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Hey, good morning.
7.06.
Nice to have you back here up north on a Wednesday morning.
November 19th might be a little slick where you are.
Some fog out there, some other remnants of the snow that some folks got yesterday.
Take it easy out there and if you're in anything remotely close to foggy, keep those headlights on once we get a little brighter out there today.
Parker Olson producing things down in Madison Studio A2.
Our question of the day, you get a chance to welcome somebody to Wisconsin for the very first time and you can take them anywhere in the state to show it off.
Where are you taking them?
It's all based on that viral video now of Travis Kelsey describing to his or Jason Kelsey describing to his brother Travis Kelsey to football players about his trip to watch Monday Night Football Lambo Field and the supper club that he went to and all the spotted cow that he drank and the size of the prime ribs and the cheese curds and the ice cream drinks and the Yeagermeister.
He ate and drank a lot.
Now you might not do that for a first time visitor to Wisconsin or maybe you would.
855-756-855-752-4842.
You get to take somebody to Wisconsin for the very first time and show them something what's it going to be on the text line from Jim in Brookfield.
Good morning, Pat.
Living in the southeast part of the state, we take all first-time visitors to the lakefront in Milwaukee.
All visitors are impressed with the beauty of a large freshwater lake with plenty of public access.
That is absolutely true.
And it's not just the Milwaukee area.
I know, uh, you know, my wife is from Manitowoc County.
And so you take people out to Manitowoc and, and you know, if you know, if somebody's never seen one of the great lakes for the first time and you take them out to the shoreline and their jaw disrupts, I mean, you see it on the map, you know, but it doesn't make sense that there's an ocean in the Midwest.
And yet there it is, you know, it goes on as far as the eye can see the wonder of the great lake, something we take for granted here.
but it's always fun to take visitors there.
So what would you do?
Where would you take a friend coming to Wisconsin for the very first time?
Robin Tigerton says good morning.
Clear skies, 18 degrees fog in the area, especially areas that had snow.
Today I'm taking my Aunt Leigh to Appleton to see her son, my cousin Bert, who had open heart surgery Monday and made it through his surgery.
So congratulations.
Hope you get better soon.
He goes on to say the roads are slippery in Northern Wapaka County this morning.
Iola had five inches of snow and Tigerton had no snow.
The snow band was a 70 mile band.
went from Stevens Point to the Fox Valley.
Yes, it was.
And kind of like the snow band last week, the lake effect snow in southeast Wisconsin.
Have you seen the satellite imagery of that where I mean, when they they zoom in and you can see on one side of the freeway is all this snow and it's bare ground on the other side.
It was very well defined, but also from Robbie, a good reminder to take it easy on the roads out there.
And again, we appreciate your texts, your comments on Facebook and YouTube and more.
Ellie Bordeaux is standing by.
She's going to talk to us about the newsletter that she puts together for us at Up North News.
Tomorrow on the program, we're going to have Sean O'Malley talking about your money and the markets.
But coming up at 7.35 this morning, less than a half hour away is our weekly homeroom segment talking about education.
And we have quite a topic for you this morning, a blue ribbon commission that was put together eight years ago.
to try to finally come up with a bipartisan solution for fixing the way that we pay for education in Wisconsin.
And they did it.
They did.
It's just that it had to go to the legislature to be enacted.
And it is still on a shelf gathering dust.
So we will talk to two members of the Blue Ribbon Commission, Julie Underwood, the former Dean of the UW Madison School of Education and Sonny Pope, a former state legislator about that Blue Ribbon Commission, what it recommended and whether these are still bipartisan ideas that could be implemented.
if we had a legislature with the courage to get us over the finish line.
So that all and more coming up along with your answers to our question of the day.
But first it is time to touch base with the Oracle of economy walk Ellie Bordeaux newsletter editor here at Up North News Ellie good morning.
How are you?
I'm great.
How are you guys?
We are great.
Thank you.
Nice to see you here and to talk about the the trouble that you're making at the newsletter.
I mean, along with passing on, you know, news stories and feature stories, but you get us into these debates about, you know, the best burgers and the best pizza and you're stirring up trouble again this week.
