Nothing Special About Hating Education (Hour 2)

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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow, powered by Upnorth News.

Now, from our Lake Rosota studio, here is the founding editor of Upnorth News, Pat Craiglow.

Hey, welcome back.

It is seven o'clock.

Well, seven o' six anyway.

We're in the seven o'clock hour of our program these mornings, powered by Upnorth News.

Nice to have you along.

We've got Parker Olson in Madison Studio A2.

Brittany Merleau will be up here in just a bit, and it's Wednesday, so we're going to be doing our homeroom segment.

coming up in our next half hour we'll be talking to one school district finance director about the ongoing gap in special education reimbursement and how the legislature treats public schools compared to how it treats voucher schools.

Spoiler alert public schools once again coming out on the short end of the stick on that one so stick around for that in just a bit but first we've got to talk about the weather

Where an hour ago I read you the state forecast from meteorologist Brittany Merlot and it said expect rain at the start of the day in the southeastern half of Wisconsin.

And I'm calling up the radar right now and it shows that much of the southeastern half of Wisconsin is getting rain this morning.

So one point for Hufflepuff.

Brittany Merlot gets that one right.

It's raining in much of southeastern Wisconsin today.

Ms.

Merleau, good morning.

How are you?

It sure is.

Good morning, everyone.

A little bit cooler today than what we felt yesterday.

We hit 90 degrees down south.

Really?

Racine.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Squarching out there already.

Mid-80s in Madison, and now today, eyes are going to be mostly in the 70s.

Low 70s to upper 70s, depending where you are.

Right now, though, this morning, 50 degrees up north.

70 down south.

We're seeing patchy fog far north as well.

And then, of course, the overcast cloudy skies that rain rolling in southeast parts of the state.

We're actually looking at a small storm headed towards Delavan and towards Lake Geneva area.

Nothing is severe warned.

There is a small chance that later this afternoon, some of these could become stronger, maybe severe.

If they are severe, hail and high winds would be the risks with them.

Otherwise, really just looking at some heavy downpours, especially south and especially east.

Yes, Milwaukee area down to about Lake Geneva, even into Jamesville, you could see one to possibly two inches of total rainfall today.

So a bit of a soaker for you.

No sunshine, unfortunately.

Keep an eye out for, of course, some flash flooding.

Streams are going to be rising down there as well.

And then up north, what's going to be happening is not much.

Maybe a scattered shower, maybe a rumble of thunder on a.

much more likely as we go into the afternoon and evening.

And again, none of those really look strong to severe.

But as we go through tomorrow, those temperatures are going to be starting to rise again.

We've got the potential for strong to severe storms tomorrow evening, then again on Friday, and then that heat and humidity is going to be building and Pat, heat index, it's going to be feeling like 100 degrees as we go into Saturday and Sunday

statewide.

sauna like out there

All

right,

well, we consider ourselves prepared here and you know what you need to do when it gets to be like that?

You need to drink your water.

You know who

knows this?

Robin Tigerton.

He says it's cloudy and 65.

Yesterday he had to mow six yards in Tigerton, trying to get ahead in the mowing game before the hot weather comes this weekend.

He says, I do drink plenty of water and Gatorade.

When I'm mowing, I still hear Greg in my head, drink your water.

So Greg, Greg has a way of getting in your head that way about drinking

your

water.

water.

He mentions his cousin Jodi Grip and drug passing away recently, who was an awesome cook at Matthew's supper club in Clintonville and made spaghetti for his birthday.

And he goes on to say Brittany is a meteorologist genius.

We can fact

check that.

That's that's 100% true.

And Tony giving us a gross emoji face for the gross weather that might be coming up this weekend.

But you know, again, Gatorade, water, all those things that Parker likes.

Yes, absolutely.

Yes, no sugary drinks.

And I know it's sad to say but avoid the alcohol this weekend.

It's going to dehydrate you.

All things in moderation, right, Brittany?

Yes, I know.

I know.

Moderation, absolutely.

