Boots & Sabers

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Category: Education

GOP to Blame for UWWC Demise?

by | 0806, 27 Oct 23 | , | 1 Comment

I was amused by this letter to the editor in the Washington County Daily News. Look, I get wanting to use events to credit/blame the party you like/don’t, but how, exactly, would more funding have for the universities have made Wisconsinites have more kids 20 years ago? The campus has less than 270 FTE students. How barren does it need to get before the taxpayers can cut it loose?

To the editor: The recent announcement of UWM Chancellor Mark A. Mone that UWWC would discontinue in-person learning after June 30, 2024, is both deplorable and predictable. It is deplorable cutting off a readily available, inexpensive window into the UW System for residents of Washington County. It is predictable because our gerrymandered state Legislature has not backed the UW System for years. It is totally disingenuous of Rep. Rick Gundrum and Sen. Duey Stroebel, who consistently voted to cut the UW System’s budget requests whenever they had a chance, to suggest, as Gundrum recently did in this newspaper, that other factors made UWWC’s mission out of date. What turned UWWC’s existence into mission impossible was systematic underfunding of the state’s stellar university system’s budget, joined with a 10-year undergraduate tuition freeze started by the Legislature in 2013. The canary in the coal mine is the apparent demise of the state’s two-year colleges.

 

I lay the floundering and ultimate sinking of UWWC directly at the feet of the Legislature, including or own Rep. Gundrum and Sen. Stroebel. The citizens of Washington County deserve better. Stop trying to sink the UW System, or we will truly be the flyover zone with little to keep people in or attract people to our state. Maybe, just maybe, it’s not too late to save what remains of the system of two-year state colleges, and indeed the UW System itself, but it looks to be too late for UWWC. That is a colossal pity. Any cobbling with Moraine Park is a fig leaf in my estimation.

 

Carol Pouros West Bend

Student loan repayments restart

by | 2028, 8 Oct 23 | , , , | 0 Comments

Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News last week:

With October upon us, the well-meaning, morally repugnant, and oft-extended moratorium on student loan repayments has finally come to an end. It is not a crisis. It is a return to normalcy.

 

According to Forbes, borrowers owe $1.75 trillion in student debt, including federal and private loans, or about $28,950 per student. Interestingly, the average debt for just federal loans is $35,210 per borrower, indicating that federal loans are granted much more liberally than private loans. In Wisconsin, the average borrower owes $30,778 in federal student loans.

 

That is a lot of money by any measurement. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that many of the people who owe tens of thousands of dollars for their education are not earning enough money to comfortably pay it back. It is difficult for a person earning $36,754 per year (the average per-capita income in Wisconsin in 2021 according to the U.S. Census Bureau) to fit student loan payments into their monthly budget — especially in Biden’s inflationary economy.

 

Student loans have been around for generations, but the issue has become acute in recent decades because of two aggravating factors. First, the cost of a college education has skyrocketed. Between 1992 and 2022, the inflation-adjusted average cost of college at a four-year public university increased by 26.7% according to College Board. A $50,000 education in 1992 now costs $129,000. Over the same period, inflation-adjusted median household income rose by only 17.6%. The price of higher education has been increasing much faster than students’ ability to pay.

 

The reasons for those increases are myriad. The federalization of student loans made for easy money for universities to tap. They took advantage of students flush with borrowed cash to bloat up their administrations and go on a building binge.

 

Meanwhile, the second aggravating factor is that demand has risen as high schools across America portray a college education as the only viable path to stave off poverty. Instead of portraying the military, the trades, entrepreneurship, or other career paths as equally viable, too many high school teachers and counselors — all college graduates themselves — have culturalized kids to think that anyone without a college degree is lesser.

 

Compounding the misleading culturalization, the abysmally wretched financial education provided in those high schools leave prospective students ill-equipped to evaluate the risk/reward of financing a college degree with debt. Ignorant of the power of compounding interest, too many kids are borrowing tens of thousands of dollars to get a degree with little market value. The result is that they are unable to get jobs after graduation that pay enough to easily pay off the debt.