What you doing?
Yes, I I try to, you know, get some conversation rolling about things.
This week we talked about ice cream shops and when I posed this question.
I think I got more responses from ice cream shops and I did cheese curds which was a little surprising to me but.
Dairy state you know so it goes so we got so many responses about ice cream which.
I love.
This is, again, another selfish one for me because I love ice cream.
So if I'm going around... It's not
that selfish.
We all could put that in there and
it could be
entirely self-serving, self-serving, soft serve or custard or whatever the case may be.
Did
anything
there stick out at you in terms of I got to go try that?
One in particular that a lot of people responded with was Olsen's ice cream in Chippewa Falls.
Have you tried it?
Of course.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's right down here on Bridge Street downtown.
A lot of times in the summertime, you'll see a line stretching out because it's a small shop and a line stretching out down the sidewalk.
And it's it's just again, your classic local homemade ice cream place with a few flavors and such.
So yeah, it's a it's a staple.
It shows and you got that with Ramon's no Claire and others have thrown in their own own favorites.
I love these little local shops.
Totally.
Yeah, I that was one that
So many people responded with so I definitely need to try that one out.
We got also got some Clemish Creamery in New Auburn They make their ice cream fresh from their farm.
That's really cool.
We got a couple of those where people Have an actual farm and make ice cream
which is so cool and
also their own good so Wisconsin, you know Which I love so yeah, we talked about ice cream this week and next week.
We're looking at fish fries, which I
Again, another very Wisconsin one and fitting because of Fridays.
So we've gotten a lot of responses from that already too, which is so great.
So I love it.
Which
is good.
And guess what?
We're going to do it all over again in about three months when we get to Lent and everybody's
doing
fish fries again.
We can't let that time of year pass without it.
But let's let's get the next round of answers on good fish fries.
And by the way, a little bonus content for folks and now Ellie will know who's listening to the radio show if you send in your answers, not just the best fish fry.
But what fish?
I mean, most people will say cod, but others, you know, they love perch or bluegill or schmelt or whatever the case may be.
So if you've got a favorite fish, favorite style, favorite way it's made, but especially favorite place
to get a
fish fry.
Or favorite sides to potato pancakes.
You want fries, you want applesauce.
We're killing Parker over here.
Look at this.
Get hungry.
Have you been to just a good quintessential fish fry restaurant?
Parker, you're making that face like no.
Well, I'm glad that's working.
So yeah, we'll get those.
And of course, because that's going to be in the newsletter Friday, that'll be our question of the day on Friday.
So you don't need to send in answers right now, but get yourself loaded up.
I mean, you can always email and put them in there.
But on Friday, we're really going to be wanting to know what people think about that.
So more favorites, more of the locals love section from the newsletter that Ellie is putting together.
What else are you working on?
So we actually had an article in this morning's newsletter about where to find free Thanksgiving damn meals in Wisconsin.
So we've got a whole list of different meals that are offered for free throughout the state.
We've got some an Iron River, Eagle River, Fitchburg, Superior, Beaver Dam all over.
We've got Delta Beer Lab is offering their seventh annual free community Thanksgiving and their tap room.
We've got some that
are on actual Thanksgiving Day, a few days before, a day after.
So there's a lot of options for people that don't necessarily have a place to spend Thanksgiving or don't have the resources to have a Thanksgiving meal.
There are a ton of places across Wisconsin and this is not a comprehensive list, you know, there are plenty of others, but we put some different places together throughout the state and I feel like we did a pretty good job of making it all statewide.
So yeah, check it out.
If you need a free Thanksgiving meal, there are plenty of places throughout Wisconsin that it's offered.
Or if you would like to support one of these places that
is doing
the free Thanksgiving meals and that'll give you some food for thought, pardon the pun, about where you could be supportive to get these meals out to folks on what would otherwise be a lonely and hungry weekend.
We mentioned the other day when you had this in the newsletter that there's a big reading project, a group that is collecting children's books.
I was blown away by the numbers that you put in your article in terms of what they're trying to raise for books and money and things like that.
