Why Education May Be the Issue That Breaks Republicans’ Decade-Long Grip on Wisconsin

When a new academic year begins in Wisconsin a few weeks from now, the only school in Darien, a small community near the Illinois border, will remain empty. In January, local school officials proposed raising property taxes to bring in three and a half million dollars. Voters rejected the idea–it would have been the second property-tax increase in three years–forcing the district to make drastic cuts to its budget. Darien Elementary School was one of those cuts. Its teachers were laid off, and its students will be sent to other schools in the area. Similar school closings have, in recent years, occurred in a number of other rural Wisconsin towns.

It has been nearly a decade since Governor Scott Walker–who grew up near Darien–and his fellow-Republicans began implementing their vision of conservative austerity and privatization in Wisconsin. The result has been a state more attractive to corporations, with a smaller middle class and deteriorating public infrastructure and institutions–from roads to the University of Wisconsin system to public schools. During this period, Republicans have maintained nearly unbroken control of the state’s government, and Walker has become a conservative hero. This year, as he seeks reëlection to a third term, he has expressed pride about his record and has been typically implacable on most issues–except, notably, education. After the state cut more than a billion dollars in spending on schools and universities between 2011–the year Walker took office–and 2017, Walker signed a budget last year that included an increase of some six hundred and forty million dollars in K-12 spending. "I’m being aggressive on this," Walker told the Wisconsin State Journal, in June. "We’re proclaiming proudly that I’m the pro-education governor and I want to continue to be the pro-education governor."

By Dan Kaufman

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