A Fair Shot

By Geoff Carter

The dark days of the pandemic and the quarantine are not behind us yet, but things are looking up. Now that over 40% of Americans are now fully vaccinated against COVID, we are slowly moving back to normality. The Biden Administration has already passed “The Rescue Act”, providing direct pandemic relief to millions of American as well as providing a child tax credit that will lift hundreds of thousands of youngsters out of poverty. And there’s more.

The “For the People Act”, which seeks to expand voting rights and to counter dozens of pieces of state legislation seeking to restrict voter rights, has been endorsed and is being actively lobbied for by the president. 

Terms are being hammered out on Biden’s infrastructure proposal, a bill that would repair thousands of roads, bridges, and railways while providing hundreds of thousands of jobs. The bill also invests in housing, manufacturing, transportation, and home health care. It will also provide digital infrastructure to all Americans, specifically those in rural areas. The bill will also invest $100 billion towards upgrading and building new schools. 

Unfortunately, our schools need more. Much more. In the State of Wisconsin, particularly in Milwaukee, public schools are woefully understaffed, underfunded, and underequipped. Since the implementation of Act 10, Scott Walker’s devastating anti-education legislation, public school funding has been eviscerated. Districts cannot afford building repairs, new textbooks, or adequate staffing. Teacher salaries and benefits have been cut; fewer young people are going into education and, as a result, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction is granting emergency licenses to prospective teachers as they complete their coursework—a sort of on-the-job-training. 

This is—mostly—a state issue. Since Scott Walker’s evisceration of public schools in 2010, the Republicans in Madison have stubbornly refused to restore state funding to pre-Walker levels. Since poorer districts, like Milwaukee, rely on state money, their students tend to suffer more. 

MPS serves some of the poorest children in the state. Because school funding is determined by local property tax values, suburbs like Fox Point that have higher property values typically have a higher per-pupil budget. State funding used to be the mechanism that would somewhat level the playing field, but Republicans in Madison have been siphoning funds to charter and private schools in the state’s voucher program. 

In short, MPS is getting the short end of the stick. Framing the funding problem as an equity issue and proposing all property tax funds are collected statewide and distributed equally to every district has gone nowhere.

However, the impetus for addressing inequities within our schools—and our society at large, has been gaining traction. These problems have become too obvious to ignore. The police murders of George Floyd and dozens of other African American citizens have put racism in law enforcement—and other institutions, including education—under the microscope. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The pandemic itself, and its devastation in the African American community, has exposed inequitable practices in health care, voting, our courts, and in our schools. 

The pandemic made it clear that urban school systems deal with entirely different sets of problems than most suburban districts. When COVID first hit last March, one of MPS’s first actions was to make sure that their students were able to eat. Many MPS children depend on their schools for one, or perhaps two, meals per day, so the district instituted a drive-up program so many of their students, and other family members, had meals. Many other Wisconsin districts did not have to deal with these issues of extreme poverty and hunger. 

Many students did not have the technological resources to access their virtual classrooms. MPS had to quickly install a mechanism to register and deliver laptops to their students. Some households also did not have WIFI. To guarantee that each of their students have an opportunity to be in school, a series of hotspots were engineered and delivered to students in need. 

Economic issues are not the only problems Milwaukee Public Schools is facing. Graduation rates and achievement are typically lower than statewide averages. In a move that is long overdue, recognizing that their pupils are disconnected from much of the educational process, schools and teachers are finally effectively tailoring curriculum for the cultural needs of each student. Surprisingly, a significant number of students have thrived in the virtual classroom, leading to speculation that perhaps a hybrid model might be the wave of the future. 

Issues of institutional racism and implicit bias in the schools are also being addressed in the hopes that students will be able to be part of a truly equitable and fair educational system. Staff and faculty are being educated to recognize the presence and effects of these biases on their students and themselves. They are working to make sure everyone has a fair shot.

This barely scratches the surface of our problems in education, but at least now—after the pandemic—the issues are being addressed. Thanks to President Biden and the new progressive push in Congress, public policy has changed focus to the disadvantaged. The president has so far done his best to ensure that the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society will be taken care of. So far, he has addressed issues of child poverty, voting rights, health care, and education. 

We need to follow President Biden’s lead. Wisconsin needs to step up and start taking care of our neediest and most underprivileged students. With recently successful forays in virtual and hybrid learning, this post-COVID period could be the dawn of a new golden era in education. And we do need to educate our people. At a time when a significant number of Americans believe the Earth is flat, embrace anti-vaxxers, and refuse to believe the evidence of their own eyes, we must start the long and arduous job of rebuilding the foundation of equitable public education in this country. We need to make our citizens thinkers again.

This is America. Everyone does deserve a fair shot. 

Mostly_empty_hallway_at_Central_High_School_in_Little_Rock.tif by Thomas J. O’Halloran. Library of Congress, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons