Congratulations to the Wisconsin Legislature!
They get the Academy Award for Best Performance in Reneging Responsibility and Passing the Buck.
They also come out the winners in successfully failing to address a doomed public finance system for Wisconsin’s schools, while managing to pass the anger and frustration onto the backs of local communities, creating a cast of mythical villains that include school adminstrators, teachers’ unions and essentially all-volunteer school board members across the state.
Frustration, chest-pounding, threats and blame are being recreated at a local level in 424 school districts across the state. Friends no longer speak. Families are threatening to move. Most important, many kids are stressed out by the adult anger around them. Great atmosphere for meaningful learning.
I bet more than a thousand Madisonians have emailed or called our 7 BOE members in the past 3 weeks. I’m willing to bet newcomers Beth Moss and Maya Cole have gotten more correspondence than anyone else. Great inauguration into a thankless job that doesn’t pay enough to cover mileage to visits across the district’s 50+ schools.
Has anyone emailed or called Don Pridemore? Raise your hand if you have.
Don Pridemore is the Republican Assembly member in Hartford who chairs the “Education Reform” committee in the Assembly.His committee has received the Sondy Pope-Robert bill to reform public school finance. But he refuses to call for a hearing on public school finance in Wisconsin. He claims no one has ever asked.
Nope, they probably haven’t. He and his well-paid colleagues in the Legislature can fly under the radar because it’s easier to call a school board member who has been serving for exactly 12 days than it is to take the time to go back on this website to find Pridemore’s contact info and put a few lines together, or call his office and call for a hearing on school finance reform.
So, here it is:
Don Pridemore, 267-2367, Rep.Pridemore@legis.wisconsin.gov
People in Pridmore’s district ESPECIALLY need to be contacting him.
Beth Swedeen
AMPS 
Thank you for refocusing the discussion. I sent the following:
Dear Representative Pridemore,
I support public schools, and I believe they are the cornerstone of our state’s and our nation’s future. For too many years, school districts across WI are being asked to shoulder the burden of an unfair public school financing system. Further, for too long, Wisconsin’s legislature has backed off its commitment to funding legal mandates adequately.
As chair of the Education Reform committee in the assembly, which has received the Sondy Pope-Robert bill to reform public school finance, I am writing to ask you to hold a hearing on public school finance in Wisconsin.
Sincerely,
Barbara M. Schrank, Ph.D.
Madison, WI
I sent an outraged email, which I will follow up with a phone call tomorrow morning.