Yes.

I mean, it's only Wednesday.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

But I mean, when you know that there's going to be such a hot weekend coming, do you have your own plans, your own defense mechanisms, or do you just stay inside in the air conditioning?

I try to hydrate right now.

Actually, I went out to the store yesterday and I got those electrolytes.

Act crazy drinks, you know, double hydration.

It's what plants crave, yes.

Get your

mundo,

okay.

We'll be drinking some of those and then of course trying to stay cool as we go through this weekend.

I'm not going to go crazy doing a lot of biking and stuff that I usually do because that heat exhaustion, it snuck up on me before.

I have been close to heat stroke, so personally I know.

Yeah, you know, you want to be working that hard.

And apparently the Gatorade H2O thing was a waterboy reference according to Tony.

Yes.

I guess I'll have to

watch that

movie sometime.

So Water Boy hasn't made the cut yet, but maybe someday.

Okay, thank you, Brittany.

Talk to you next hour.

All

right,

coming up today on Matt and Air on Air, 9.30 this morning, Dr. Kristen Lierly will be joining Jane and Greg and then of course a 10.50 stick around for this shouldn't be a thing.

On the Maggie Dawn show at 4.30 this afternoon, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes Conway will be joining Maggie Dawn and of course you can catch Nightlight with Peach Waba at 6 and then there's always that Todd Alba show.

You will hear him weekdays from 2 to 4.

And you often hear him at 750 on Wednesdays here.

We've actually punted him.

We've punted him over to Thursdays at 750.

We're gonna have Jimmy Koska on at 750 today for stations that are following us.

You might be in a local news break.

If and if that's the case, you can catch us later on demand by podcast head over to Spotify or or Apple.

Tony asked on YouTube what

Tony, you need to know I'm the worst at keeping up with some movies.

You have no idea how many years and years it took me to watch Forrest Gump or Step Brothers or the Sandlot.

All these movies that eventually my daughters would shame me into watching so I would get some of the movie references.

So apparently Water Boy is gonna have to go on that one.

Let's talk a little sports at 713.

First off, the NHL Stanley Cup.

It's done.

Florida won it.

Yay.

In baseball, the Cubs beat the Brewers five to three, so the Cubs are now six and a half games up on the second place Brewers.

Isaac Collins did have a two run homer for Milwaukee, and Jake Mizorowski will make his second major league pitching start for the Brewers coming up tonight against the Cubs.

Coverage of the pregame begins at 630 on stations in Richland Center.

Oshkosh, Racine Kenosha, Park Falls, and Hayward, so tune in there, and I believe...

Oh, I was looking at the WIA postseason calendar here and we are a day away yet from the Baseball and Girl Soccer Championships.

The Baseball Championships for high school will be at the Fox City Stadium in Grand Chute and the Girl Soccer Championships will be played in Milwaukee.

So, there's a little check on sports for you.

Well, we got rid of the terrorists, right?

I mean, all this deportation that's going on out there, we've

gotten rid of all the terrorists?

I guess, because we're also at the point where a teacher, a teacher's aide in the Milwaukee area has done that self-deportation thing.

Because, again, it's teacher's aides, the people who are helping our children that are apparently the big risk, the to or what?

To our what?

To crime?

To our health?

To the life of the country?

I don't know.

But once again, we've got Trump's mass deportation plan that is leading people to, you know, basically fear for their livelihoods.

And now we're leaving the country with their American-born children.

In this case, in Milwaukee, we're talking about teacher's aide Yassinia Rano and her 10-year-old daughters.

It will be the first flight ever for her twins to a country they've never seen before.

They were born in Milwaukee.

They are U.S.

citizens.

And for Rwana, who works in the Milwaukee Public Schools, it's the end of a rich life built over 14 years in Wisconsin, according to an article written by Sophie Carson in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

She says, I have a tornado inside of her, standing with friends, colleagues, supporters.

Said she was grateful for the support and hoped that she could one day return to the US.

She crossed the border without authorization in 2011.

