I am vetoing Assembly Bill 967 in its entirety.
This bill requires a school board to include a provision in the authorizing contract of a charter school to allow the charter governing board to open one or more additional charter schools if all of the charter schools operated by the governing board were assigned one of the top two performance categories in the most recent school and school district accountability report published by the Department of Public Instruction.
I am vetoing this bill in its entirety because I object to the Legislature’s attempt to usurp the local authority of elected school board members to decide what conditions must be met for the expansion of a school board-authorized charter school. Charter schools were first authorized in Wisconsin in 1993 and there are currently more than 200 charter schools authorized by school boards in Wisconsin, each with a carefully considered contract to operate. Each of these charter school governing boards may request additional schools if and when their authorizing contract is renewed by their school board, and locally elected decision-makers can then decide if additional schools are in the best interest of their community. We should trust parents, educators, and school districts to work together to do what’s best for our kids and what makes sense for their local community. The Legislature’s attempt to remove such decision-making authority from local school boards undermines these decisions being made at the local level.
I am vetoing Assembly Bill 968 in its entirety.
This bill creates the Charter School Authorizing Board (CSAB) consisting of the State Superintendent, two members appointed by the Governor, two members appointed by the State Superintendent, and six members appointed by legislative leaders. The CSAB is attached to the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and may authorize independent charter schools, funded in the same manner as those chartered by the UW System Office of Educational Opportunity (OEO).
I am vetoing this bill because I object to the Legislature’s continued efforts to inject partisan politics and micromanagement into our education system. Specifically, this bill creates an unelected, unaccountable board to authorize and supervise new charter schools in Wisconsin, in violation of Article X, Section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution. The framers of our constitution vested the supervision of public instruction in the State Superintendent, a constitutional officer elected by the people of this state. Here, the board would not be accountable to the State Superintendent or voters of Wisconsin. Instead, the bill allows Legislative leaders, who are not elected by the entire state, to appoint a majority of the eleven board members.
I further object to complicating our school funding system by creating yet another state-level charter school authorizer. Currently, funding for students in an OEO authorized independent charter school is provided through state General Purpose Revenue (GPR) and a corresponding state general aid reduction to the resident school district of a child attending such a school. While the resident school district is allowed to count the student in their membership for revenue limits and state general aid purposes, they are generally not made whole for the state aid reduction, which can result in higher property taxes for residents in those school districts. This funding system results in inconsistent financial impacts on property taxes and overall public school resources with varying relative costs per pupil and relative property value per pupil.
I am vetoing Assembly Bill 984 in its entirety.
This bill requires that the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents and System institutions establish and use only “objective admissions criteria” in making undergraduate student admissions determinations and course admission criteria and requires that institutions publish the criteria online.
I am vetoing this bill in its entirety for several reasons, among them the fact that the concerns this bill purports to address are already addressed under current law—Wisconsin state statutes already prohibit any tests based on partisanship, religion, national origin, or sex in student admissions for the University of Wisconsin System. As I have also said before, I object to the Legislature’s efforts to politicize our campuses and micromanage our higher education institutions. I also object to the Legislature haphazardly mandating the University of Wisconsin System to use only certain criteria in the admissions process that Legislature apparently took no care to even define, much less extrapolate upon, in the present bill before me.
Moreover, this bill would likely have inadvertent but severe consequences for Wisconsin’s workforce and our ability to likewise keep talented Wisconsinites here by arbitrarily limiting enrollment in our universities. In so doing, I am also concerned this bill might necessarily affect non-traditional students, including folks returning to education, service members and veterans, or other individuals who might not have taken a typical path to one of our institutions but who nevertheless are an essential part of our state’s success.
Implementing this bill could severely and negatively impact overall enrollment across the System, hindering both the state’s future workforce and individuals seeking access to the high-quality education System institutions provide.
I am vetoing Assembly Bill 995 in its entirety.
This bill prohibits school board districts or their employees from requiring students to wear face coverings in school buildings or on public school grounds if the student is opted out of the requirement. It also requires a school board to provide a full-time, in-person option for all pupils enrolled in the school district.
I am vetoing this bill in its entirety because I object to the Legislature inserting itself into mitigation decisions that parents, educators, and schools have been making together at the local school district level throughout this pandemic to keep our kids, our educators, and our classrooms safe. Having spent most of my career working in Wisconsin schools and classrooms, I know that every school district in Wisconsin looks different—they have different challenges, different class sizes, and different facilities. This is among the reasons why many Wisconsin schools returned to in-person instruction in 2020 and we have trusted local districts, parents, and schools, in consultation with local public health officials, to make decisions about mitigation efforts that make sense for their schools based on their unique needs. We will continue to do so.
Respectfully submitted,
TONY EVERS
Governor
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Communications
April 8, 2022
Edward A. Blazel
Assembly Chief Clerk
17 West Main Street, Suite 401
Madison, WI 53703
Dear Chief Clerk Blazel:
hist159919Please add my name as a co-author of Assembly Bill 17, relating to various changes to the worker's compensation law. hist159920Please add my name as a co-author of Assembly Bill 67, relating to storage and processing of sexual assault kits and requiring the exercise of rule-making authority. hist159921Please add my name as a co-author of Assembly Bill 190, relating to the responsibilities of the Law Enforcement Standards Board and disclosure of employment files when recruiting former or current officers. hist159922Please add my name as a co-author of Assembly Bill 297, relating to traffic violations when emergency or roadside response vehicles are present and providing a penalty. hist159923Please add my name as a co-author of Assembly Bill 333, relating to crisis program enhancement grants. hist159924Please add my name as a co-author of Assembly Bill 960, relating to battery or threat to a health care provider or staff member of a health care facility and providing a penalty. Sincerely,
STEVE DOYLE
State Representative
94th Assembly District
