Wisconsin from Civic Media.
This is Up North News Radio.
Now, live from our Lake Lesota studio, here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat
Breidler.
Well, the Lake Lesota studio is relocated to the mountain west as watching the moon setting behind a snow-capped mountain.
There's worse ways to start a day.
Welcome back to Up North News Radio on a bash of Lee, Wisconsin and a little bit of Idaho this week.
Anyway, brought to you by courier newsroom and carried by our friends here on the civic media radio network.
It is 706 on this Wednesday morning, April 9th, coming up our homeroom segment.
And we're extending things a bit with the conversation because it's not just about public schools in Wisconsin, which we tend to talk about every Wednesday morning at this time, but about
early childhood, childhood education, special education, the state budget.
And the things that legislators could do to live up to the theme that Governor Tony Evers expressed in his budget address, and I believe his state of the state as well, to think of this as the year of the kid and how to make our state budget more kid friendly, how to make it more family friendly.
He's got ideas.
There's people in charge of the legislature who don't.
like the ideas, and this is the time in the process where they get to hear from you about whether the state budget should be more kid-friendly, more friendly toward public education, more family-friendly.
Kareen Hendrickson will be here to talk about that from a child care standpoint.
Chris Handbook Boyle from a special education standpoint will talk about...
Bryn Horton as well from the Wisconsin Public Education Network with an update of all the legislation moving through the Capitol that would affect schools in Wisconsin.
So that's all coming up.
And then Todd Alba will wrap things up later this hour.
And we've got some news about the show itself.
This here little radio show is about to make a big change that we can't wait to tell you about.
But you're going to have to wait because weather is a much bigger deal.
than anything that's happening with me and my little program here.
Whether you like it or not.
Especially since we're apparently, maybe, finally, coming out of what counts as a deep freeze for April, and it is something that is much more seasonal, or dare we say warm, Brittany Merleau.
Yeah, I don't know if we can say that just yet.
OK.
Well, warmer than this.
Yes.
Oh, this
morning right now.
That's how I'm feeling.
I've got flurries on the radar.
I don't see any making it to the ground at the moment, but it might be in some places.
Mostly cloudy this morning.
For a lot of the state, there are some pockets of sunshine far south.
and those temperatures this morning from the upper 20s to the upper 30s.
So we're getting there slowly, but surely highs today will reach the upper 40s to low 50s, but it's not going to be a bright and beautiful one like yesterday.
We've got the clouds hanging around.
We've got actually a traffic jam of low pressure systems right around Wisconsin.
So what's going to happen is we're going to stay overcast through today and tomorrow with chances of spotty sprinkles and light drizzle pretty much from now through the end of Thursday.
And at night we could see it mixed to a little bit of snow too.
So we could see some trace accumulations out there by tomorrow morning.
But otherwise after that we are looking at
bright and beautiful skies for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
And yes, this is where things really start to get much warmer.
I cannot wait for it because we're going to be in the mid to upper forties for tomorrow.
We're going to be in the low to mid fifties for Friday and then low sixties for Saturday.
And it doesn't stop there.
We're going to be in the mid to upper sixties on Sunday.
And some of us are going to hit 70 on Monday.
See, now there we go.
I like that.
That gets us to warm and warm is a good place to be.
Rob says, good morning from Tigerton.
It's cloudy and 27 degrees yesterday was a beautiful day.
Took a walk around Tigerton, still muddy in the woods and around the streets in Tigerton.
He said, Thursday night, I'm going to take the National Weather Service Storm Spotters class through the National Weather Service in Green Bay.
It's Thursday night at seven.
The class is online.
It's very important during weather events, he says.
that storm spotters help meteorologists and storm reports and rain amounts.
Regarding our...
discussion in the last segment, he too had to square dance as part of physical education class.
They also had a trampoline.
What?
Yes.
He says, uh, yeah, they also, uh, his favorite Abba song, his favorite Abba song rather was Waterloo.
But yes, we were talking in the last segment about, um, square dancing, counting as a fiat activity only
in
Wisconsin schools.
You figure, right?
I was in Illinois and we had that as a.
This is education class too.
Yes, we did.
And that was my favorite.
