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Last August, days after some schools had opened and days before most schools were ready to open, the Dane County Health Department issued a school closure order for all schools, public and private serving grades 3-12. School Choice Wisconsin Action, along with several private schools and other stakeholders, immediately filed suit through the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. The petition asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court for an injunction that would allow schools to open while the Court deliberated. The injunction was granted allowing private schools in Dane County to open for in-person instruction, but the Court’s final decision was…
Read MoreDue to the evolving nature of EANS funding, School Choice Wisconsin Action (SCWA) hosted a roundtable discussion on May 12, 2021 for school staff members to ask questions and share information. Our panel included Lori Saqer of Messmer High School, Brian Frank of St Augustine Preparatory Academy, and Donna Bembenek of Catholic Memorial High School. The FAQ from that roundtable is below. * SCWA Disclaimer: While seeking to be a helpful resource to schools, SCWA has pulled together answers from CESA6 and DPI for the following questions submitted to the May 12th SCWA roundtable on EANS. This tool in no…
Read MoreMPS is moving forward with a current-law application of transportation benefits with private schools and parents for the entire school year. They have made commitments to legislators that their intent is to fully allocate eligible resources by June 30, earlier if possible. In April, School Choice Wisconsin Action was instrumental in getting AB160 / SB221 before the Education Committee in Madison. The bill, introduced by representatives Jessie Rodriguez and Jeremy Thiesfeldt, relates to transportation to a private school during the 2020-21 school year for pupils who reside in a first class city school district. In her testimony before the Education…
Read MoreFor Immediate Release Contact: Jim Bender, Government Affairs and Public Policy Consultant School Choice Wisconsin Brookfield, WI – The following is a statement from School Choice Wisconsin’s Government Affairs and Public Policy Consultant, Jim Bender on Governor Evers’ budget provision calling for the freezing of enrollment in the Parental Choice Programs: “There is a clear divide in education in Wisconsin today – not between public and private, but between open and closed. One small, but very influential camp, is utilizing resources to force kids to stay home, the other is working night and day to provide in-person instruction in a…
Read MoreFor Immediate Release Contact: Jim Bender, School Choice Wisconsin [email protected] 414.319.9160 Brookfield, WI – In celebration of National School Choice Week, School Choice Wisconsin is releasing an OnMessage statewide education poll that shows Wisconsin parents have a strong desire for educational flexibility during the COVID pandemic. School Choice Wisconsin commissioned the poll of 800 Wisconsin likely voters in the late fall of 2020 to collect reactions to school closures, enrollment options and other aspects of parental empowerment in education. Major findings: 62% want schools to be open with some form of in-person education. (Yesterday, the CDC released a study supporting…
Read MoreContacts: Susan Mitchell, 414.232.4324 Jim Bender, 920.222.5427 Brookfield, WI – School Choice Wisconsin (SCW) President Jim Bender will step down at the end of the year to form his own business, Bender Consulting, LLC. SCW will begin immediately to recruit a new president, SCW board chair Susan Mitchell said. “Jim has led SCW through a decade of major growth in programs, participating schools, and students,” Mitchell said. “Thanks to his leadership, the number of programs has quadrupled, participating schools have tripled, and the number of students served has doubled,” she said. The pandemic has shown parents the value of the…
Read MoreFrom the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Milwaukee schools and universities that have been planning to offer face-to-face instruction this fall may need to shift gears after the city health department quietly enacted stricter guidelines for when in-person classes may resume.” Later in the article, Jim Bender explained that schools had been blindsided by Milwaukee area health officials, “Nobody saw this coming. Schools did not have any sort of consultative role in these changes. And they didn’t get any communication from the health department that the changes were being made.” Read the entire article.
Read MoreEspinoza v Montana Ruling Finds Montana DOR Violated First Amendment In a 5-4 decision, Justice Roberts writes that prohibiting religious schools from publicly-funded education programs violates the First Amendment, Free Exercise Clause of the US Constitution. In a shot directly at the basis for Blaine amendments of many states, banning entities from public programs simply because they are religious is discriminatory. In particular, the Alito concurrence focuses on the fact that “Montana’s no-aid provision retains the bigoted code language used throughout state Blaine Amendments”. “Today’s ruling adds further structural support for school choice programs to include all types of schools…
Read MoreWisconsin Program Sees 37% Growth Enrollment for the Parental Choice Programs for 2019-20 show significant growth once again per DPI. Please see the tables below for headcount data and important information about DPI data releases meant to mislead the media/public with regards to prior year enrollment. “Year over year, the Parental Choice Programs continue to grow across Wisconsin,” Jim Bender said. “Combined with public school open enrollment and independent charters, more than 12% of students are educated with public dollars outside their resident district. That number continues to increase every year.” WPCP – District limits are at 4% of enrollment…
Read MoreFor Immediate Release September 12, 2019 Contact: Jim Bender DPI gets an “F” on transparency by withholding crucial data from media Test results released yesterday by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) show that again this year, students in the Parental Choice Programs are outperforming their full-income, public-school peers on the ACT. As with all test data, a one-year snapshot of raw data has limitations but the trend of higher scores for students on a voucher is great news for both students and taxpayers. New this year were the results of the Aspire Exam as part of the ACT suite.…
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