 

It is true that some people are not getting the value out of their degrees that they had hoped for or were promised. It is true that college costs more than it should. It is true that student loan payments make it more difficult to afford other things and that everything is more expensive than it used to be. It is true that lenders were all too eager to dole out money without any consideration of the degree being pursued or potential future earnings of the graduate.

 

All of these things are true, but it does not absolve the borrowers from the obligation to pay off their own debt. It is not a financial question. It is a moral one. If you borrowed the money, then you must pay it back. To fail to do so makes you a shameful deadbeat and a drain on your family and community. Having a college degree does not make you any less of a loser if you renege on your obligations.

 

Furthermore, nobody wants to hear you whine about your student loans. In 2022, less than 38% of adults 25 and older had at least a bachelor’s degree. Three in five adults in the United States do not have a college degree and did not sign up to pay off the debt of people who have one. Most adults who do have a college degree have either paid off their student loans, are paying off their own student loans, or never took out a loan in the first place. They did not sign up to subsidize deadbeats who do not want to pay off their student loans.

 

The college and student loan system is terribly broken and has led far too many people into borrowing more money than they can easily afford to buy degrees of marginal value. Honor, respect, and dignity demand that the borrowers pay it back as promised.

West Bend Removes “Ender’s Game” From 8th Grade Book Club List

by | 0748, 6 Oct 23 | , | 0 Comments

Huh

WEST BEND — On Monday, during the West Bend Special Curriculum meeting, it was announced that “Ender’s Game” would be removed from the Badger Middle School first-quarter book club list for eight-grade English class.

 

The West Bend School District had changed parameters for reviewing book club books during their Sept. 7 special board work session, with an emphasis on looking at three criteria defined in board policy, which are sexual content, graphic violence and excessive obscene language.

 

According to the WBSD, “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card, a 1985 science-fiction novel about a cadet, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, who has trained since early childhood, with others, to win an anticipated third conflict with an invading alien species, was removed because it violates all three district policies.

 

The cited violations were:

 

■ Sexual content: Bug mating described in detail and sexual jokes.

 

■ Graphic violence: Physical fights between children, some resulting in death, and described in detail.

 

■ Excessive obscene language: The use of “hell,” “damn” and “b*****d.”

Usually when we are discussing removing a book with graphic language from the curriculum, it is a book that I’ve never heard of. It’s usually some obscure trans-advocacy book or something that only the activists know about, but they treat it like THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK YOU WILL EVER READ AND YOU ARE A MONSTER IF YOU DON’T LOVE IT!!!!! In this case, I’ve read Ender’s Game more than once – including rereading it a couple of years ago. It’s a brilliant book and legitimately a landmark piece of science fiction. The movie was acceptable. Not great, but decent.

But… it is, indeed, full of obscene language and children fighting (that’s kind of the point). The sexual content is rather benign, in my opinion, but it is there. Would I let my 8th grader read it? Yeah, I would. They probably wouldn’t get it yet, but it would introduce some deep concepts. It would invite the conversation and allow me to develop their minds.

But it is appropriate for an 8th grade book club in a government school? Meh… I could go either way. Could the book introduce or develop inappropriate thoughts without parental guidance? Maybe. I’m neither upset nor happy about the decision. It’s probably not the decision I would have made, but it’s not an unreasonable decision. It’s a great book, but there are millions of other books in the world.

See, liberals? See how easy that was? They can remove a book I like from the book club and I don’t act like they are burning books in the street.

Student loan repayments restart

by | 0731, 3 Oct 23 | , , , | 6 Comments

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

Meanwhile, the second aggravating factor is that demand has risen as high schools across America portray a college education as the only viable path to stave off poverty. Instead of portraying the military, the trades, entrepreneurship, or other career paths as equally viable, too many high school teachers and counselors — all college graduates themselves — have culturalized kids to think that anyone without a college degree is lesser.