Tell us about the group.
Yeah.
So again, another volunteer opportunity, like you said, with the Thanksgiving meals, a lot of those places are looking for volunteers donations.
This is another one of those.
Madison Reading Project has now launched their sixth annual community book drive.
They're looking for 2000 books, brand new books and raising $50,000.
So this is a nonprofit that's based in Madison and they've been doing this.
drive for six years now and there are donation bins placed through public locations in the community where people can drop off brand new books.
They also
Hope that if you buy new books you do it from somewhere local in Madison or a small business to support small businesses in the community Or you can host your own fundraiser or book drive.
It's called peers for pages So they do really great stuff at this organization and there are a bunch of different partners in the community that are partnering with Madison Reading Project to put this on and Make it successful.
So it's really great
if I could
just also add to that.
I want to speak to just the specific listeners and readers of our newsletter who send us notes that say something like the following emphasis added.
You guys, you're supposed to be up north news.
There's only up north stuff and you're talking about a Madison reading project.
What's all this madness in your up north?
Stop it.
As Derek Van Norton would say, stop it.
If this gives you an idea
for helping out a book drive in your hometown.
If it gets you to bring some extra books in to your local school for them to give the kids, then we have done our job here.
So when you hear something's in Madison, Milwaukee, one of the other cities, that's okay.
Use it as inspiration for what you want to do, because we're still covering plenty of other stories as well.
But I just, when I heard you mention Madison, I thought, oh, we're going to get the notes again.
So there's our story on the notes there.
All right, you got one more for us?
Yeah, so we also, something that we're doing in the newsletter right now is I want to tell the stories of our readers on the ongoing Wisconsin housing crisis.
And I know a lot of people have experienced it.
I know people that have experienced it.
I've experienced it, rents going up, those kinds of things.
So I want to be able to tell those stories and give people a platform to share their stories and learn more about what's going on with the housing crisis.
How can this potentially be fixed?
What are the impacts those kinds of things and I know a lot of people across the state have been impacted by it And I want to give people a platform to share their stories So I've been asking people throughout the newsletter this week to share their stories if they feel comfortable they can remain anonymous in the story and I'm waiting to get some a bunch of responses and then I'm gonna kind of Put that all together into some sort of project to share with my readers and share with our audience.
So it's really great
All right, that sounds great.
And you can read all of this, of course, in the newsletter that Ellie's putting together.
You can sign up at upnorthnewswi.com.
Click subscribe up in the top banner and get these stories delivered fresh early every morning.
Ellie, thank you so much.
We'll talk to you a little later.
Have a great day.
Sounds good, you too.
All right.
Also, of course, there's our question of the week that's in our Sunday morning newsletter.
And as I mentioned on Monday, I mean, we have really got a big response to the question that we asked on Sunday.
We said, do you have a close friend who's your political opposite?
Not an acquaintance, not, you know, somebody that you really consider a close friend.
And yet, you know, you cancel out each other's votes.
So do you avoid talking politics?
I'd prefer to hear instead from people that go, oh no, we talk about politics.
We've solved all these problems.
We've solved them together.
Why don't more people listen to us as far as how we would solve it?
We'd love to hear what you think.
Again, you can sign up for our Sunday morning newsletter, same website, UpNorthNewsWI.com, or you can put your comments here or use the Civic Media app to tell us if you have a close political or close friend who's your political opposite and how you deal with it.
Okay, again, in 15 minutes, we will be talking about the Blue Ribbon Commission on Education.
Seven, eight years ago, they came up with all kinds of great ideas, and most of them are still sitting on a shelf.
We'll talk to two members of the commission and find out how we move that all forward.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
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.
Nice to have you back.
We're coming up on 7 23 on a Wednesday morning November 18 8 5 5 7 5 civic is the phone number 8 5 5 7 5 2 4 8 4 2 you can call that number or text it You can also use the civic media app to call us directly or text us or record a little quick voice note And that'll come to us that we can maybe play on air as well and with that you can
Answer our question of the day.
A friend is coming to Wisconsin for the very first time and you can take him anywhere in the state.
Where are you going?
