Well, there it is, Busted Pencils, fully-ledged education talk, educated educators talking, education.
Yeah, Wisconsin Public Education Network with us, Jenny Hofschulti, Tom Wormuth,
talking about referendums, and Tom, you had such a great story there of, you know, you went
to referendum in the fall of 22, lost by about 500 votes, bring Wisconsin Public Education
Network in in the spring, and the referendum passes by 200 votes. Jenny, how does that happen?
Well, first of all, I don't want to dog on this great story, but I am going to dog on the
legislature a little bit first. So, our network spends a lot of time educating the community about
school funding, and we absolutely do not want to be in the referendum business for one second,
because we shouldn't be finding our schools this way in such an inequitable joy gap widening
way, right? And it's heartbreaking, and there are districts that face dissolution, and like what kind
of imbalance that brings to a community. So, WPN does not want to be in this vote. In fact,
we spend a ton of time encouraging people to show up for state budget actions, finance meetings,
meeting with your legislature, trying to tell your local stories to get them to give a damn about
what's going on in our schools, to help not just give more money in each biennium, but like to fix
the funding formula, right? And to make it so that school districts aren't on pins and needles
all the time, and that we didn't have such a punitive system where we're constantly trying to
kick people about their state test scores when we know there's so much more that goes into those,
right? So, what we do with the referendum teams is our local organizers around the state
meet with local teams, those jazz teams, help educate them so they can be good messengers of
the story of how we're funding schools in the state, and then to help people ask really great
questions. Not only have your local school board about how money spent and budget allocations
are made, but just how the state is funding the schools and to help people understand the stories
bigger than your vote, yes, question, right? A lot of times people will come in and they'll be like,
they must be, you know, embezzling, they must be doing something wrong, you know, and like,
they pay people too much, and like, I don't know anybody who works in a public school that things,
the teachers are making too much, right? So, we really use those to tell the story of the community
and then just to raise the story about like what your public school means to you as
the heart of your community, you know, for some places it's the largest employer of a region or
area, people love their Friday night lights, it's a sense of community, generations have
attended those public schools, and sometimes you get a little gap in people's, you know, sweet
memories of it and you have to revive those things for them. So, we spend a lot of time with the
S committees talking with them about like, what do you love about your public schools? What story do
you want to tell? What vision do you have for what kids in your community need right now and then
what education is going to look like in your community going forward? So, that's a lot of the work
that we do is just talking things through and empowering local groups. We like, we know, we'll vet
their language on certain things or look at their yard signs before they print them and I will say
one more thing. We connect them with other people who have been on these S committees around the
state too. So, like, we connect people, you know, from Shaboygan to LaCrosse, from, you know,
Sturgeon Bay down to Bristol, just like they've been in that boat and you're not alone. And sometimes
just knowing how money referendum we've had can really light the fire and somebody, we have a
business leader right now helping with the yes committee on the north, northern part of the state,
and he like doesn't have kids and doesn't study and never cared, but he's mad as hell about how
we're finding schools and like he knows how important that school is to the city, right? But he hadn't
thought about it until someone knocked on his door and was like, are you going to vote yes for
our referendum? And he was like, what are you talking about? He now he's like, he's their biggest
cheerleader. But that's that I love just that part of the story there, the ability to go out there
and take a resident and to have them, I don't have kids in the school and just like all of a sudden,
like, wait a minute, but this is important. This is the heart of our community and the way you put
that out there, Jenny, you know, these aren't yes committees as much as there to me. There are
storytelling committees that are helping people connect to those stories that sometimes as you
and you said this, you know, very much the same way to to remind them that these are your schools
and that you have a connection to them, you might have forgotten. It, you know, maybe it's been
been years since your kids were in school or maybe you're a grandparent, but you have some vision,
some memory that we help them link back into. And, you know, so think about what happened in
in Tom's district there then to go, you know, in the span of what six months to get that type of a
change in the voter to go forward. I wonder though too is at what point because Jenny doing all of
this work with constant public education that we're getting these yes committees out the constantly
be, you know, getting the referendum passed. Do you guys have time though to continue working with
the legislature on the real issue, which is we need to not go to referendum anymore?
I mean, I mean, we do have a budget by any budget coming up this spring. So our hope is to
chain get some of these yes committees to be turning up for those budget actions. You know, this,
all of this referendum business around our public schools is happening in tandem to this great
expansion in our voucher program in the state and how much money is being poured into
parochial and choice schools, right? And then we have open enrollment across the state where school
districts can take students from other school districts. So this like very competitive nature took a
long time for school districts to start to tell the truth about their story of their financial
struggles because you didn't want to be the school district that said you're struggling financially
because that would make people have pause. They could start looking around in other communities.
You know, so this funding by referendum is happening in tandem to this big choice movement and then
this redirecting of public money into parochial schools. Those things get flashy headlines and then
people who don't have kids in schools and aren't hearing those stories start to believe the hype
about like, well, why do we need public schools? And it's our job collectively to remind them not
only do we need public schools, but we need people who care about them to show up at the state house
to tell the legislature to spend the money on our kids. I mean, they're sitting on a giant surplus
right now. And that story doesn't get enough story because they could fill a lot of these holes
instantly of literal, literal stroke of pen. That's awesome. Absolutely. And one of our themes from
for the week is to practice corporeal politics to get out and to to talk with one another to be
part of the blood like you're saying yes, committees, but also to understand how we can collectively
change the need to even have referendums. So one of the really important things too, I want our
listeners to be able to get is Jenny, where can listener get connected to yes committees all over
the place? Where can they find out more information about WPN? I think the best place to start for
us is just going to Wisconsin Network, all one word, Wisconsin Network dot org. There you're going
to find a wealth of resources from us and not only yes and referendum committees, but budgeting
and getting together and connecting around public schools around the state. And it is a landing
place for anybody who cares about public schools. You don't have to be an educator. You don't have
to be an administrator. You don't even have to be a podcast host. You can just join that one.
Wisconsin Public Education Network busting pencils. See y'all tomorrow night.