Wait, I don't do physical activity really or have someone throw a ball at my face.
Grand.
Oh
my gosh.
So there's going to be some changes to the civic media lineup to tell you about.
If you're if you're happy with this program and hope you are because you're listening or watching, you're going to get more of it.
As we expand later this month to three hours from six to nine, Mr. Bach is going to be a busy man as Matt Naranair moves to its new slot, nine to 11.
So we get some busy times here, which means more me, more Brittany, and a whole lot of Greg.
There's so much Greg to go around that, you know, we've got two programs back to back to keep them busy.
Can you keep those plates a spinning young man?
What?
What?
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I was asleep there.
Yeah.
We'll give him a break at some point during that five hours.
Tony was getting excited like five hours of Greg.
No one
has ever.
I'm going to take that as anger that you don't want that because no one's ever wanted five hour.
That's a terrible name of five hours of Greg.
Alicia says, I'm always happy with this program.
Looking forward to Pat, Greg and Jane back to back.
And Tony, not square dancing.
He says in Ashland, I didn't take it, but I think actually had fishing as a class.
My high school had my high school had bowling.
There I've heard a lot of bowling, but I did talk to somebody who had fishing as a class.
I think that's actually looking back.
That's I think Sherita Booker talked about it in Milwaukee.
That's a very
important unit, I think, honestly.
Yes, right.
Yeah.
So for more of this scintillating conversation with Brittany Merleau and Greg and me, tune in to the new three hour version of this program starting in a couple of weeks.
Stay tuned for the exact date and the whole exact lineup.
A whole lot of things are going to be changing real soon here.
But the bottom line is Brittany Merleau is not going anywhere.
Still has our forecast for us in Brittany.
We appreciate that so much.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Have a good day.
All right.
Yep.
You as well.
All right.
Let's get into our discussion, our homeroom segment about kids and education in Wisconsin and early childhood and child care.
So many things that we could be doing so much better to make things more kid friendly.
Karine Hendrickson is here.
She's a child care provider.
Chris Handbook Boyle, our friend from the Wisconsin Public Education Network here as well.
Ladies, good morning.
Thank you for being here.
Good morning.
Nice to have you here.
Karine, you are a tireless advocate.
Now, I take that back.
I'm sure if you were on it, you'd say you're a tired advocate for childcare, but you are tireless in your willingness to go more than the extra mile to talk about the...
what the crisis is in child care right now and how it is something that is solvable.
There's things that our state legislature could do about it.
As you're watching this state budget process unfold, what's your 30,000 foot view of weather and how the child care crisis is being considered in the state capital?
Well, my 30,000 foot view is it's confusing.
We are hearing from some people that there's no way we're gonna get anything in this next budget.
There's other people saying that, yes, we'll get something in this budget, but we have to come up with better long-term solutions.
And I kind of have to push back on that.
That's their job as the legislature is to find the solutions and implement them, take our advice, listen to us.
But at the end of the day, that's literally their job and what they're supposed to be doing.
And so right now, we're really fighting for inclusion of early care and education, childcare,
in the state budget for the very first time, we rely 100% on federal dollars and we all know where those are all up in the air at the moment as well.
And so really it comes back around to what is our state willing to say the children are worth.
And right now they're saying they're worth zero dollars.
And that's not okay.
And so we have been going to legislative visits.
We've been having legislators come in.
There's advocacy days.
Brooke Legler, my colleague and co-founder of WeCan has been taking our show on the road.
Chris actually just saw us up in Ashland.
We'll be in Monroe tonight doing a community conversation with the Monroe Education Association at the Green County Justice Center from 6.30 to 8.30 p.m., free and open to the public.
And Saturday we're doing one up in Green Bay.
Same thing.
So we're really just trying
trying to help the community members understand how childcare impacts them, whether they have young children or not.
And really just tell the legislators, I care about the children in our community.
I care about the adults who are caring for them and I care about our communities.
And we need to invest in it as such.
There's a report coming out showing that what will happen if this fiscal cliff that we are gonna fall over in July happens and we get nothing to continue the childcare investment in wages.
About 20, the report's supposed to come out today.
Here's some highlights.
25% of us are talking about closing either immediately or within six months.