And the answers just keep coming in on Facebook and YouTube and on our text line.
Let's see, Alicia puts in the Point Beach Lighthouse near two rivers is another great one.
Tony says, I appreciate looking at the Shawamagan Bay daily.
And then of course says I would like Parker to read the name of this Bay on the radio.
No, we're not going to, we're not going to subject him to reading shawam again.
I've, I've done that enough with first time reporters to Wisconsin, giving them the, you try to give them the information on the place names.
and the spelling, which are not necessarily in sync with what you might be used to.
Anyway, you can share that with us.
You're easy to pronounce and you're hard to pronounce areas of coming to Wisconsin.
Let's see, on the text line as well, we had, let's see, Tom and Hartford asked a good question here.
Oh, it's Tommy Thompson's 84th birthday today.
And Tom and Hartford puts on the text line, should Tommy be governor again?
I mean, he did make some noise earlier about about doing that.
Let's see.
Also, Tom also puts here, for steak, go to Schomburg's restaurant on Lake Emily near Fox Lake.
All right, I'm going to say that one again, because I have not heard this one before and I got to make a note someplace.
So for steaks, go to Schomburg's restaurant on Lake Emily near Fox Lake.
Okay.
That one is definitely noted.
Here's, we've mentioned supper clubs as one idea to take a friend.
And you have to make sure there's nothing against, you know, supper clubs that are in town.
There are still some in cities, but you know where some of the best meals are.
They are in places so out of town, so out of the way that you feel like you're being driven someplace where they'll never find your body.
And yet they have the best food and, you know, don't, don't know why.
Don't know why, but boy, there, there've been some place, there was a place outside of Cornell for the longest time.
It was called Handys.
I don't know what it's called right now, but it's one of these really out of the way places and you go, how is a place so far from civilization making such good food?
But they just are.
But of course, then you've got the ones that, you know,
It feels like millions of people have been to like Ishtnala in the Wisconsin Dells That's the one that shows up in all of the the guidebooks and we've been there once Ishtnala is popular for a reason.
It is good.
It's in the Dells and I don't know that the system has changed now But the way it was with Ishtnala at least a few years ago was they don't take reservations You go and you sign up and then you wait and thankfully it wasn't pleasant day.
We got there an hour before they opened
And there was already a big crowd.
I think we were like 50th in line or something like that.
So we had an hour and a half or so, but they have all these little things to see outside.
And of course, you're in Wisconsin Dells.
So there's going to be things to see all kinds of beautiful stuff.
And eventually we got in and it was worth it.
You know, your classic supper club meal.
But again, you can get that classic supper club meal just about anywhere else in the state.
And, you know, to hear Jason Kelsey talk about it in that video that went viral.
You'd think he'd never had a big steak dinner before.
I don't know.
Parker, do we still have Jason Kelsey's audio describing his perfect day in Wisconsin when he came to watch the Packer game a couple of weeks back?
All right.
Maybe this gets you fired up.
Tell us where you would take a friend.
Imagine Jason Kelsey shows up at the airport.
You want him to talk like this when the visit's all
done.
Dairy and alcohol, for me, doesn't sit well.
Over the course of the day, this is my day.
I go to Lambo, get a tour.
We go to Legend Laries, which apparently is a wing spot in the Wisconsin area.
I eat chicken wings and fried food there.
I have about seven spotted cows, because when you're in Wisconsin, you're going to drink a spot of cow or two.
I go straight from there, an hour drive to this freaking supper club after the four o'clock game's end.
And at the supper club, the first thing you do is the whole thing is you sit at one table by the bar and you order your food there.
While you're ordering your food, you're drinking alcohol, mainly old-fashioned.
So I have an old-fashioned there.
Then we go to the table.
I eat a prime rib the size of the entire plate, all right?
Yeah.
And then I top it off with an ice cream drink.
When I tell you my stomach had no idea what I was doing.
Like, it's just fried chicken, prime rib ice cream drinks, beer, old fashioned.
I probably took about four years off of my life in one day, going to freaking Green
Bay,
Wisconsin, and chopping it up with these.
