Just Say No to Decoupling: Why We Have to Stop Vouchers Right Now

An Essay by Jon Shelton

Originally published here on Substack.

As many readers of this blog likely know, we are currently in a budget year in Wisconsin.   Back in February, Gov. Evers released his budget proposal, and the Republicans who control the legislature, as they always do, ignored it and started from scratch, as they push for their own vision in the biennial budget.

The Governor’s office, which is likely negotiating with Republican leadership right now, will continue to do so until one of two things happens: they find an agreement, at least on some items, and the Republicans release a budget Evers can sign after some partial vetoes; or the GOP releases a budget that is so awful that the Governor will have to calculate whether to veto it in its entirety or determine if it’s worth it to line-item veto what he can and sign it anyway.

One of the key points of contention in this year’s budget is likely to be “de-coupling” the state’s voucher program from local school districts’ property taxes.  This issue may sound like a technical issue that only Madison insiders should be concerned with, but it’s not, and what happens with vouchers in this budget is crucial to the future of democracy in Wisconsin.

OK, so first of all, some context: it is important to remember that over the past decade and a half, Republicans have expanded the state’s voucher program, created in the early 1990s to give a very small number of low-income families in Milwaukee access to private schools, dramatically.  On top of expansions during the Walker years, in 2023, Gov. Evers agreed to a deal to expand voucher funding, and as my fellow union president Peggy Wirtz-Olsen said at the time, this would cost taxpayers well over $200 million from 2023-25.  These increases are going to loom even larger next year, when the enrollment caps are gone entirely for vouchers (what this means is that there are no longer any limits on the number of families who can use our tax dollars to pay for their private school tuition).

Starting next year, any parents in the state who earn up to $99,000 for a family with four kids, or up $132,000 for that same family in Milwaukee or Racine, will be able to have their kids enroll in unaccountable, private schools subsidized by taxpayers across the state.  The program will never ask for them to recertify their income, either, so even if that family’s income increases to $1 million, the private school their children attend will still receive government subsidies for as long as their kids are in school.

In sum, we are already going to be facing some significant challenges to funding public education moving forward because of irresponsible choices that have been made by Republican legislators (and in 2023, co-signed by Gov. Evers) in the past.  

But now, the right, most prominently the reactionary Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty, has been pushing to “de-couple” voucher funding, which means that instead of local school districts being on the hook for paying for vouchers, all of the funding for the program would come directly from the state’s coffers.  In theory, it sounds like this might be good for school districts (districts no longer have to worry about funding vouchers, right?).

But it’s awful for two primary reasons. First, and this is something WILL explicitly points out, de-coupling vouchers from local school district funding makes a constitutional court challenge to the voucher program much more difficult (or as a report from 2023 points out, de-coupling “insulates” vouchers from court challenges).

Second, it means it will be even more difficult for taxpayers to understand how vouchers threaten public schools.  A few weeks ago, the Green Bay City Council took the action of making the impact of voucher spending on our public schools more transparent by adding a line item to our tax bills to let us  know just how much of our tax dollars are being siphoned away to a completely separate school system where our democratically elected school board has absolutely zero oversight.

As president of a union where so many of our members have to repeatedly fight for referenda just to keep the programs our students need, and as taxpayer with two kids in Green Bay schools, I spoke in support of voucher transparency.  A parade of local Catholic school administrators showed up to speak in opposition to the proposal, and many of them, unprompted, mentioned “de-coupling” as the solution to pressures on local property taxes.   It has clearly become a talking point for voucher proponents.

Now, I have nothing against private schools—everyone has the right to send their kids to the school they believe best serves them, and I’m certain many students get a great education in a private school—but these schools don’t have to accept all students or provide full special education services, nor are they accountable to the curricular requirements we’ve agreed are important in our state.  So it simply isn’t appropriate that they are funded with public dollars.  And, as I pointed out at the council meeting, if folks are proud of the voucher program, why wouldn’t they want us to know about the money we are spending on it?

The reality is that voucher supporters don’t want everyone to know how much we are spending because they know most Wisconsinites support our public schools.  Continuing to expand the voucher program is an ideological, anti-democratic move, and it’s no surprise that the Trump administration is pushing voucher expansion hard in negotiations over the federal budget.  

As Ruth Conniff has pointed out in a recent piece in the Wisconsin Examiner, unfettered voucher programs in state budgets have created huge line-items, limiting public services in other sectors of the budget, in both Arizona and Florida (two states that we certainly should not aspire to follow).  If we de-couple vouchers now, it is going to be even harder to come back from the reactionary budgets Republicans have facilitated in Wisconsin if Democrats are able win a trifecta in 2026.

There is a very real chance Democrats can win both houses of the legislature, and either Gov. Evers or another Democrat can keep the Governor’s mansion blue, giving us a historic opportunity to change course away from the mean-spirited politics of inequality with which the GOP has weighed down our state.  We can fully restore collective bargaining rights for workers, fully fund public education at every level, ensure everyone has affordable childcare and healthcare, and actually do something about the housing crisis we face.  But the reality is that Democrats in the legislature and Gov. Evers must make a stand against de-coupling now or a completely open-ended voucher program is going to be a major drag on all these possibilities.  That’s what Republicans want.

You can help make sure “de-coupling” doesn’t happen in this budget by writing your Democratic legislators and Gov. Evers right now and letting them know you oppose it and that you support our public schools.  In 2027, we may very well have a once in a generation opportunity to get our state on the right track.  But agreeing to de-coupling vouchers now is going to make that all the more difficult.  We have to make sure it doesn’t happen.