78% are going to be increasing rates at least by 10%.
38% are saying $26 or more a week.
Childcare is already unaffordable.
And we really need to be letting people know, including our employers know, what's going to happen if all of a sudden you can't afford to find childcare?
What's going to happen to their business?
Along with all the other things at the federal level, tariffs, unease, et cetera.
This is just one more wedge and cudgel that's just going to destroy our communities.
And then adding to that, Chris, before we take a break here, is that subset of early childhood, and that would be early childhood special education for folks, for families with special needs.
And that too is something where more could be done but isn't being done, but you're trying to advocate for solutions, right?
Yeah, I spent almost the whole
maybe last 15 years of my career as a speech and language pathologist, special education teacher working in childcare.
So we had an itinerant model where we went in and spent front-end loaded IEP needs within childcare and then we're there to help the staff and implement that IEP where the child was in childcare.
And with the funding that is happening with public schools,
And I was just talking to someone in Eau Claire, because we had partnerships with 4k with many of the private and the businesses of childcare in Eau Claire.
They're up being given what's happening right now to $1400 a month.
And I asked, well, do you get a break for if you have more than one child, which used to happen when I was doing all of this?
And he said, no, not anymore.
So you can see that the quality of what we're able to offer.
child care given kids with disabilities and because of funding and also funding for child care that public schools have to support what they're asking for because there is a huge connection between children that are in child care and their public schools.
Yeah, and we'll talk more about the the the fiscal cliff what is behind it and Again, the things that can be considered and put in the next state budget when we continue the conversation with Karine Hendrickson a child care provider and Chris Handbook Boyle from the Wisconsin Public Education Network The Brewers were winners in Colorado's who opened up a series yesterday The final score there was a seven to one with home runs from Bryce Terang Christian Yelich and William Contreras and the Bucks came back from 24 points down in the fourth quarter to beat the Timberwolves
last night as well.
Final score there 110-103.
More of Up North News radio coming up after this break on the Civic Media Radio Network.
you
Actress Cynthia Nixon is 59 years old today.
I catch all of our birthdays and other notes in our history lesson every weekday morning at 6.50.
Now we're talking about how the next state budget can be more kid and family friendly, more of that conversation in a moment, but the list you know as well that tomorrow in our Thursday State Capitol report, we will be talking to State Representative Tip McGuire and ways that Joint Finance Committee Democrats are proposing to stop the revolving door of school referendums.
Again, it's all about making these
budget more family friendly and that's coming up tomorrow on Up North News Radio.
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website for more.
Back to Karine Hendrickson and Chris Hambock Boyle and talking about ways that our state legislature could do a better job of not just taking care of public education that we talk about every week, but child care as well.
Karine, let's go back and reset for folks that haven't been following this closely.
You mentioned a fiscal cliff.
Why is there this fiscal cliff?
Can you give the very basic answers to why there is this crisis of affordable child care?
I guess I'd start it by saying there are a lot of people that expect child care to still be some kind of a charitable offering as opposed to, you know, a living wage.
Ding ding ding, that is the biggest.
They expect us women to be martyrs and that we should just do it for the kids because, you know, our families and our lives don't exactly matter somehow, I don't know.
But anyhow, our state has never invested in childcare.
The federal government has always minimally invested and that's how we pay for our entire system.
And so, including subsidy for children that are low income, but only 9% of those children that are eligible actually could find an access
access the care to use that.
So that really doesn't exist either.
And so what happened is during COVID, all of a sudden, everyone realized that without childcare, parents can't go to work.
And so it revealed what was going on.
And as such, we were invested in.
And so during COVID, there were three rounds of funding that came through.
And our state used one of the rounds to
provide a monthly amount of money based off of quality, number of kids, number of staff, educators, etc.
And we received that funding every single month.
Well, that ended about 2023, 2024, but then Governor Evers clawed back other ARPA money in order to continue the program at half the amount that we were getting.
And so that ends in July.
There is no other
pocket, no other couch cushion, no other way to then get this funding to continue without the state stepping up.
And so that's why we're running into the cliff.
Most other states have already fallen off the cliff, and a lot of them are choosing to invest in child care as a state, because again, they realized that we're important.