I had Yeager my shirt guy said
Hey, you wanna play beer die?
We're playing beer die.
And he's like, and loser buys.
I lost.
I was like, all right, what do you guys wanna do?
What's a Wisconsin drink?
And they said, Yeager.
I said, I haven't had Yeager in probably 15 years.
Let's do it.
It was churning all sorts of different ways, but I'm not a big so I handled it fine.
But I was like, I don't know what the hell I just did to myself today.
And I loved every second of it.
He did.
He loved every second of it, Wisconsin.
Clearly.
You want your visitors talking like that, and you want them understanding why we have issues in this state.
We have issues with obesity and with alcohol use.
I mean, we don't call it beer dye, but we do shake a lot, shake dice a lot for
shot or for a beer.
And you've got your shake of the day as well.
There's a lot of dice shaking going on in Wisconsin that also surprises people in other states.
So
teach them games.
That's another thing for a first-time visitor to Wisconsin.
Try to teach them Sheep's Head.
I know, or whatever card game you like to play that is played nowhere else.
There is so much that's unique to Wisconsin.
We'd love to know what you would do with a first-time visitor, 855-75 Civic, or get in the comment sections of Facebook and YouTube, or use the text line, 855-75 Civic or the Civic Media app.
All right, as mentioned, Julie Underwood and Sonny Pope are standing by.
We're going to talk about the Blue Ribbon Commission on education and how we can fix school funding in Wisconsin years after it should have been done.
We're coming up on that after this.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
We have tried to do a little one-stop shopping when it comes to this program and the newsletters and the news stories that I write and the podcast links.
And you can find it all at upnorthnewswi.com slash mornings.
Upnorthnewswi.com slash mornings.
We can learn more about this radio show, mornings with Pat Crichtlow powered by Upnorth News.
our weekend newsletter Sunday mornings with Pat Crichtlow.
Also links to the stories that I write for the website and ways to either watch this radio show or subscribe to it as a podcast.
Again, get it all at up north news wi.com slash mornings.
Welcome to our homeroom segment at 736 now.
In our homeroom segment, we talk about public education, some of the opportunities, the strengths, the perils and pitfalls and the threats to it.
And
A lot of the discussions that we have about education in Wisconsin come back to one central mystery.
How do you pay for it all?
You know, different states wrestle with it in different ways.
Wisconsin seems to have wrestled with it more than any other.
And once upon a time, not that long ago, some folks said, why don't we get people in a room in a bipartisan manner and come up with some ideas, some ways to fix this?
And they did.
there was a blue ribbon commissioned on school funding and
I still hear to this day, people saying, well, we should put this in or put that in.
And it hasn't.
And so we thought we'd talk to a couple of members from that commission and ask, you know, where do we go from here?
Can we still implement some of the things that they did back in 2017, 2018?
Two of those members include Julie Underwood, who's the former dean of the UW Madison School of Education, and Sandy Pope, who is a former state assembly representative, and they join us now this morning.
Julie and Sandy, good morning.
Thank you for being here.
You're welcome.
Good
morning.
Nice to have you both here.
Sandy, take it from a legislative standpoint.
Tell me about the time you knew that some kind of a commission was going to be formed.
Were you asked to be part of it?
Were you part of the asking other people to make up this commission?
How did all get
started?
Well, I'll start by telling you before I went to the legislature in 1998, I was interested in school funding and there were seven.
such task forces, committees, commissions, whatever, addressing the problem of school funding.
And almost nothing had been implemented.
They were all sitting on bookshelves with dust on them.
Speaker Voss put this one together.
And I think it was done because of so much pressure from citizens about struggling schools and feeling that it was absolutely imperative that the problem be addressed.
So this commission was put together
I don't know how bipartisan it was, but that may have been part of the problem.
Anyway, I don't think we did a whole lot of anything except create another report to sit on a shelf.
It appears.