She'd been living with an order for deportation, but until now, there'd not been any effort to take action against her or others like her.

She kept regular appointments with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

But she's now a local symbol of the Trump administration's deportation net sweeping up people like her who have committed no crimes, have US citizen children, and have been working legally in in-demand fields.

And that's where I want to take it next year because we also have seen Trump flip-flop.

on workplace raids depending on where they are.

Last week he said he was going to leave alone farms and and the hospitality services but then days later reversed himself yet again and said there must be these mass deportations and I think back to the Republican National Convention last year in what had to be what is not had to be what is one of the lowest points in this country's history was to see thousands of people in that arena.

holding up signs that said mass deportations now.

It was one of the saddest moments in American history that in a country built by immigrants, many of whom did not follow any kind of processes like we have now, they simply came for that better life and made that better life.

And they put up with all of the prejudice, discrimination, bias, abuse, bad publicity year after year.

and to see it culminate this way in this manner is just such a sad low point, not just for American history, but for the American economy.

I saw a great little spoof on social media yesterday featuring four or five older white guys wearing their Trump caps, but shirtless, because they were out picking crops in a field.

for a few minutes and then they said, this is tough.

We gotta bring them back.

And then you see them trying to clean, you know, a hotel room and they can't.

They're tired and like, we gotta bring them back.

All these people waving these nasty portation signs whose lives would be so much poorer, but for the clothes that they wear that are made by migrants, for the services that they enjoy that were made by migrants.

And they can all day long come back and go, well, she knew she was breaking the rules.

We also know she broke the rules of a system that's broken and she would like to follow the rules of a system that works.

And the system would work if a certain class of politicians would get off their collective butts and once again, embrace the notion that we need immigrants more than ever in this country or this economy is going to go south in a hurry.

The baby boomers and their red caps.

They are leaving this mortal coil at a rapid rate and they are not being replaced in the workforce.

And to say, well, they just didn't follow the rules while you don't want to update the rules says a lot more about what your real motivations are.

Those folks waving those mass deportation signs one day and pretending to go to church the next day.

We need solutions in this country.

We don't need mass deportations.

It's expensive.

It's wasteful of our tax dollars.

and it's not targeting the people that are being vilified the most, the ones who aren't citizens but are committing crimes, which is a fraction, a tiny fraction of the immigrant population, but they're easy to villainize, they're easy to vilify, put in political ads with their dark skin and their long rap sheets.

Compared to all the many, many, many people who come here, make a better life for themselves, escape gang violence, escape human trafficking, until a bunch of white guys come along with their mass deportation signs and policies and say, you know, this country's for Americans, said these people who weren't Native Americans in any way, shape, or form.

So they're getting what they want.

A good teacher's aide is self-deporting with her American daughters.

and we can only hope she eventually makes her way back to this country to do good.

Unlike some other people who we'd be all better off if they could somehow be deported right out of any seats of power in our government.

Some of you are getting a local update next and then we'll have our homeroom segment talking about special education funding in about 15 minutes.

You're up north.

You're listening to Civic Media.

Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.

Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.

is just about seven twenty three now on this Wednesday morning, June 18th, Pat Crite Lowe up here in Chippewa Falls and Parker Olsen at Studio A2 in Madison.

Again, we say A2 because from now on, when guests come in here and they start heading toward A1, Parker's going around and tackle them and drag them down the hallway into A2.

Yeah.

And let's get a window in that thing.

What do you what do you say?

Here's the thing.

You don't have to ask for permission to put that window in there.

You just grab that sledgehammer that I know is down there with all the other building supplies And you just put one hole in the wall and they're like well now we got to do something We may as well put a window in here.

I mean

there's that's the back wall of the front wall up there.

There's definitely there's definitely Stuff in this room.

That's heavy enough that I could use as a sledgehammer If I really what there is a window however, it does not look anywhere near towards like the entrance

Yeah,

so I might have to go through an office or two to be able to see

that way,

but I

think to be okay.

It's a work in progress.