In 2019 already, the number three barrier for employers was the lack of child care.
So this was a conversation we were having already pre COVID in our state.
Our legislative
body just said go ahead and use the ARPA funds to prove that this works as a pilot.
We will not use any state dollars.
We prove that it worked and they still refuse to invest any state dollars.
So that's
why
we're sitting where we're sitting.
And that's where that's the message that you're hoping goes to members of the Joint Finance Committee as they do their public hearings is to provide that level of support.
And I find, Karine, that I'm coming at this issue the same way that I'm coming at climate change.
When trying to persuade folks who are right of center on this issue is whatever you think of the climate issue and whatever you think of the family issues, if need be, think of it as an economic development issue, the job opportunities in climate and certainly the workforce challenges in Wisconsin.
and we know the workforce challenges in this state, and I'm rather surprised that on that measure alone, you're not getting a more receptive response to what this means just from the standpoint of, you know, Wisconsin's economy.
Yeah, it's kind of confusing but at the same time a lot of our representatives have told us most of them are gone that have said it out loud but have said that women should just stay home and Maybe that should be a choice But then you also need to fund the women to be able to stay home along with those who would rather be out in the workforce when our economy just flat out cannot
handle if we take that many people out of the workforce.
We already are upside down.
People are retiring and there's not enough people to replace those who are retiring to keep our economy going.
And then you look at prison systems and the lack of investment in early care and education that pre-school to prison pipeline is real.
We spend 2.75 billion on that in state dollars, but zero in childcare.
We flipped those numbers.
I bet, you know, we add more.
We're going to decrease later.
So even if you don't care about any of that, if you care about crime, reduce crime by investing in children.
And Chris handbook boil from a special education standpoint.
I think the same argument can be made about investing in special education and other programs And what that does for for all of us writ large as an economy as a society
Yeah, the the pull even just from the Eau Claire Area school districts general fund of 19 million to cover the special ed needs in the district and I have the data that
Representative Phelps asked from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau on how that relates to the referendums that we all just went through.
Three-quarters of all the 421 districts in the state of Wisconsin have gone to referendum.
A big piece of that is the underfunding and defunding of special education.
And, you know, there needs to be money also spent on the connection and making the itinerant model of serving kids with disabilities in childcare.
a high quality intervention, which hasn't been able to be kept up either because of the lack of funding.
So where do we go from here as we start to wrap things up?
And Chris is going to stick with us into the next segment with Bryn Horton to talk about specific legislation.
But Corrine, from a child care standpoint, the Joint Finance Committee has held two public hearings.
There are two more to go, but there's also ways to provide public comment.
What is it that the message, what's the message you're hoping more parents and frankly employers as well send to their lawmakers?
that we need to invest in our childcare system, that we need to increase the wages for that educator so that we can recruit and retain.
There's all this talk and all this donation of building new buildings, but there's no teachers.
And so what's happening is you're building these beautiful new buildings and you don't have teachers.
And so they're closing or this beautiful new building, they can pay an extra dollar an hour.
So all you're doing is poaching from the rest.
So the message is we need $480 million in the state budget directly for childcare investment and also the special education piece because as Chris said,
We also serve those children here, especially those threes and fours.
And we can get them early and get them services.
And a lot of times they don't even need services then when they get to the school.
And that will save us money.
Same thing, there's a $10.5 million increase for children ages three to seven so that they can get paraprofessionals in our program so that we don't expel those kids and we support them.
And so those are all huge kind of go together and just the overall messages invest in public education from
birth.
And you can do that by email as well to budget.comments at legis.
Wisconsin.gov.
Corrine Hendrickson, thank you as always for the update.
Let's talk again when this study comes out, maybe later this week and get some of the specifics.
So thank you for being here.
Chris Handbook Boyle is going to continue in just a bit along with Bryn Horton from the Wisconsin Public Education Network.
After this, you're up north.
Our homeroom segment, we're going with a little School of Rock from Jack Black, having mentioned Jack Black the last hour and going to see the Minecraft movie yesterday with the 11-year-old who's hanging out somewhere over my left shoulder here, getting ready for school ostensibly, although that looks like a video game.
Well, you know, grandpa's busy.