 

Compounding the misleading culturalization, the abysmally wretched financial education provided in those high schools leave prospective students ill-equipped to evaluate the risk/reward of financing a college degree with debt. Ignorant of the power of compounding interest, too many kids are borrowing tens of thousands of dollars to get a degree with little market value. The result is that they are unable to get jobs after graduation that pay enough to easily pay off the debt.

 

It is true that some people are not getting the value out of their degrees that they had hoped for or were promised. It is true that college costs more than it should. It is true that student loan payments make it more difficult to afford other things and that everything is more expensive than it used to be. It is true that lenders were all too eager to dole out money without any consideration of the degree being pursued or potential future earnings of the graduate.

 

All of these things are true, but it does not absolve the borrowers from the obligation to pay off their own debt. It is not a financial question. It is a moral one. If you borrowed the money, then you must pay it back. To fail to do so makes you a shameful deadbeat and a drain on your family and community. Having a college degree does not make you any less of a loser if you renege on your obligations.

 

Furthermore, nobody wants to hear you whine about your student loans. In 2022, less than 38% of adults 25 and older had at least a bachelor’s degree. Three in five adults in the United States do not have a college degree and did not sign up to pay off the debt of people who have one. Most adults who do have a college degree have either paid off their student loans, are paying off their own student loans, or never took out a loan in the first place. They did not sign up to subsidize deadbeats who do not want to pay off their student loans.

 

The college and student loan system is terribly broken and has led far too many people into borrowing more money than they can easily afford to buy degrees of marginal value. Honor, respect, and dignity demand that the borrowers pay it back as promised.

Student Debt Payments to Resume

by | 1859, 16 Sep 23 | , | 8 Comments

Explain to me again why this is a hardship that America’s plumbers and factory workers should bear.

Mykail James has a plan for when payments on her roughly $75,000 in student loans restart next month. She’ll cut back on her “fun budget” — money reserved for travel and concerts — and she expects to limit her holiday spending.

 

“With the holidays coming up — I have a really big family — we will definitely be scaling back how much we’re spending on Christmas and how many things we can afford,” James said. “It’s just going to be a tighter income overall.”

 

In October, roughly 27 million borrowers like James will once again be on the hook for repaying their federal student loans after a three-year hiatus. President Joe Biden tried to use his executive powers to forgive about $400 billion in student debt last year, but the Supreme Court overruled that decision in June, and payments kick in again in October.

 

Now there are big questions about how those people — many of whom had expected to have at least some of their debt erased — may change their spending habits as they budget for student loan payments again. It could crimp the economy if a large share of consumers cut back simultaneously, especially because the resumption in payments comes just as the retail and hospitality industry begin to eye the crucial holiday shopping season.

Universities Enforce Racism and Ideological Conformity by Any Means Necessary

by | 1314, 10 Sep 23 | , , | 0 Comments

The UW System has retained its Equity Enforcement infrastructure despite having funding for it cut. They prioritize it over all other interests. Our kids are getting a worse education than we did.

Diversity statements are a new flashpoint on campus, just as the Supreme Court has driven a stake through race-conscious admissions. Nearly half the large universities in America require that job applicants write such statements, part of the rapid growth in DEI programs. Many University of California departments now require that faculty members seeking promotions and tenure also write such statements.

 

Diversity statements tend to run about a page or so long and ask candidates to describe how they would contribute to campus diversity, often seeking examples of how the faculty member has fostered an inclusive or anti-racist learning environment.

 

To supporters, such statements are both skill assessment and business strategy. Given the ban on race-conscious admissions, and the need to attract applicants from a shrinking pool of potential students, many colleges are looking to create a more welcoming environment.

 

But critics say these statements are thinly veiled attempts at enforcing ideological orthodoxy. Politically savvy applicants, they say, learn to touch on the right ideological buzzwords. And the championing of diversity can overshadow strengths seen as central to academia — not least, professional expertise.

