Local evidence of political pain in public schools

Public Forum:

On May 19, the Wauwatosa School Board vote passed to privatize their custodian services with accompanying layoffs. We applaud Brian Bawden and Phil Kroner for their courage to stand up against this vote, at least until further options were considered.

Although this situation was caused by our present Republican majority legislators and governor, we cannot morally accept this vote. Now that the custodians are gone, what are they going to do next year? Privatize teachers with accompanying layoffs?

As it was pointed out by a few of the board members themselves, it is anticipated that this will be a repeating situation in the next one or two years. This is where we are headed in our Wisconsin public schools with the mandates and controls that our Republican legislators and governor have placed on the local public schools in Wisconsin. This is government takeover of our local public schools, with devastating effects.

So many Wisconsin public schools have been forced to privatize numerous services, and some rural public schools have actually had to close. We guess that's what Republicans want. The response of Republican legislators that have been contacted regarding these issues has been "you just have to deal with it," or no response at all.

Republican legislation and control are destroying our once-excellent Wisconsin public school system. There is no way we can support this kind of approach. It is not working for the good of any community, or for the good of the state.

We urge people to contact their school board members, and their legislators. Get out and vote in November to get this approach out of Wisconsin. What's going on is morally wrong.

Sandy and John Zellmer

Wauwatosa