Let me give you that email address again for budget comments to your legislature, to the Joint Finance Committee.
The email address is budget.
Comments at Legis for Legislature, LEGIS, budget.comments.legis.wisconsin.gov.
Send comments.
Send them what you think should be done here.
Coming up later across the civic media radio network on Matt and Air on Air, Dr. Kristen Lyrely is...
appearing as a guest at 1030.
And on the Todd Alba show, Trig V. Olsen from the Lincoln Project will be joining Todd right off the top right after the new news.
So let's continue with our homeroom segment here and welcome into the conversation, Bryn Horton from the Wisconsin Public Education Network and Chris Hamburg Boyle continues with us as well.
Bryn, good morning.
Thanks for being here.
Morning.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, Brynn is basically the legislative tracker for the public education network.
So to put it in the old Karnak terms from the old Johnny Carson show.
everything you would want to know about what the legislature's considering about education.
Brynn is tracking every bit of it, every bill, every little phrase in some other bill, she's got it all.
And we don't have enough time to get to it all, but we're definitely going to get to the highlights.
So Brynn, we've mentioned, you know, the big thing, of course, is the state budget and the joint finance committee is considering that right now.
But there's, there's all kinds of other committee work.
There is an education committee.
And so what, what are some of the things
that are happening with that group right now?
Yeah, I think it feels like sometimes work stops during joint finance committee hearing time, but it doesn't actually.
And so I was somewhat surprised this morning to log on and find out that there was an education committee hearing scheduled for tomorrow morning on a bill that just got introduced yesterday.
So I think that kind of what I wanted to touch on that for is that seems to be kind of a habit.
that has continued again into this legislative session of having bills be introduced very quickly and hearings happening very quickly without, I mean, they're required to do 24 hours of notice, but 24 hours isn't a lot of time for people to find out and be able to get their information into the committee.
So, and this just happens to be on one bill.
That's about the universities of Wisconsin system reporting.
costs to students and then that has to be supplied to the schools in order for them to give to their juniors and seniors and that's the only bill they're hearing so I always find it interesting.
So this is a new mandate for the UW system and it was given on 24 hours notice which you know this bill wasn't just written.
All right, this has been a standard practice for the Republican majority is to give the public as, you know, doing the bare minimum.
And that's on bills that maybe shouldn't even be the highest priority, Chris.
I mean, you look at some of those early bills they've considered from education, not exactly the things that are addressing the big problems, right?
No, I hear over and over again when I listen to the joint, you know,
joint finance testimonies that to that have already happened and then that the committee work with the debate that goes on.
You know they they bring up firearms for teachers pronouns wireless communication devices where most districts have those.
You know they they have their their ways of doing that and they've already set their policies.
And then you know they ask people say well as legislators.
I've been out in my district.
I haven't heard any of my constituents asking for these bills.
They're asking to fund our schools and we are not talking about that.
No, we're not talking about it at all because we do have these other
other issues that are oftentimes, you know, culture war issues, issues designed to drive wedges and things like that.
So Bryn, that's the next thing that's coming up from the Education Committee.
Am I right the way that I kind of characterized it?
Like the state budget is the big thing, but along with the bill you just mentioned that there's, there are lots of other plates you have to keep spinning if you're going to keep an eye on everything that could affect education in Wisconsin.
Yeah, it just I think knew this year if you was not new this year I don't think but if you are a chairperson of a committee You cannot hear the bill in your committee.
So a lot of times That's causing bills that are education related to fall under committees that you wouldn't normally expect for them to And so that makes it a little bit harder
keep track of where things are going and when hearings are popping out because it's not something that you would expect, something that's related to school districts to go through?
Oh, yeah, this is again, right up there with not giving proper notice is what I'd call, you know, the misclassification or the misassignment of bills that instead of going to the committee that it would make sense for it to go through, it goes to something like, you know, an efficiency committee or, you know, some
some other area where you wouldn't expect it.
And again, unless you're watching everything which really only highly paid lobbyists can do, it's possible that something sneaks through in the next thing.
You know, it's under consideration by the full assembly or the full Senate with, you know, nary a peep on it because people didn't get a chance to see it.
Brent, I'm not even sure how you do all that.