 

[…]

 

Candidates who did not “look outstanding” on diversity, the vice provost at UC Davis instructed his search committees, could not advance, no matter the quality of their academic research. Credentials and experience would be examined in a later round.

 

The championing of diversity at the University of California resulted in many campuses rejecting disproportionate numbers of white and Asian and Asian American applicants. In this way, the battle over diversity statements and faculty hiring carries echoes of the battle over affirmative action in admissions, which opponents said discriminated against Asians.

Teacher’s Union Boss Sends Kids to Private School

by | 0740, 9 Sep 23 | , , | 3 Comments

Ever notice how the people responsible for destroying our quality of life are walling off their own lives from the devastation?

The president of Chicago Teachers Union has sent her eldest son to a private school in the city, it has emerged – a month after she called those who supported school choice ‘fascists’.

 

Stacy Davis Gates, who in 2018 tweeted that private schools were ‘segregation academies’, enrolled her son 14 year-old son Kevin this term in a Catholic school. Her younger two children attend a Chicago public elementary school.

 

When critics accused her of hypocrisy, she said that she was doing the best for her son, because public schools in her neighborhood were poor quality.

New Houston School Superintendent Pushes Substantive Change

by | 1534, 28 Aug 23 | , | 3 Comments

Doing things the same way will get the same results. Good for him for forcing meaningful changes. I hope he will measure and adjust as needed.

One of Miles’ boldest projects has been a major restructuring of 28 underperforming schools, many of which are located in lower-income neighborhoods. Their teachers must now follow a centrally scripted curriculum, with in-classroom cameras monitoring their performance and pay based largely on standardized test scores.

 

Miles, who developed these ideas as CEO of a charter school network, has said he wants to eventually expand his “New Education System” to 150 of the district’s 274 schools, whose nearly 200,000 students are more than 80% Latino and Black.

 

Miles also has disbanded a team that supported students with autism, although his staff says special education services will continue as part of a restructuring, and filled some vacancies with uncertified teachers.

 

His most criticized change is transforming libraries at dozens of underperforming schools into “team centers” where students will get extra help and where those who misbehave will be disciplined, watching lessons on Zoom rather than disrupting their classrooms.

Another school year begins

by | 1500, 25 Aug 23 | , | 4 Comments

Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News earlier this week:

With the beginning of another school year bursting with hope and promise, it is sobering to pause and reflect on just how bad Wisconsin’s schools are. For generations, Wisconsinites have pointed to the educational system as a point of pride. No doubt there was a time when the state’s schools were great and the pride was justified, but it has not been true for decades. We are lying to ourselves.

 

Yes, there are bright spots, but as a whole, Wisconsin’s education system is failing our children on a monumental scale even as we pat ourselves on the backs, increase the funding, and gaslight ourselves about what a good education our children are getting. If the first step to any recovery is admitting that we have a problem, then Wisconsinites must admit that the schools are failing.

 

The truth is in the data. While some bemoan standardized tests, they are a useful tool to provide objective insight into the outcomes that the schools are delivering. They also provide a longitudinal look at performance to measure the impact of changes in policy. While some kids are better than others at tests, the widespread application of tests provides a statistically relevant view of school performance in the job that matters most — are the kids learning? Are the schools teaching kids to read? To write? Do math? Civics? Science? To reason? To think? Are they teaching kids basic facts that form a base of knowledge from which kids can understand and evaluate the world around them? Are the schools teaching kids to concentrate? Study? Sort and prioritize knowledge?

 

For the majority of kids in Wisconsin, the answer is “no.”

 

Wisconsin began administering the Forward Exam in the 2015-2016 school year. The Wisconsin Department of Administration says that, “The Exam is designed to gauge how well students are doing in relation to the Wisconsin Academic Standards. These standards outline what students should know and be able to do in order to be college and career ready.” The exam is not testing to see if a kid is a genius. It is merely testing to see if he or she is proficient according to the standards for their grade level.

