WEAC Members Speak Out in Support of Doyle's Budget

WEAC members continued to speak out on behalf of Governor Doyle's state budget plan Wednesday (April 9, 2003) as the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee wrapped up its budget hearings.

The committee will now begin amending the plan, and the need for WEAC members to speak out on behalf of their profession and great schools will intensify in the next few weeks and months, according to WEAC President Stan Johnson. Johnson called on members to contact their legislators and urge them to support the budget proposed by Doyle. Members can use the OnWEAC Cyberlobby to get background information and direct links to their legislators.

At the committee's final hearing in Madison, Johnson said the governor’s plan keeps education a top priority, even though the state is facing a record deficit.

“Even during these tough fiscal times, the budget provides an increase in aid for K-12 schools, adds flexibility to revenue caps for low-spending districts and maintains funding for key programs like 4-year old kindergarten and the SAGE class-size reduction program,” Johnson told legislators. “WEAC recognizes each of these proposals as part of a strong commitment to preserve great schools during the toughest fiscal crisis in state history.”

Johnson’s prepared testimony called on legislators to support the governor’s proposal to eliminate the Qualified Economic Offer law.

“Ending the QEO will enable educators to be part of the solution to the state’s financial troubles,” he said. “We believe that repealing the QEO as part of the budget will lead to the retention of quality staff who deliver world-class educational programs to children.”

Johnson also told legislators that WEAC supports the governor’s efforts to maintain and expand funding for the Wisconsin Technical College System, and called on the Legislature to approve state employee contracts without delay.

Other WEAC members who testified at the Madison hearing echoed Johnson’s call for approval of stalled state employee contracts.

“We are the mainstay of Wisconsin’s state services,” said Mary Turnbull, a WEAC Council #1 member who teaches at the Ethan Allen School at Wales, a juvenile correctional institution. “Education is imperative for successful community existence upon release from the corrections system.”

Turnbull said she and her colleagues work with the state’s neediest students in less than ideal physical conditions, and yet their contract has not been honored.

Mary Joas, who also teaches at Wales, described some of the dangers teachers face while working with violent criminals.

"In corrections, I work with and have worked with colleagues who have been raped on the job, colleagues who have been held hostage, blindfolded, bound – and one teacher who was tied to an explosive, acetylene gas tank.

"Our unions are appalled that you have approved a 3% wage increase for each and every one of yourselves but you refuse to approve our negotiated union contracts," Joas said.

Echoing a sentiment expressed by WEAC members at previous Joint Finance Committee hearings in other parts of the state, members from Fort Atkinson, Reedsburg and Belleville told the panel how revenue controls and the QEO have harmed their profession, their personal lives and their schools.

“We must provide funding for not just good, but great schools,” Fort Atkinson middle school teacher Lucy Walter said. “We must recruit and retain the best and the brightest to our classrooms.”

Walter said the QEO has created “low teacher morale, hard feelings between administrators and teachers, and tension-filled schools that are not conducive to learning.”

Stan Johnson's complete testimony
Resource page on the 2003-05 state budget

Posted April 10, 2003