Well, it certainly does based on the record since then, but there was so much that was said at the time about, for example, Republican Senator Luther Olson
uh was his name always came up when you talked about education and funding and he you know served on this as well uh as did Joel kitchens uh from the state assembly republican from the sturgeon bay area uh and then you had uh you know other members on there as well and yet again despite that it sits on a shelf julie talk about your experience uh being on the commission and and what it feels like to have what you've proposed still still sitting out there
Well, I know lots of times reports just sit on the shelf and for this one.
I was actually really really optimistic because Joel kitchens and Luther Olson were chairing it and They were actually they said it was bipartisan.
They they put sandy on it.
They put me on it and We don't share their political views very often.
So I was really really
hopeful, and we had hearings all across the state, and we had some great recommendations.
The problem is we're still talking about them.
They haven't implemented them.
They haven't written bills.
They assigned, Joel Kitchens assigned legislators, Republican legislators, because they were in the majority, still are, and nothing.
Crickets.
Yeah.
And one of those members, Howard Markline, is, you know, a co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee.
He's still very active and still could be part of this.
and hasn't for, you know, whatever reasons.
So, Sandy, let's look at some of the things that were put out there.
Obviously, you would have loved to have seen all the recommendations implemented, but if you could pick one or maybe two things that were so key to reforming school funding that you guys discussed, and you could wave that magic wand tomorrow, Sandy, what would it be?
I would start with addressing the issue with special education funding.
and two-thirds funding.
Those seem to be foundational to me.
I don't know that we've actually addressed those issues adequately, but they seem to be foundational.
They do, and for folks that have heard us talk about it before, special education costs much more than traditional classroom instruction.
And so the state had originally picked up a large percentage of special education costs, reimbursed local school districts.
But that percentage fell and fell and fell.
And only in this last state budget was it supposed to be brought back up.
But there was a note that just came out yesterday from DPI.
Looking at the new rate, it was supposed to reach 42% reimbursement this year.
And yet this year, it is still like around 35%.
But
by the
way, parenthetically, voucher schools
get a 90 percent reimbursement rate.
So, Sandy, we've got a ways to go to fix just special education funding.
Well, you know, Pat, when this commission came together before we ever met the first time, we were fighting over what whose schools are are we talking about?
Voucher schools or public schools?
Because there was a lot of voucher school representation on this committee commission and
I think the conflict of interest was very bothersome to me that the voucher schools had such heavy representation and I felt like public schools needed to be addressed first and foremost.
Well, that's ideally what it was there to serve as.
Julie, when we talk about two-thirds funding, we talk about the state share.
picking up two-thirds of the of the tab of what it costs to educate our children before you go looking at local property taxes and and other sources like that and it was there once upon a time and and we have definitely gotten away from it.
Do you still see that as key to reforming school funding and not having so many school referendums out there that are raising local property taxes?
Absolutely you know
I've been doing some reading into Wisconsin's Constitution and the Education Clause, Article 10, Section 3.
And even in the creation of the Wisconsin Constitution, those who were putting it together were talking about what that balance should be between state funding and local funding for schools.
And in the record, they reached a resolution
that the state should pay twice as much as the local twice as much as the local that puts you back to two-thirds funding so they were talking about that you know in the 1840s we had two-thirds funding theoretically at one point but not so now and also it should be at least two-thirds funding because the legislature is the one who is responsible
according to the Wisconsin Constitution for creating and funding public schools.
Exactly.
That's Julie Underwood, former Dean of the UW School of Education, and we're also talking to Sandy Pope, a former state legislator.
And Julie, I'd ask Sandy what recommendations stuck out from her from the old 2017 Blue Ribbon Commission.
She mentioned the two-thirds funding.
She mentioned special education.
Let me hand the magic wand over to you.
And were there other recommendations in there that you would
You would have implemented by now if you had had the power, Julie.
So many.
Certainly, two-thirds funding is an important one.
And another one is something that we used to have as well.
They created these revenue limits.
And at first, they had an inflation escalator on it.
So it went up automatically based on inflation.
And we lost that in the early 2000s.
And we're way behind in terms of inflationary increases.
I think we're nearly $4,000 per pupil behind where we were in 2010 had we had an inflationary increase.
So that's one of them.
Plus, Sandy mentioned special education reimbursement.