 

The results are appalling. For the 2020-2021 school year, the most recent data available, a mere 39.2 percent of students between grades three and eight were at least proficient in math. Over 57 percent of students cannot do math at their grade level. For the same age group, only 37 percent of students were at least proficient in language arts. Almost 60 percent are not able to understand language at the appropriate grade level.

 

It does not get better as they get older. In the eleventh grade, over 90 percent of Wisconsin’s students take the ACT exam. On that test for the 2020-2021 school year, only 27 percent of students were at least proficient in math. Only 28.1 percent of students are at least proficient in science. 35 percent of students are at least proficient in English language arts.

 

For every three kids who enter a Wisconsin school this year, only one of them will end the year proficient in math or language.

 

Yet, Wisconsin’s schools boast a 90.2 percent graduation rate. Why in the world are we graduating 90 percent of kids when only one in three of them can do math at grade level? How are we looking ourselves in the mirror and telling ourselves that we are equipping our children for the world of tomorrow when we thrust a diploma into their hands despite the fact that over half of them cannot read at an adult level?

 

Wisconsinites should be ashamed and angry that our schools are so abysmal at performing their core duty — educating children. Instead, we shovel more money into the Government Education Complex, celebrate that our kids managed to get a piece of paper, and throw kids into a complex world for which they are debilitatingly unprepared.

 

Our children deserve better, but they will not get better until Wisconsinites stop living in a fantasy and admit that our schools are failing.

Drunk Teacher Removed From Class on First Day

by | 0743, 23 Aug 23 | | 2 Comments

Clearly, she has some issues.

A third grade teacher has been arrested for being ‘drunk on the job’ after staff pulled her out of the classroom asking her to explain why she had a cup allegedly filled with wine.

 

Kimberly Coates, 53, was teaching her class at Perkins-Tyron Intermediate School in Oklahoma when she was taken out of her classroom on the first day of term to meet with the school’s superintendent and a police officer.

 

After drawn-out questioning that saw her take a breathalyzer test and continually deny she had consumed alcohol at school, she eventually admitted she had drunk half a box of wine until 3am earlier that morning.

Another school year begins

by | 0625, 22 Aug 23 | , | 0 Comments

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

With the beginning of another school year bursting with hope and promise, it is sobering to pause and reflect on just how bad Wisconsin’s schools are. For generations, Wisconsinites have pointed to the educational system as a point of pride. No doubt there was a time when the state’s schools were great and the pride was justified, but it has not been true for decades. We are lying to ourselves.

 

Yes, there are bright spots, but as a whole, Wisconsin’s education system is failing our children on a monumental scale even as we pat ourselves on the backs, increase the funding, and gaslight ourselves about what a good education our children are getting. If the first step to any recovery is admitting that we have a problem, then Wisconsinites must admit that the schools are failing.

 

[…]

 

For the 2020-2021 school year, the most recent data available, a mere 39.2 percent of students between grades three and eight were at least proficient in math. Over 57 percent of students cannot do math at their grade level. For the same age group, only 37 percent of students were at least proficient in language arts. Almost 60 percent are not able to understand language at the appropriate grade level.

 

It does not get better as they get older. In the eleventh grade, over 90 percent of Wisconsin’s students take the ACT exam. On that test for the 2020-2021 school year, only 27 percent of students were at least proficient in math. Only 28.1 percent of students are at least proficient in science. 35 percent of students are at least proficient in English language arts.

 

For every three kids who enter a Wisconsin school this year, only one of them will end the year proficient in math or language.

 

Yet, Wisconsin’s schools boast a 90.2 percent graduation rate. Why in the world are we graduating 90 percent of kids when only one in three of them can do math at grade level? How are we looking ourselves in the mirror and telling ourselves that we are equipping our children for the world of tomorrow when we thrust a diploma into their hands despite the fact that over half of them cannot read at an adult level?

West Bend School District Changes Course on Inappropriate Books

by | 0656, 16 Aug 23 | , , | 0 Comments

Or do they?

