Walker has already thrown thousands of jobs out and hundreds of millions of dollars of allocated federal money for improving infrastructure projects out the window in the short, disastrous time he and his regime have been in power.
The college dropout governor and the purchased Republican obedient rubber-stamping apologists for the Koch Brothers and the far-right extremist American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are on a radicalized vengeance to destroy the public education system in the state by rejecting allocated federal money for broadband, thanks to being bought out by telecommunications lobbyists waving kickback money under their noses. They want to privatize the public education system with failed charter school policies and voucher programs that favor the corporate interests over how families can participate in school issues. Taxpayers will have to pay for wealthy families to send their children to religious or country day schools as well as will make poorer families have to spend thousands of dollars on annual tuition fees to send their children to private schools since public schools will be defunded and left in the dust.
The Republicans simply are at war on education for their corporate masters and wealthy contributors:
Tony Evers, heading up efforts for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, has been busy trying to make Wisconsinites aware of what the Walker regime is doing to decimate the future of education in the state:
Tony Evers, Superintendent for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, says the expansion should be struck from the state budget. He says he also opposes the committee’s vote to expand vouchers to Racine, but adds that the Green Bay expansion was “really egregious”, because the vote happened late at night.
“This major change in how public schooling will look in Green Bay was done without one single public hearing to hear from the citizens of Green Bay, whether this is something they wanted to happen,” Evers says.
The voucher program lets public school students attend private and religious schools with taxpayer money. Evers says expanding the program when public schools are already facing nearly $800 million in cuts will have a lasting impact on taxpayers and school districts.
“If indeed the vouchers are expanded to any place else in the state including Milwaukee, the potential is very strong that property taxes will increase,” adds Evers. “Because not all the students that will be in the voucher program will be from public schools. In fact, from our Milwaukee experience, most of them were right in the private school system at that time. So the funding for that will come from the local property taxpayers, that’s a significant issue.”
Tragically, the Republicans also would rather disaffect many communities in Wisconsin by refusing to take allocated federal money for broadband grants like Walker did when he threw away $810 million in federal grants to improve the rail infrastructure and thousands of jobs because he was purchased by road builder lobbyists.
From the UW perspective, this will require it to return the $39 million in broadband grants to the federal government. In addition, it will prohibit any UW campus from participating in advanced research networks linking research institutions worldwide. You cannot have a renowned research institution, like the UW-Madison, without having access to such networks. From the public and private school and library perspective, seventy-five percent of our public schools and ninety-five percent of our public libraries get Internet access via WiscNet – a not-for-profit network service under the auspices of the UW-Madison. The provision in this legislation will very likely make it impossible for WiscNet to continue offering Internet access. If our schools and libraries must use other Internet providers most will pay at least 2-3 times more than what WiscNet now charges. Furthermore, other Internet providers base their charges on how much bandwidth a school or library has – the higher the bandwidth, the higher the Internet costs. WiscNet’s funding formula is not based on bandwidth. Thus as schools and libraries continue to increase their bandwidth, their WiscNet costs remain the same. With our schools and libraries facing substantial budget reductions, how can anyone justify making them pay more for less service?
The Walker regime and the obedient Republicans want to make Wisconsin’s public education system sink to the bottom. Presently, elementary, middle and high schools in the state are rated in advanced levels and the state’s colleges and universities are among the best in the country.
It’s no wonder college dropouts like Scott Walker are jealous.
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