I'm hoping you have a few helpers that are out there when you do these things.
So from a
From an education, from a legislative 101 standpoint, other people can't track these bills.
I mean, are there ways that the public education network or others notify people so that at least they know what's coming, even if they don't have time to testify or send information in?
Yeah, definitely.
I have a lot of different sources which really helps.
I know on your show before I talked about how I'm on a school board in some prairie and so I do receive information from the Association of School Boards which really helps.
But we do have a tracker on our website.
that has all the bills listed.
And if you click into the bills, it'll tell you what process they're in.
And then we've tried really hard to make sure that we're sending out action alerts to people, especially if it's a bill that we want for people to know about and contact their legislators about.
Sometimes we feel like, like Chris was talking about, right?
It's just distraction.
And it's not doing anything to help anybody.
And so we don't want to shine more light on a bill that's really worthless for.
for school districts at this point is not worth people's time to be able to spend time on.
So what we've tried really hard then to do is send action alerts as emails and post on Facebook to be able to let people know when we really want for you to be taking action and especially if we have partners who find that the bill is really damaging and that they need support and help to testify.
You know what I really love about having not just Chris on here as a guest, but also as a listener is sometimes she'll send me a note right about at the same time I'm doing work on the note.
So just as I was putting Wisconsin Network.org up on the screen, I get a note from her going, Hey, mention it's Wisconsin Network.org.
That's where you track this stuff.
Chris, you guys put a lot of work into that website.
Brin's done an amazing job when we started it and she's worked on even getting it to a better format so that people can go in and see even how their legislators vote on these bills because I think that's a great way to hold them accountable as well.
And let me ask you to talk a bit more about the special education aspect of it because we had Corrine Hendrickson on for a little while and we emphasized a lot of the childcare advocacy that she's doing.
And you spoke briefly about the special education component, but I wanted to give you a little extra time to talk about what are the actionable things?
What are things that legislators could do?
Again, nobody's expecting them to solve every problem every time, but...
There are things they could be doing.
When it comes to special education, what's the low hanging fruit that our lawmakers could be making life a little easier for families and educators?
Well, I made a little list before I got on this morning because I was hoping that we could maybe give to that.
You know, when you talk about the money and the budget.
and we talk about staffing.
I mean, people are not going into education and they're also, you know, the big deficit is in special education.
I think there needs to be an increase in a connection to the itinerant model of special education in higher ed, pre-service training that allows people to really know that they can go into community places where kids are and
and provide that special education where the kids are at.
Not pull them out, not put them in a different setting, but allow them to stay where they're at.
That's hard to do.
And most student teachers that came to me did not have that experience prior to coming to the public schools.
The other is to increase the connection to birth to three programming.
I did that too when I first started out so that it is birth to age five.
leading into the school district.
And then I also wanted to bring up Head Start.
They just closed the office in Wisconsin.
People don't know what's going on there.
That impacts children and families in an amazing way.
So I think there's lots that could be done looking specifically at what the needs of kids and families are, and then we would get to the right place.
I know you guys are a little biased on this, but when I hear Elon Musk and President Trump and a lot of people on the fire, we're talking about cutting all the waste out of the budget, all the waste, the fraud, the abuse.
Chris, we'll start with you.
Then, Brynn, I just don't recall hearing head start as part of the waste, fraud, and abuse, and yet that's one of the things that's being cut.
Am I missing something?
Was there all kinds of fraud and head start that people actually want to reset on this?
I'll start with that one because I worked in Head Start for many, many years as the special ed conduit within that program in the Eau Claire School District.
We had that program in the district which many districts don't have, so I was able to see it first hand.
It is an amazing program.
The standards within that program should be the standards we all work with children and families.
And I think if you don't have that close relationship with Head Start,
Most families that even got involved because a certain percentage of families have to be above income.
So you get that great mix of people learning from each other.
People don't know.
No.
And Bryn, again, I know it's a softball question, but maybe somewhere in here, there's some waste, fraud and abuse that you're actually glad is being slashed to the bone in education budgets.
But I'm guessing that that's not the case.
No,
not at all.
I mean, I...
I think that if people really looked at the school district budgets, they would see how little leeway districts have to spend on anything.
