The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) stands ready to defend Wisconsin’s Choice Program in court, representing parents, students, teachers, and choice schools across Wisconsin. WILL is preparing to file a motion to intervene in the case recently filed by the Minocqua Brewing Super PAC challenging Wisconsin’s choice program.
WILL President and General Counsel Rick Esenberg, released the following statement,
“Wisconsin’s choice program serves over 52,000 students and plays a vital role in Wisconsin’s education system. Unfortunately, Far-left interest groups are uniting behind a Super PAC, to take education options away from low- and middle-income kids and families across the state.
If successful, their efforts would destroy a popular program that serves thousands of Wisconsin families. The arguments that it makes would call into question Wisconsin’s entire education system, throwing us all into chaos. Their ‘facts’ in their complaint are incomplete, misleading, misinformed, and their legal arguments border on nonsense. WILL stands ready to oppose their efforts and mount a staunch defense of the program in court.”
Additional Background: WILL has reviewed the plaintiff’s petition and takes issue with many of its asserted “facts” and its flawed conclusions. Under Wisconsin law, the funding disparity that continues to exist is in favor of public schools and not schools in the choice program.
Under current funding, Wisconsin school vouchers are still significantly less than the funding per pupil in the average district. According to DPI data, the average district in Wisconsin now receives $14,863 in state and local funds. The K-8 voucher amount for the 2023-24 school year is 64% of that total, and the 9-12 voucher is 81% of that figure.
Wisconsin choice schools are not “moving local funds out of local districts.” School choice is funded entirely by the state, and local taxes solely fund local school districts.
Wisconsin’s school choice programs serve over 50,000 kids and the data consistently shows that as a group choice schools serve primarily minority and low-income families and outperform public school districts on a variety of education metrics. The attempt to deny this opportunity to families that choose to participate is shameful.
Support WILL’s efforts and join the cause at will-law.org/schoolchoice.