Wimmer is recommending that “The 57 Bus” by Dashka Slater be removed as a choice book from the eighth-grade English curriculum at Badger Middle School, and that the use of “The 57 Bus” and “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, M.D. in the West Bend High Schools curriculum be suspended until the curriculum committee and school board complete their review of the curriculum guidelines and books on the book club choice lists.

 

“The work of our board and their curriculum and policy committees has yet to be finalized,” said Wimmer in a WBSD release. “The books in question will not be used for book club selections until formally reviewed by the curriculum committee and subsequently the full board.”

 

The two books will remain in the West Bend High School Library “until any further board work or action provides direction for removal,” according to a release from the WBSD.

 

Wimmer said the reason for her recommendation to remove “The 57 Bus” from Badger Middle School was due to the book being duplicative in WBSD curriculum, since it was included in both the eighth grade and junior year English book club choice book lists.

 

“Not even looking at content, not even looking at those kinds of pieces, it’s duplicated,” said Wimmer. “It’s a piece in curriculum that’s dually stated, that was not present in the library at Badger, it’s just not necessary as a book club [book].”

Everyone is dancing around the content and trying to litigate on the secondary or tertiary issues. The stated reason by the superintendent is that it is being removed from part of the curriculum because it’s duplicative. Put another way, they push these social issues SO MUCH that they can tolerate backing off a little in this one instance.

Still… it’s a move in the right direction, I guess.

Districts Shift to 4 Day Week to Attract Lazier Teachers

by | 1905, 10 Aug 23 | | 0 Comments

I’m not sure that the people who apply because they only have to work 4 days a week are the people you want teaching your kids. 

Nearly 900 school districts in the United States currently use a four-day weekly academic schedule. That number rose from 650 districts in 2020 to 876 districts, across 26 states, in 2023. While smaller, rural districts have been more likely to favor the schedule, larger districts are now shortening their school weeks in an effort to recruit and retain teachers. It’s a selling point in an era when schools are facing a national teacher shortage.

 

“The number of teaching applications that we’ve received have gone up more than four-fold,” Herl said.

 

Schools in other parts of the country have noticed similar patterns. In Chico, Texas, where the public school district also announced a shift to four-day academic schedules this year, officials said positions that used to receive five applications were suddenly receiving more than 20, CBS News Texas reported in May.

Legacy Admissions Come Under Fire

by | 0648, 9 Aug 23 | , | 0 Comments

Meh. I don’t have any problem with preference for legacy families. It’s no different than a store offering a coupon or perks for frequent shoppers.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to ban the consideration of race in college admissions has put pressure on institutions to end another controversial practice: preferences for children of alumni.

 

In Wisconsin, few colleges and universities consider “legacy” status in admissions decisions, according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel review. And because most Wisconsin schools accept far more students than they reject, it’s likely many legacy students would have gotten in regardless of their family’s history of attendance.

 

But there’s another way in which legacy can benefit already advantaged students: Some schools offer scholarships specifically for students with a family member who graduated from there. At least 13 Wisconsin institutions do, according to the news organization’s review of 28 school scholarship websites.

UW Sees Dramatic Drop in “non-underrepresented students”

by | 1648, 4 Aug 23 | , , | 20 Comments

Well, that’s an interesting stat.

UW System data indicates drastic enrollment drops by “non-underrepresented” students. They’re defined as students who are white, international students, or those with family heritage in Asian countries well-represented in the student body—such as China, Korea, and Japan.

 

Enrollment by those students fell around 20%, from almost 160,000 in the fall of 2010 to just under 130,000 in the fall of 2022.

Well, let’s see… over the last decade or more, the UW system has been actively biasing their enrollment criteria to favor underrepresented students while telling your average white or Asian Wisconsin kid that they are not welcome. UW administrators have carved out “safe spaces” for underrepresented students under the premise that they are needed because white and Asian kids as threats. Is it any wonder that when you spend years telling a group of people that they are terrible bigots because of the color of their skin that they might choose to go elsewhere for an education?