It's okay.

From the Eau Claire Leader Telegram, Altoona's new container park aims for a mid-July opening.

Let's see, this is talking about how I'm looking at the photo here.

Have you seen these where people take these shipping containers?

Oh, yeah.

You

might see in semis or on cargo ships.

Yeah,

that's really cool.

And then repurpose them.

And this one is like a little community park

that will eventually be filled with vendors and things like that.

This particular space, it says, will include five total vendors, three restaurants, a tap room, and one retail space.

Wow.

I know.

I've seen this again for people who are looking for unique forms of housing.

Have you seen where they're put in a frame of apartment buildings, maybe a stack of four by four?

You know, on top of each other.

Okay.

Yeah.

I haven't watched any of like the, you know, the HG TV shows or anything like that to, to know if this is really worthwhile.

But I mean, it sounds like it has potential.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Seems cool.

Yeah.

Well, the cool thing is, is I'm looking at the, the photo here and it's, it's down near the Altoona Rail Yard.

Okay, which which you know, my my dad, you know, worked for the Chicago Northwestern Railroad for many years, working the train worked in the caboose of the trains from Altoona to St.

Paul.

And at that Altoona Rail yard still as busy as ever, though the the railroads don't have the same kind of employment that they used to have.

But it's nice to again have development that is kind of embracing, you know,

the train tracks.

You think of the, think of the ball parks, you know, that are built along like the St.

Paul Saints, you know, used to have one that was built along the train tracks there.

So whether it's train tracks, rivers, things like that, it is not having every, it was just so tired when every park and every housing development looked the same.

There is a, I think there are new apartments in Whitewater that's a buddy of mine and I were driving pasts.

And he looked at them and went, wait a minute, are we in Manona right now?

What just happened?

Because it's the same

thing.

Yes.

And look, there's a lot to be said about consistency.

I mean, part of the reason we have chains now is that there's consistency.

If you go to a McDonald's or a Chili's or whatever, you know what you're going to get.

I go to a Holiday Inn Express all the time.

I know what I'm going to get, but you lose the local flavor that way.

And I always tell the story about going to a business meeting when I worked in a different industry.

And they sent me to a business meeting in Denver.

But it turned out to be at an airport hotel.

So all I could see out the window for this entire conference was, you know, the Hilton and the Wyndham and the Hyatt and the Holiday Inn.

And I saw a Chili's and a Wendy's and a McDonald's.

There was nothing that told me I was in Denver until I went back to the airport and you can see the mountains out the other way.

You know, but otherwise there was no local characteristic like that.

That's not fun.

Now, Altoona has started doing that.

If you're taking Highway 53, which now bypasses Eau Claire to the east of Eau Claire, and you're going through Altoona, and once upon a time, there was nothing there.

If I could find one old piece of footage of me as a TV reporter, which we'd be going back 25 years now.

And it would be me standing in essentially the woods on a trail saying that someday the highway is gonna come through here and all of this is gonna be developed and you're thinking no way and sure enough it is the the River Prairie development is It's lovely although I would argue it.

It's really filling in like it's filled in so much now that I feel like it might be losing some of its luster, but

Again, you can make it uniquely yours.

And so now you come to the other part of Altoona and you see these containers that are very, they're painted in very bright colors, bright yellow, blue, orange, red are all there.

And again, show real promise for being uniquely local right there near the rail lines.

And so I

I want to salute that and say, great, bring in the vendors.

We need the local vendors.

We need local restaurants.

Again, there's nothing wrong with a little consistency, but it's definitely a short trip to Cookie Cutterville, isn't it?

Yeah, I would definitely rather eat at a locally owned, like this is us embracing local community kind of place than I would go to McDonald's as

much as

I love a McNugget.

What I have fun with as I've done all my travels now is that if there's one thing McDonald's are known for in this day and age is that all the old men in a local community will gather at the McDonald's for their senior cup of coffee.

and basically it'll be a gathering of the Knights of the Round Table there.

