-day and every day, and is high quality and assured to give all children the start they need to be successful.
• Teacher recruitment and retention, particularly in rural and urban areas, that brings the best and brightest into our schools and values them.
• Mental health support and resources for our students, particularly during the aftermath of a pandemic when there is so much trauma.
• The way forward is through a revision of our school finance system, and that will be my highest priority during my tenure. We need a school finance formula that works for all public schools in Wisconsin.

Supporting Students of Color

The disparities between black, brown, and white children have only been growing. We have tremendous work to do, to dismantle more than four centuries of racist national, state, and local policies.

For all students, especially students of color, English Language Learner students, our students in poverty in urban and rural settings, and our students with disabilities in both settings, having access to fully funded preschool and early childhood programming where they can socialize, be well supervised, get access to interventions in literacy and mathematics, behavior, and speech, language, and OT/PT, are important building blocks for future academic success. When all kids get the strong start they deserve, they are much more likely to be successful academically, to thrive in school, and graduate high school.

We also need to reevaluate the institution of public schools inside and out. We need to root out racist disciplinary policies, attract and retain educators of color, and listen to our students of color when they tell us something isn’t right.

Supporting LGTBQ+ Students & Staff

All means “all.” All kids need to be included in our schools, and they need to be safe. This is an equity issue – our students and staff have a right to feel safe and comfortable in our public schools. Anti-harassment and anti-bullying policies and enforcement of those policies is an imperative for our LGBTQ+ community. One way to ensure this is happening is to provide an outlet for kids so that they can talk to trusted adults. We need to foster school cultures where adults truly listen and can help students identify resources they need to grow in a safe and healthy way. It is also an imperative that students get access to support, to mental health resources as needed, and representation in our school culture and activities.

It is also an imperative that students get access to support, to mental health resources as needed, and representation in our school culture and activities. Additionally, our trans and non-binary students and staff deserve to use the restrooms and changing facilities that match their gender identity.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) Education

Wisconsin’s Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) communities have been underserved by our public school system. My platform is centered around disrupting the systems of inequity that plague our public schools — and that includes the inequity faced by our DHH students and families.

One of the biggest things we can do to tackle this inequity is to expand our early childhood education, especially around language skills, for our DHH students. Home visits by DHH mentors are a core component of this and our schools need the funding and resources to provide these and other services that set up our DHH students for success.

Additionally, we need to ensure that we can recruit and retain the American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters that our schools are both morally and legally obligated to provide so that we can give our DHH students the high-quality education they deserve. On top of this, we also need to expand our efforts to recruit DHH teachers and educators.

As Superintendent, I would also encourage and promote ASL learning for anyone. You don’t need to have a DHH family member or friend to learn ASL, and the more people in our community who learn ASL, the easier it is for all DHH people to fully participate in society.

There are many other areas of DHH education that need improvement, and I’m ready to begin this work as Superintendent.

Equity Audits

I am committed to establishing a cabinet-level officer in DPI Administration that will oversee the equity work in our agency as well as in our school district programming.

One of my passions is “equity audits.” Equity audits are a way to look internally at our policies and practices in school, in our curriculum, handbooks, and participation/engagements in clubs, activities, classes that fully shows us that kids are not feeling unsafe or unwelcomed in our school culture (like certain classes, spaces, extra-curricular), and that everyone is represented.

Through equity audits we identify areas that are not working for all kids, or areas that need additional resources to make them truly equitable for our students. I am excited to get to work on this very important initiative – through the equity projects within my platform, to the equity audits in our schools, I am committed to ensuring that every child, every day, thrives in Wisconsin’s public schools.

• Teacher Education, Recruitment and Retention

We need highly trained, passionate, and compassionate teachers in the profession. Act 10 destroyed that promise for many of our future teachers by reducing pay and benefits, and making the profession undesirable. It also discouraged young people from going into the teaching profession, and as a result, we have more vacancies now more than ever, especially in the highest need areas like special education, math and science, computer science, reading, and foreign language, school counseling, and technical education (business, agriculture, and STEM).

• I would work with our teacher unions to restore the teaching profession to the respectability it deserves as one of the most noble professions. I would work with existing programs in our colleges and schools of education to recruit young adults back to teaching. I would work to increase teacher pay so that teachers can once again support a family with a living wage and a career path that pays them for their expertise and education.
• I would advocate for the removal of “educator effectiveness” as it stands right now and replace it with a system that is locally controlled, and collaborative between unions and school boards and administrators.