Immoral people act immorally in all things

by | 0703, 4 Aug 23 | , | 0 Comments

Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News earlier this week. As I expected, I’ve received several outrage emails (and a few in praise) since it ran by folks in West Bend. Not a single person on either side mentioned the outrageous spending from the district. That’s the apathy that allows the district to increase spending by 40% when they lost 10% of the students. And they will keep increasing spending unless the voters stop them.

The West Bend School District is in the news again for promoting adult material to minors, but that controversy, while important, ignores the elephant in the classroom. Let us first discuss books and appropriate material for minors.

 

The issue in West Bend is that the schools are making available to children several books that discuss, and often evangelize, complex, and often controversial, topics like transgenderism, sex, and sexual intercourse. The books often include graphic descriptions of sexual activity and drawings of the same. While nobody is arguing that such books should be banned, many community members think that such graphic and complex issues are not appropriate for children.

 

The boundaries of age appropriateness waver by culture and temperament, but we have long held that there is a progression by which people are educated on increasingly complex and graphic material as their minds develop. What is appropriate for a 6-year-old is not the same as for a 26-year-old as the 6-year-old’s knowledge and experience has not yet developed to understand and contextualize the same materials. Issues like transgenderism, sex, and sexual intercourse, or for that matter the invisible hand, natural rights, or Mao’s Cultural Revolution, are issues that require a more mature mind to understand.

 

In most contexts, adults allowing access to, much less showing, graphic sexual material to children would rightly be considered deviant or predatory — like a creepy guy showing porn to his 10-year-old neighbor. In West Bend, as in other communities, there is now a passionate group of adults who insist that access and advocacy of such materials for children in school is paramount and any opposition to such is akin to Goebbels burning books before the Berlin Opera House in 1933. Such bombastic parallelism is the mark of a soft mind and softer morals.

 

With a near infinite amount of material to make available to our children, our government schools are obligated to curate content to the values and customs of the majority of their constituents. San Francisco will have a different perspective than West Bend — or so one would think. With the availability of school choice, parents of any economic means can and should be diligent about putting their kids in environments where the other adults are teaching values contrary to their own. If the school will not support parents, then the parents are obligated to take action in the best interests of their children.

 

While sex and books attract the ire of the community in West Bend of late, left unremarked is how the school district continues to spend the community into oblivion with absolutely no restraint or respect for the taxpayers. Let us consider just four important numbers: 6,623. 5,972. $87.5 million. $108.7 million.

 

According to the West Bend School District, in 2018, the district had 6,623 students and spent a total of $87.58 million. In 2023, they had 5,972 students and budgeted spending a total of $108.7 million (final audited numbers of what they actually spent has not yet been published).

 

That is a 10% decrease in students; a 25% increase in total spending; and a whopping nearly 42% increase in spending per pupil in just five years. During the period of a 10% student decline, spending on staff and on facilities increased. There has been no perceptible effort to reduce spending in proportion to the reduction in the number of students they serve.

 

If we are to discuss the immorality permeating the West Bend School District, we must start with the gluttony, hubris, and malice towards the taxpayers that saturates their financials. It is no surprise that where immorality exists, we see it manifest in many ways. Furthermore, given the record increase in state school funding in the state budget, coupled with the state’s dramatic increase in the property tax levy limit, we can expect the school board to continually increase taxing and spending ad infinitum.

 

The West Bend School District is now spending over $18,200 per student per year with no signs of moderating. In return for that extravagant expense and largesse from the taxpayers, the community is insulted and ignored when asking for school employees to demonstrate some decency and respect for the age of the children and the values of their parents. It is detestable but will continue as long as the community tolerates it by electing School Board members who support it.

UW Oshkosh to Layoff Staff

by | 2004, 3 Aug 23 | , | 0 Comments

It’s about time. Enrollment is declining. They should be cutting back staff. Also, as someone who has spent some time on the UWO campus, there is plenty… PLENTY of fat to trim. Note to UWO leadership: if you make small reductions as you go based on actual conditions and future projections, you won’t have to make big reductions all at once.

