Wisconsin Homeowners Demand Legislators Fund Public Schools

The Wisconsin Homeowners Alliance is running television ads statewide to call on lawmakers to fund public schools. The Homeowners Alliance is an advocacy group supported by realtors, and the message in the ad emphasizes the pressure the Legislature puts on homeowners when it skirts it responsibility to adequately fund public schools.

“Strong schools make strong communities,” the ad’s narrator says, explaining that property taxes fill the gap that state funding shortages create.

In the last 10 years, record numbers of school districts have been forced to go to referendum to fund public schools’ basic needs. During that same period, school funding for the state has lagged inflation by more than 20 percent.

The ad ends by asking all homeowners to contact their legislators and demand increased state funding of public schools: “Tell legislators: Fund schools. Don’t bury homeowners.”

As the Republican majority on the state’s Joint Finance Committee is poised to soon pass along to the full Legislature a budget that leaves a 3-1 disparity between public school special education students and voucher schools virtually unchanged, and freezes almost all funding for public schools while continuing to increase it for vouchers, WEAC leaders are urging all WEAC members to email your legislators now.