But there are also other children who have really high
high needs, high cost needs, children who live in poverty, children whose home language is not English, gifted and talented children, children with mental health needs.
And the state doesn't have a sufficient mechanism to put money into the districts to take care of these children's needs.
So, Sandy, what's the path forward?
And, you know, both of us being former Democratic legislators, it's easy to say, let's just change the makeup of the legislature in 2026.
That certainly would be one thing.
But if you had to work in the here and now, and work at putting some of these recommendations into play,
Is there a way to start?
Is it just continuing?
I mean, we've seen all the pressure that people tried to put on the Joint Finance Committee in budget cycle after budget cycle after budget cycle, and it just doesn't appear to go anywhere.
So is there a path forward with the recommendations of this Blue Ribbon Commission, or is it pretty much entirely dependent on the partisan makeup of the legislature?
Hope you'll have to take yourself off mute there, Sandy.
There you go.
Did I, did I mute you?
No, you've got to unmute yourself there.
There you go.
Try that.
Okay, sorry about that.
That's all right.
When I talk to people outside of the Capitol, I always say that the answer to this problem lies in the ballot box.
Figure out who you are voting for and what they represent to your interests.
And that's a difficult thing to do.
There's a lot of detail in the school funding.
situation and how it's resolved and who's important to fixing it.
But that would be I think the starting point because it doesn't seem like this legislature imbalance is ever going to get to the answers.
It just hasn't been working.
And then I want to make a shameless plug for the Wisconsin Public Education Network.
It is
Its tentacles are everywhere in the state of Wisconsin.
They have huge influence among citizens who are paying attention.
But I also think sometimes people get interested in school funding when they have children in school.
As their children age out, they sort of lose interest and they care as taxpayers.
but they don't care as much as parents of kids in schools.
So I want to give a big plug to the Wisconsin Public Education Network for educating people all over the state of Wisconsin and working tirelessly to hold legislators speak to the fire during campaign season and budget hearings and things like that.
they're doing so much to bring transparency and and accountability and you can learn more at wisconsinnetwork.org as we say week after week here uh julie underwood i've got a minute left so a short answer but if if somebody has a republican legislator they bump into them at a coffee shop and they you can say one thing to that republican legislator that you hope maybe moves them a little bit what's that one thing you hope people would say to their republican lawmaker
that our state
has to head an educated citizenry and the only way to do it is the legislative will to fund public schools.
That's it.
It really comes down to the will to do that to serve our public schools.
And again, the people who started the State of Wisconsin understood this and put it in the initial state constitution.
A blue ribbon commission followed through with it and its recommendations are still out there.
Members included Julie Underwood, former dean of the UW School of Education and former Wisconsin legislator, Sandy Pope.
It is so great to get to talk to both of you ladies.
Thank you so much for coming in this morning and giving us some background.
Thank you.
All
right.
Thank you.
Be
well.
Thank you.
Have a wonderful day.
All right, still ahead.
We've got our eight o'clock hour where we will talk to Melissa Baldoff with our climate check and Earl Ingram from the What's Going On with Earl Ingram podcast.
You can learn more about that at civicmedia.us.
You can learn a lot about the network at civicmedia.us.
Sign up there.
I'm Pat Krightlo.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
eight five five seven five civic is the phone number here eight five five seven five two four eight four two our question of the day a friend is coming to wisconsin for the very first time and you can take them anywhere in the state where are you going and let me head back over to the uh comment sections uh let's see we've got oh yeah from artith on facebook i would take them to our absolutely beautiful awesome state capital in madison for a guided tour of this magnificent building this is our history i
couldn't agree more, Artith.
That is, again, what a pleasure it was to get to work in the capital.
And it was only for four years, but still, you know, the best day ever each year would be when the fourth graders come in.
Because, you know, did you have the requisite fourth grade field trip to the state capital?
And it's it's great because you see that the kids are looking up at the rotunda and they're looking at all the artwork and they're looking at these you know offices and these people who have these important jobs and just that again just that that sense of wonder that you see in their eyes and you think okay this is why we're doing this and some of them might be lying on the floor of the rotunda and then you know it's after midnight and Derek Van Orden comes out and starts
yelling at them get out of here.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I was conflating two different capital stories here.