You know, the whole brain trust will gather and they will solve the problems of the world, man.

But the thing that's fun about that is if you go to a place, either a city or a community where there's not a local McDonald's and can you find the place where they gather?

And when you find that place, you're just like, oh, here's, if, if, if McDonald's were here, they'd be like, yep, here's where they put the McDonald's, you know, if you ever do someday.

Cause this too is where, where the brain trust gathers and solves all the problems of the world.

If only, if only we would listen to them.

That's what we need in Washington DC is we need microphones that are secretly wiretapping all those McDonald's early in the morning.

We should do that for just like a week.

just see what happens if we let the old guys at the roundtable do it.

I think that could be really fun.

We're going to talk to Mark Elworthy from the Eau Claire area school district about special education funding as part of our homeroom segment.

That's coming up next.

You're up north.

Tomorrow on the program, Todd Alba, Chad Holmes, Sean O'Malley talking about your money in the markets, and Joseph Ecke, all joining us on our mornings powered by Up North News here on the Civic Media Radio Network.

Baseball tonight, Cubs, Brewers, 630 on stations in Richland Center, Oshkosh, Racine Kenosha, Park Falls, and Hayward.

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All right, let's get to our homeroom segment for this week and we're gonna get a bit into the weeds on the state budget.

Because again, when people go, oh, my eyes are gonna glaze over, I'm gonna fall asleep.

No, don't.

These are your state tax dollars and you should have a better idea of where they're going.

Frankly, I think that if more people knew where their tax dollars were going, where they think they're going versus where they actually are going, they might make some different choices for

you know, their legislators in November.

So we're going to get into a particular aspect of it when it comes to education funding and joining us to do that is Mark Elworthy.

He's the executive director of business services for the Eau Claire area school district.

Mark, good morning.

How are you?

Good morning, Pat.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, nice to have you here because

You know, you have obviously been following this state budget debate very closely.

We understand the stakes that are involved from a general standpoint, but we also know that if you...

If you just focused on the big buckets of money that go to schools, you're kind of losing sight of how some of the smaller buckets do have an impact on our property tax bills.

And specifically, we're talking about special education funding.

The joint finance committee, which is made up of senators and state assembly reps and

essentially writes their version of the state budget bill.

The governor has his version and then they write their version.

And the parts that they were working on recently dealing with education and special education were a little concerning, especially because of the gap between the way that special education gets state help in public schools versus the voucher program, which goes to private, usually religious schools.

So Mark, with all that as a setup,

What are you seeing right now from the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee that maybe concerns you about how special education funding is done by this legislature?

Right, so broadly speaking in Wisconsin, the funding formula, and I know people think it's complex, if we

boil it down to a couple of things.

It's revenue limits minus state aid equals property taxes.

And general aids, which was one of the most noticeable differences between the joint finance committee and the governor's proposed budget is there's no money going into general aids.

And so that impacts all aspects of education.

Why?

Because instead of the state contributing to

funding of education in the next two years it would solely any increases would be solely funded as currently written by local property taxes.

The revenue limits came into place in 1993 when local property taxes were ironically going up too quick.

In this current proposed budget by joint finance committee it returns the funding solely to the increases solely to local property taxes.

Then you've got special education aid and it's been a hot topic.

Some proposals about increasing high cost special education in comparison to categorical aid special education or special education categorical aid.

What's really important to know is special education categorical aid is received by every district in the state.

High cost and it's for students that.

require and we are mandated to educate all students that attend public schools, a certain amount above 30% minus some aides.

That only impacts about 50% of the districts.

I've heard as few as a thousand students.

So the proposal coming out was to improve the high cost special education aid, but the

What should be noted is that only impacts a very basically half the district in a very small part.

It's about one hundredth of the actual categorical aids.

So.

In the budget process, it's about give and take most years, and it's, I think, really important.

I appreciate the opportunity to be able to be here to educate, that special education categorical aid, state categorical aid go to all districts, and that really moves the needle.