And everything added is just more that they have to do with less.
And I think it starts probably the same way.
You know, that's a vital service that we offer members of our community that truly need it.
The funny thing is, I mean, we are seeing an increase in conservative candidates running for school boards.
But oftentimes, when they run and or when they're elected, they see the budget, they see there's not much to cut.
But oftentimes, their priority is, again, back to the social issues, the wedge issues, the policy issues, rather than the fiscal issues, because, again, people appreciate
just how tight these budgets have become.
And we're going to have State Representative Tip McGuire on tomorrow morning in this time slot to talk about the Joint Finance Committee work and trying to halt the revolving door of school referendums.
And there will be people who say, well, you know, they just want to throw money at the problem.
Well, if that's your way of saying making up for 15 years,
of stiffing public education.
I guess that might be one way to put it, Chris, but I want to close with that powerful statistic again that I first learned from you that we're going into what, 16 years now of state aid to our public schools not keeping up with inflation.
And so if you don't keep up with inflation for 16 years in a row, small wonder, we need those referendums.
There's no big mystery here, is there?
No, there is no mystery at all.
It's a matter of not making things work where they make these decisions.
And they're holding all of us hostage at a place that is not good for kids and families.
Yeah.
Brennan, let me give you the last word, kind of like in the last segment we talked about.
If people were to ask you, I'm going to write a letter to my assembly rep or I'm going to email my state senator, what would be the central thing you hope they would convey?
I think that the most important thing right now is for people to hold their elected representatives for doing what they need to do to help the people in their districts.
That's not what they're doing right now.
They're off on these tangents and I think that is really important for people to reach out and say, what are you doing to help us back home right now?
We're desperate.
That's what I hear from people.
And by the way, at the district level, the Wisconsin Public Education Network has done amazing work at showing for each legislator, you know, how much money is leaving their district to go to voucher schools and the things like that.
So go to Chris is holding up the evidence right there.
Go to Wisconsin Network.org for more.
Bryn Horton, Chris Hambock-Boyle, you guys are wonderful.
Thank you so much.
Have a great day.
Thanks for having us.
Todd Alba is coming up next.
You're up north.
Welcome back.
Todd's giving us a
little dance to Lil Nas X whose birthday is today.
Is he
yoga?
I
don't know.
Lil Nas X is 26 today.
Is that, is that like in the music video or something there, Todd?
He's just giving us a little
dance.
It just, it just inspired me to do some yoga for a second.
Okay.
Ollie had called in during the segment and I completely forgot the note that Ollie was calling in with a question.
So Ollie, my apologies and we'll, we'll do a better job of that next time you're in.
Mr. Alba, how are you doing today?
I'm well, I'm well.
Thank you.
And you gentlemen.
We're groovy.
Peachy.
Groovy and peachy.
It's even better than well.
Yes, we are.
I went to the grocery store last night.
Grocery is beautiful word, isn't it?
Old fashioned word.
But it's old fashioned grocery shopping.
Let's explain that one for a moment.
I bought
alcohol.
No, no, no, that's not the explanation.
The
explanation is I saw this great social media post yesterday or the day before saying, oh, isn't it something that Joe Biden isn't around anymore saying crazy old man things like this, groceries, beautiful word groceries.
And
they're
like, no, wait, that was Donald Trump earlier today.
Again, the lack of media scrutiny, shall we say, on this confused, angry old man is
particularly stunning.
So thank you for calling attention to
it.
I'm not making this up now.
I'm not joking around.
I don't believe that Donald Trump has ever gone grocery shopping in this.
I think he doesn't even know that people do grocery shop.
You just send the servants out and it appears.
Well, however it happens, let's not for a moment think that, well, frankly, that a lot of politicians could actually tell you the price of eggs right now.
They latch onto a talking point, and it just takes us in all kinds of different directions.
As long as they can score points off it, you can talk about domestic terrorism.
And next thing you know, honor students are having their international visas.
Well,
yeah, there's that too.
But let me quickly say, I saw grocery shopping last night, and there's this
this wonderful polite little girl scout with her mother at the table as I'm leaving and as I'm checking out I hear her and she has a voice for radio because it just penetrates.