But anyway, heaven forbid, we admire the wonder of life in Wisconsin, and our beautiful capital building here 855-752-4842.
Let's do a little sports here at 754.
Now we've got the the brewers Parker signing
Brandon Woodruff.
we were thought we were done I
stays healthy.
he got enough.
He got enough indication that other teams were now suddenly hesitant because of that late season injury.
And maybe that's it.
But remember when he finally came back from the injury, you know, for those, what, two, three months, whatever it was, two months, I mean, he was lights out.
Yeah, it's fantastic.
And so that that's where to make everybody feel a little bit optimistic.
I will tell you, we are 127 days away from
Opening game opening season Yeah, March 26th is when this all gets started.
So
And I'm not joking like he
He has
Yeah, maybe that's the indication.
I sense this might be a subject on Make the Call, the Civic Media Sports show that airs Saturday mornings at 7 a.m.
and on the Civic Media app.
He asks rhetorically.
a little bit.
Make the call Saturdays, 7 to 8 a.m.
on the Civic Media app and on the network.
Tonight in sports, you've got the Big High School Sports Show.
Chad Holmes does that up at 98.9 WXCO in Wausau.
You can listen on the Civic Media app as well.
Just a wonderful highlight on local sports there in Northern and Central Wisconsin.
And then also tonight on several Civic Media stations, the Luke Fickle Show.
I've never listened to the Luke Fickle show and I'll be curious to see how, how that goes week by week by week, but hey, he's got job security now.
So you can be listening in at 705 tonight and learn more.
And getting set to host Illinois Saturday night.
You can listen to the Badger football pregame starting at 430 Saturday on stations in Richland Center, Amory, Ripon, Wisconsin Rapids, Ironwood, Michigan, and the Civic Media app.
And of course, those are the places where you can hear the Luke Fickle shows coming up tonight at 705.
Let's see, we've got the Milwaukee Bucks.
They of course are going to be without Yanis for
probably a couple of weeks here with that groin strain, so the Bucks will be at home tomorrow, taking on the Philadelphia 76ers.
Badger men's basketball, they next play Friday in Salt Lake City against BYU.
And then after that their next game will be on Thanksgiving Day.
It's not just the Packers who play on Thanksgiving Day.
It'll be the Badger Men's basketball team as well.
They'll be playing Providence in San Diego 4 p.m.
I believe is when the pregame gets started.
So on Thanksgiving Day, you can tune into the Packers pregame at 10 a.m.
Then the Packer game and then you can go right into Badger Men's basketball pregame and game here on the Civic Media radio network.
The Badger Women's basketball team is in action later today
against UIC in Chicago.
The Badger men's hockey team will be playing Friday and Saturday at top ranked Michigan State.
The top ranked Badger women's hockey team will be hosting St.
Thomas tomorrow and Friday nights.
Let's see and I'm missing who Badger women's volleyball.
They are playing tonight.
They are hosting ninth ranked Purdue.
I mentioned the Packers on Thanksgiving Day, but let's not forget there's a game before then.
They will be hosting the Minnesota Vikings this coming Sunday before they have that Thanksgiving game in Detroit.
And on Sunday, you can catch the pregame starting at 10 a.m.
on stations in Richland Center, Park Falls, Racine, Watoma, and Ironwood, Michigan.
So more than a little bit of sports for you to be able to handle.
Coming up in our next hour, we'll be talking to Melissa Baldoff.
She has her climate check and there's a little good news to pass along in there.
Wisconsin is now awarding some $14 million in grants for 26 more EV charging stations around the state.
We may have a Trump administration that's opposed to cleaner, greener energy sources, but the consumer, you, you're still embracing it with hybrids and with EVs.
And so now there will be a growing network of charging stations going up around the state.
We'll talk to Melissa Baldoff about that, and we'll talk to Earl Ingram right after the news about his What's Going On podcast that you can catch over at CivicMedia.us.
I'm Pat Krightlow from Up North News.
Follow us at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
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