Right now in Wisconsin, we're about 28th in the nation.

20 years ago, we used to be funding our schools that we are ranked eighth.

So that's a significant difference.

And so why are we in this place?

It's because funding has either been frozen or just addressed in very small amounts over the last 20 years.

And this is a rhetorical trick that

I've seen a lot and really wanted to call out because again, you've got that big bucket of money of you know, of categorical aids, you've got the slightly smaller bucket of special education categorical aids, and then you've got the even smaller bucket of high cost special education aid that you were just describing.

And the tactic is that you get in this case, a certain group of legislators saying, hey, hey, hey, look at how much we've put into this

small bucket over here.

But as you just pointed out, that that bucket is so specialized that only about 50% of school districts even need to tap into that bucket when what would really help would be, you know, either in the larger bucket of special education, categorical aid or just general state aid overall.

But for one reason or another, you've got people saying, well,

We're at least putting a lot into this much smaller bucket.

So that ain't nothing, but it's not nearly what it could be, Mark.

Yeah, it's not surprising that has been the decision-making voting pattern of the recent past.

And again, why are we here?

It's because we've underfunded, whether it's schools in general or specifically.

special education categorical aid.

If we fully funded special education categorical aid, there would be no need for high cost special education

aid.

See, now that's a magnificent point that if you just fixed the small bucket of special education, you wouldn't even need the even smaller budget of high cost special education.

If again, you would just do your job.

But there's also that funding gap

of special education overall between public schools and the voucher program for private, usually religious schools.

And that's the one that I think the members of joint finance heard about from the public more than anything else.

And it's the one that blew me away when I first learned about it a couple of years ago, that voucher schools are being reimbursed by the state for special education costs at about 90%.

And

public education, which used to be way up there, what 67 to 70% or something.

It was apparently to hear Republican legislators two years ago tell it a big deal that they increased the reimbursement rate in public schools to now is it is it 32% something like that?

It's targeted for 33.3%.

The DPI just came out with their annual calculations.

It's just under 31, because the costs to educate do not keep up.

The funding's always been some certain, so it's a fixed amount, and it's a budget, right?

And costs increase over the biannual budget.

And so it's traditionally...

Lower than than the target amount, but yeah, you know, and I think you're right.

The concept of addressing high cost special education.

How should I put it got attached to the vouchers and special ed?

I think it probably.

How should I suggest that the benefits of making this adjustment aren't significant enough?

You know, again.

The special education categorically would make the difference.

But again, it became a dialogue.

People reached out and so, you know, here's it was written in and approved by the joint finance.

We are talking to Mark Elworthy, who's the executive director of business services for the Eau Claire area school district and specifically about special education funding and some of the disparities that are involved in it.

For folks who would say, Mark, well.

you know, why are we even talking about state reimbursement of special education funding?

The whole reason it was set up in the first place deals with the fact that special education costs, you know, it costs a lot more to provide education to children with those special needs.

And so initially, the state wanted to help out with that higher cost.

As that percentage has come down over time, correct me if I'm wrong, but

those higher costs to take care of kids needing special education, that just then goes into the general budget and that costs all property taxpayers rather than having the state reimburse a share of it.

Yeah, exactly.

So in Eau Claire, we are projected to have to use our general fund dollars, $23.2 million.

is going to be used or projected to be used.

We're just wrapping up our budget right now to pay for special ed, which is mandated, correct?

And that's the direct result of underfunding of special education, categorically.

Yeah, our friend Chris Handbook Boyle puts up on Facebook, private schools are guaranteed the amount given in the budget.

Public schools are not a point that you were making earlier as well.

So here's the thing.

And I know I've been banging this drum a lot.

I'm gonna bang it again anyway.

You know, 15 years ago, we were dealing with the start of the Great Recession and a budget shortfall of three to six billion dollars, a shortfall of three to six billion dollars.

And we currently have a budget surplus of four billion dollars.

Nobody's saying give the whole four billion to me, even though a lot of people would like that.

But for a

part of that $4 billion, Mark.