Good afternoon.
Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?
And I'm like, I can't not buy.
I can't stop.
I said, what do you have?
What do you have?
Well, thin mince, great, great.
Well, it's whatever, two for one.
All right, great.
I'll take some of the lemonade.
Great.
And
then, of course, my treat foil, my tray foil, the sugar was my favorite.
I'm like, all right, I've got to stop at three boxes.
I'm already going to take these into the office, so I don't eat them all.
And then she said,
Would you like to donate a box to a nursing home or assisted living or veterans?
Wow.
Sure.
The guilt comes up.
I can't, people are around me.
I can't say I'm against veterans and old people because I'm going to be there soon.
So before I leave, I've already, I've been out 25 bucks in Girl Scout cookies.
I had the same
thing at Farman Fleet.
I'm leaving Farman Fleet and this little girl dressed as a cookie comes dancing in front
of
me.
And I'm like, of course I'm going to buy.
some cookies and they like, how about one box?
And they're like, all right, I'll take another box and
they
hit me with the, the four, not the four for three, but more like a fourth one.
And I'm like, well, just
make
sure they don't get the Samoas or the, the, the lights don't burn those.
I said, I said, I'll give you, I'll give you five extra dollars if you burn all of the Samoas.
Greg, Greg once again, uh, shows that we, we are compadres in so many areas, not that one.
Oh, really?
All right.
Samoas
are the greatest cookie
ever invented.
The Carmel Delights.
Did we?
I mean, seriously, like, it's just a torture device.
It's just ugh.
Ugh.
But this gets us back into the coconut discussion, and we really
don't have to go there.
All right.
Shizyu writes in on YouTube as a former Girl Scout.
She does me proud.
She does me proud.
There you go.
Yes.
Absolutely.
She was a great
young salesperson.
Yeah.
Hey, it works.
It absolutely works.
Uh, what have you got coming up today?
Uh, oh wait, you've got old man Olson here.
Trigby Olson
is coming up.
Yes.
Yes.
Old man Trigby Olson will be on the, uh, on the show today from Lincoln project and I will kick around a little bit on these, on these tariffs.
He talked about it last week, uh, just the fact that, you know, that, uh, 10% of Wisconsinites are, are going to be workers are going to be impacted directly by these Trump tariffs and.
because of where those jobs are located, and he has all the numbers of the cross tabs, as we say in the business.
He said, look, most of these people are going to be directly impacted by Trump tariffs as workers, not just consumers, but workers.
Majority of those people voted for Donald Trump.
So, you know, there's that.
There is.
But again, for folks that go, well, they deserve what they get.
It's like, wait, a whole lot of other people are getting hurt.
And let's remember that, you know,
All these cuts, every decision affects other ancillary staff.
Like Shizyu puts in one highlight that's rarely addressed with education budget cuts, is how it impacts the administrative and custodial staff
who are
treated as easily replaceable.
And Tony, of course, puts in there very succinctly, pay bus drivers too.
Are they not getting,
I mean, or pay them more?
Pay them better.
Okay, all right, I was
like, wait.
Well, yeah.
And down here, Matt, that's a whole other kettle of fish.
But Madison, the Madison metro is in...
Chaos or as we used to say back at high school Chow's It's a complete chaos.
It's a Rick's
insider education.
That's right.
Exactly.
Exactly, buddy No, because because the director just resigned slash got fired because they can't come to terms It turns out that mayor Satya Rhodes Conway spent all one-time money to convert everything over to electric buses And guess what when they all come do again, there ain't no money So the taxpayers are gonna have to pay a huge bill for that and the lines are longer.
So and also the button to get to the point
bus drivers are now being attacked in Madison by people strung out on things and they're like, we ain't going to drive, we don't get paid more.
So yeah, bus drivers should get paid more.
Todd, Alba has all that and more coming up at noon today.
Thank you, Mr. Alba.
Have a great day.
Enjoy
your cookies.
Great.
Greg's back in two hours from Matt and Erin air again.
Dr. Kristen Lyrely is the guest at 10 30.
I'm back right now.
Have a wonderful Wednesday.
We'll see you back here Thursday morning, 6 a.m.
up north.