I have other ideas:

• School-based professional development
• Revisiting the multitude of gatekeeping tests that teachers must pass to become licensed
• Reorganization of roles and responsibilities that are rooted in evidence-based practices such as collective efficacy among staff
• Student loan forgiveness for teachers and administrators
• A complete overhaul of the educator “effectiveness” system

I have experienced this issue firsthand as a rural school superintendent who has recruited and hired dozens of teachers. We have a crisis that needs someone who knows the local struggle. And I can lean into my experience of working in educator licensing at the Department of Public Instruction and with quality students at UW-Madison who wanted to become teachers but could not get into the School of Education.

There are several issues here. The first is supply and demand. No one ever went into teaching to get rich. It is a calling, a vocation. Since 2011, Wisconsin public teachers have been disrespected and demonized by too many, including some of our state leaders. This in turn has deterred young adults from pursuing the teaching profession. Cuts in salary and benefits have made a once attractive job that could support a family now unattractive. Wisconsin has moved to the lower half of states in starting teacher pay and below the average in teacher salary. This puts potential teachers behind what many others who have college degrees would earn in the workforce. We now are losing the Midwest regional competition for new teachers. It’s time to stop that.

Second, our schools of education—while I applaud them for their selectivity—had become so exclusive that they were attracting a type of student who had an educational experience completely different from what our public school students experienced in reality. Personally, I think the best teachers are those who did not have an easy time in school. They did not have the best grades all the time, and learning did not always come easy to them. Often, the best special education teachers are the ones who struggled with standardized tests. And our new teachers look nothing like many of the kids they will teach in our schools. We need a diverse workforce not only in race, ethnicity, and language skills, but also in upbringing—those who perhaps did not grow up in an upper middle-class household but struggled in school. There are some great programs like Educators Rising that recruit high school students into teaching majors in college. UW-Platteville has a program that recruits engineering majors into STEM teaching careers. I would like to use the Wisconsin Teachers of the Year Council in an advisory capacity to inform school boards and colleges what needs our new teachers must be educated in before graduating. We all want the same thing and we all should work together on this: schools and colleges, school boards, SAA, WEAC, and DPI.

Lastly, we need to reprofessionalize the teaching force. I want unions and school boards to work together to figure this out. If we are going to get the best and the brightest in our classrooms, we must pay them what they are worth. We must value the elementary school teacher the same as we would value a high school technology or physics teacher. Each teacher has a role to play in the educational development of our children. I want the best in our classroom, and to do that, we need to rethink how we compensate teachers and we need to rethink their career ladder. Teachers need to see a future in a school district. And they need to know that those who choose to teach in a rural area are as valued for their labor as a teacher in a wealthier suburb. I think we can learn a lot from what other states and other countries have done for educator compensation and apply that learning to our situation in Wisconsin.

We need to revisit how teachers are licensed. I think that we have too many expensive tests for teachers too, and they must take a semester of an unpaid internship to boot. We need to value people for their labor and their contributions if we want people to go into the profession, and we need to get the people who are teachers and educators to control the licensing and make decisions about tenure. I would also like to work with WEAC, the school boards, AWSA, WASBO, WASDA, and the colleges and schools of education to develop a true career ladder with sectoral bargaining and compensation packages so that teachers can establish roots and see a future in their school districts rather than have to move around so much in order to get a pay raise. I have also given thought to a “baseline” personnel expectation in all schools. Is it reasonable to expect that each building has a principal? What about a reading specialist or a gifted and talented coordinator or a curriculum coordinator? Many schools have cut different positions, which has created a widening inequity in educator positions in our schools. So when I look at licensure, I look at the economically stressed districts, and I wonder how we can aid them so that they can hire people to fill roles that have gone unfilled because of shortages or because they are cost prohibitive.

The point is, becoming a licensed educator in Wisconsin is a series of expensive and frustrating hoops to jump through. It should not be this difficult for intelligent, strong, and passionate educators to work with our kids. There must always be criteria, but the criteria should not be so impossible and time-consuming (and expensive) that they deter people from the profession. If we can make education a sought-after profession, we will attract the best and the brightest. If we can promote the profession and respect the individuals already employed by our schools, we will keep them in our schools doing what they do best: educating and inspiring our kids. ^[32]