Sen. Kanavas Highlights the Need Why We Need the Voucher Program in all schools in Wisconsin More Than Ever

Sen. Ted Kanavas recently published a press release on why increasing bureaucracy in the Milwaukee Public Schools is making a failing public school system go worse. Also, it highlights the reason why the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program should have no caps and it should be expanded all around Wisconsin. More than ever, the whole State of Wisconsin needs the Milwaukee Voucher Program. It will finally make public schools like Milwaukee improve their product in which the parents money that gets spent per pupil only gets spent in the school district of their choice public or private. I used to been a volunteer coach in the Madison Public Schools as an assistant wrestling coach, in just seeing how much liberal politics the school board in Madison shoved down our throats there is an increasing need to expand the voucher program to cities like Madison and Green Bay that need the voucher program bad. If a statewide voucher program happened think of these results.

• Madison East would not be as big as 2100 students as more students would go to Lakeside Lutheran or Edgewood Catholic. Madison East is like the poorest high school in Madison and all of Wisconsin with close to 60 percent of their students being poor .
• Milwaukee Public Schools would be forced to change their product as more economically deprived children would go to Milwaukee Messmer and Marquette University High School for example, as poor schools like South Division and North Division would have to change their product because MPS only graduates 60 percent of their students. Also, their tardy rates are abysmally high.
• Green Bay would have to start finding solutions to make their schools better as Green Bay East and Green Bay West are starting to become poor schools, especially a lot of low income kids go to Green Bay West.
• Every kid who is economically deprived in this state will realize through the choice program they will see hope through education.

Sen. Kanavas Said:

"The problems in MPS are well documented. Graduation rates that are nothing short of embarrassing, outbursts of violence in schools with little or no controls put in place to keep innocent children safe, and a burdensome employee benefits package that seems to have been taken straight off the MTEA (teacher’s union) Christmas list – all of these things prevent MPS from achieving its core goal – providing an education for children that prepares them for a role in society. What is the Board’s solution to these problems? Hire more administrators to arm the Board with "facts" they can use to undermine the Superintendent. Rather than add another expensive layer of administration, couldn’t the Board actually spend this money on improving their failing system? Rather than training their guns at Superintendent Andrekopoulos, maybe the Board could take a look at their failing, unsafe schools and start working on fixing them instead of micromanaging the CEO of the Milwaukee school system. This decision directly calls into question whether a school district with a $1.2 billion budget, $900 million of which comes from Wisconsin taxpayers that do not live in the City of Milwaukee, should be run by this Board. If MPS wants more local control, they are going to have to pony up more local money to support this system. Wisconsinites are tired of throwing good money after bad on a failing school district. Time has run out. This Board and the superintendent must work together to get MPS turned around or MPS should be replaced with a system that works. Wisconsin’s future demands it."

From that statement alone Former Governor Tommy Thompson threatened to take over MPS if it did not turn around its failing statistics. I think we need this call again for MPS to either improve or face the consequences.