What could we do to make things better for the taxpayers of Eau Claire and other school districts if we somehow use some of that surplus as a way to reimburse special education costs?

Well, because the funding hasn't occurred, Eau Claire, like many school districts, has had to go back to the public for referendums, right?

So increased funding will

decrease the likelihood of a district meeting to go to referendum.

Now that's, you know, assuming that the investment is significant, otherwise we're just going to be playing on the edges.

We'll live year to year or every two years or based on a referendum.

Ours is four years long.

We'll be right back there, but it's also sustainable.

The other thing in Eau Claire.

is we've been frozen.

We're a low revenue ceiling limit school district.

And that was a conversation that was happening at the Capitol during budget negotiations in the current budget.

It was a first time and significant increase of $800 on the revenue limit that benefited Eau Claire.

And why is that significant?

Because when revenue limits started in 1993, Eau Claire was in its own economic recession.

One of the largest employers was about to shutter.

And so the school board purposely levied at a lower rate because that's what the community could afford.

We've been frozen in time.

We've had an adjustment.

but that you know that's another type of state aid that would allow us flexibility and and just allow us it funds education in a more

significant and longitudinal manner.

And I want to end on that note that Eau Claire had kept that level low in the early 90s because the unor oil tire plant was closing up.

And so it was to to protect property taxpayers.

But Eau Claire has been penalized ever since being frozen in for a school funding system that is grossly outdated and in need of repair with ideas coming our way this morning from Mark Elworthy of the Eau Claire School District.

Mark, thank you so much.

I appreciate your expertise.

Have a great day.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Have a great day, too.

When we come back together in our next hour, we will be talking to Earl Ingram and Melissa Baldoff.

I'm Pac Wright.

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Okay, let's get an update now on some Western Wisconsin stories that Jimmy Kuska and others at Civic Media are working on.

Jimmy, how are you today?

I'm fantastic.

Great to be back this week with

you.

You seem so refreshed.

Did you sleep in this morning?

Did you get a little extra shut-eye?

Oh, I certainly did.

So in the summer, with the new WIA rules and contact days, we're allowed to have additional workouts, voluntary, of course, in high school sports, and I'm a high school football coach.

So on Tuesdays, we are holding 5.30 in the morning conditioning practices.

So yesterday, I was up five o'clock setting up cones on a very wet football field with like three inch telegraphs.

So today, I got to sleep in a little bit and actually

I had to listen to most of your show this morning, but it feels good not to do it five in the morning.

I got to sleep in to listen to an early morning radio show.

That is really saying something.

And not just a coach, but also a school board member.

So I'm sure our discussion in our last segment was not alien to you one bit in terms of the difficulties every school district faces in putting together their budgets.

Yeah, and the difference, in the last segment, we're talking about Eau Claire, a school district that I know pretty well.

because I lived in Eau Claire for a long time.

I'm a school board member at a small rural district in Wisconsin, where as a couple of years ago, the data showed 70% of rural districts in Wisconsin had declining enrollment.

So that's presenting additional challenges to the school funding mess that we're in.

It's forced a lot of schools to go to referendum, as I think you've probably discussed a million times on your show.

It is a real challenge as the budgets that were set this year in our area.

A lot of schools used to have some leeway or

put some money away in fund balance for future capital projects.

I can't do that now.

We're going with a zero mistake budget for next year, where if a boiler goes out, if there's a $100,000 repair, there's no cushion in the budget for stuff like that, just to maintain services and staffing for the students.

Because ultimately, winter school's here, they're here to serve the kids, right?

And that's where we went in our district.

But it is a fascinating discussion.

And unfortunately, the current budget process has shown

that it's not really a priority right now but for the legislature as it is but certainly it is a very complicated issue and I really appreciate you having guests on like the one you just had on talking about it because it's a lot to wrap your head around and it's good to have someone that knows the ins and outs of it.

Pat, you muted yourself.

I did, didn't I?

Sorry, I was slurping some coffee earlier here.