UW-Oshkosh plans to cut about 200 non-faculty staff and administrators this fall, while furloughing others, UW-Oshkosh Chancellor Andrew Leavitt said Thursday, as the university faces an unprecedented $18 million budget shortfall. The cuts amount to about 20% of university employees.

 

“It is no longer sustainable for us to operate without dramatic reduction in expenses,” Leavitt said in an email to employees.

 

Administrators referred to a “perfect storm” in conditions that have led to budgetary issues: a decline in the number of high school graduates choosing to go to college or university and declining state support for the University of Wisconsin System leading to an over-reliance on tuition revenue.

 

[…]

 

Oshkosh is the third largest of the 13 UW System campuses after Madison and Milwaukee. Its fall 2022 enrollment was 13,714 students, or about 700 fewer than a year before.

Controversy as Marketing Tactic

by | 0726, 1 Aug 23 | , , | 2 Comments

One of our faithful readers pointed this out to me. The author of one of the books that is being challenged in West Bend campaigned for the three liberal board members who were elected in April.

While not denying that this author is a radical leftist who wants to indoctrinate children to her beliefs, this is also a rather smart marketing tactic. There is almost an unlimited number of books that a school district can choose to put in front of kids. By stoking controversy, this author is creating a group of passionate adults who are demanding that schools buy HER book.

Smart, eh?

Immoral people act immorally in all things

by | 0714, 1 Aug 23 | , , | 0 Comments

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a sample:

The West Bend School District is in the news again for promoting adult material to minors, but that controversy, while important, ignores the elephant in the classroom. Let us first discuss books and appropriate material for minors.

 

[…]

 

In most contexts, adults allowing access to, much less showing, graphic sexual material to children would rightly be considered deviant or predatory — like a creepy guy showing porn to his 10-year-old neighbor. In West Bend, as in other communities, there is now a passionate group of adults who insist that access and advocacy of such materials for children in school is paramount and any opposition to such is akin to Goebbels burning books before the Berlin Opera House in 1933. Such bombastic parallelism is the mark of a soft mind and softer morals.

 

With a near infinite amount of material to make available to our children, our government schools are obligated to curate content to the values and customs of the majority of their constituents. San Francisco will have a different perspective than West Bend — or so one would think. With the availability of school choice, parents of any economic means can and should be diligent about putting their kids in environments where the other adults are teaching values contrary to their own. If the school will not support parents, then the parents are obligated to take action in the best interests of their children.

 

While sex and books attract the ire of the community in West Bend of late, left unremarked is how the school district continues to spend the community into oblivion with absolutely no restraint or respect for the taxpayers. Let us consider just four important numbers: 6,623. 5,972. $87.5 million. $108.7 million.

 

According to the West Bend School District, in 2018, the district had 6,623 students and spent a total of $87.58 million. In 2023, they had 5,972 students and budgeted spending a total of $108.7 million (final audited numbers of what they actually spent has not yet been published).

 

That is a 10% decrease in students; a 25% increase in total spending; and a whopping nearly 42% increase in spending per pupil in just five years. During the period of a 10% student decline, spending on staff and on facilities increased. There has been no perceptible effort to reduce spending in proportion to the reduction in the number of students they serve.

Cardinal Stritch Campus Sold

by | 0746, 27 Jul 23 | | 1 Comment

This is absolutely fantastic news for Milwaukee.

A foundation that supports a private Christian school in Milwaukee has bought the now shuttered Cardinal Stritch University campus for $24 million.

 

The Ramirez Family Foundation, run by Gus and Becky Ramirez, supports schools for “underserved students” across the globe. Now, they plan to bring a Christian voucher school to Milwaukee County.

 

[…]

 

“While we have a broad vision to expand access to a high-quality, Christian education for underserved students in Milwaukee, our specific plans for the campus will be determined after careful consideration, analysis and input from educational leaders at Aug Prep,” the statement said.

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