I apologize.

The point that I was making is that that's why we need good people serving in local government either as elected officials on these boards or serving like as a finance director to really learn the numbers and not just, you know,

grouse about the system, but actually try to be part of the solution.

Another example where you see that is at the local government level, not just for schools, but cities, for counties.

You're telling me in La Crosse, you've got to note that the roof is leaking at the La Crosse Center and needs repairs.

And so the board there had to decide last night whether to allocate funding for that.

We all love talking about these shiny new buildings going up, schools and civic centers and things like that, but you still got to do the maintenance.

Yeah, and you still have to do all the planning.

You still have to do all the zoning.

I mean, there's a lot that goes into any kind of school project, right?

Well, the La Crosse Center Board, I mean, they had to know $60,000 around just to fix a leak in the roof.

but that takes multiple levels of approval to get done.

LaCrosse also had to approve rezoning a couple of areas so that the school district, which had a referendum approved last year to consolidate its elementary schools, well, they just got the last stage of approvals from the city and the common council to actually go ahead and do that, building a new elementary school at the Hogan administrative site and then adding on in another location, but also closing a couple of elementary schools.

So when you talk about school issues and

and funding issues.

There's really two parts of it.

One, the funding formula is way outdated and the infrastructure is really aging, but also with declining enrollment pretty much across the board.

whether you're urban, suburban or rural, it's forcing school districts to close buildings and pretty much across the board in the state.

You're seeing school closures and properties go up for sale and LaCrosse just went through some very contentious referendums to get to this point where they're able to start moving the elementary schools together a little bit because some of the buildings are sitting half empty.

Wow.

We're talking to Jimmy Koska here about some Western Wisconsin stories and speaking of infrastructure and replacement costs in Trampolo.

The DNR is investigating a bridge that was burned and Assembly Representative Steve Doyle has had some things to say about what it's going to take to fix up the Tank Creek Bridge.

Yeah, and this bridge on May 15th was apparently set on fire.

The DNR is trying to learn more about it.

But Steve Doyle posted on social media that now that they've dug

into it a little bit, the cost to replace this bridge would be multiple millions of dollars.

And this is a bridge that connects a 24 mile trail along the river.

So it's a very frequently used trail and there's no detour for it because you're going through, as you know, in Western Wisconsin, there's a lot of rivers, there's a lot of wetland, a lot of marshland.

This is, you know, for people that like recreation and I'm sure if you live in the drift list, this is,

This is what you live here for.

It's a really, really important thing.

When you talk about bridges and road repairs and stuff, you're not necessarily always talking about what we drive vehicles across, but to have something safe for people to go across in some of these areas that are geographically challenging multiple millions of dollars to replace this bridge that, again, the DNR is actively putting out press releases asking, can you help us find out who did this?

The fire that happened to the bridge actually moved some of the supports, melted some of the supports, and now the cost to replace it could be exceedingly high.

Yeah.

Jimmy Kuska gives us updates on what's happening in the western, west central Wisconsin area.

That would include dairy breakfast.

You list out here some in Hayward, Grantsburg, Thorpe, Elroy, Cochran.

You going to one of them this weekend?

So I've already made my rounds because we had all of ours kind of in the last two weeks.

So I got to go to Grant Counties, Richland Counties, Crawford Counties.

But I tell you what, dairy breakfasts are one of my favorite, absolutely favorite things about living in Wisconsin.

There's

nothing better.

up in the morning and grabbing yourself a big old stack of pancakes and some cheese curds.

They are the best.

Jimmy Cuska, thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Have a great day.

Thank you.

All right.

And James Kelly will be here from our Chippewa Falls newsroom to tell us about stories he's covering in Northwest Wisconsin.

But on the way in our eight o'clock hour, Earl Ingram is going to be here.

We'll talk a bit about the history and preview Milwaukee's Juneteenth celebration.

Also, Melissa Baldoff and the updated forecast from Brittany Merleau.

I'm Pat Crightlow.

You're up north.

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