Reading Time: 7 minutes

As early as kindergarten, Robin Pierre started to notice that her daughter, Hattie, was falling behind. She wasn’t able to read the books they were sending home, despite being in a charter school known for its focus on literacy. 

Hattie started working with a reading interventionist during kindergarten and throughout first grade. But then her behavior started to escalate. She’d hide under desks and run out of the classroom. She was moved to another charter school for second grade, one focused on play-based learning and field trips in hopes that environment would better suit her.

All this time, Hattie’s trouble reading persisted. Pierre asked to have her evaluated for special education. 

Hattie was assessed; but when Pierre asked questions about dyslexia, she said the school told her they don’t acknowledge dyslexia without a diagnosis, and that could only come from brain imaging. 

“It was a fight at first,” Pierre said.

Dyslexia looks different for each person who has it. It’s a neurobiological learning disability that can make it difficult for people to decode words and read fluently. People with dyslexia may struggle with spelling and reading comprehension as a result of their challenge matching letters to their corresponding sounds. 

The International Dyslexia Association estimates that as many as one in five people could have symptoms of dyslexia, ranging in severity.

Often, people assume that dyslexia is just mixing up letters such as “b” and “d.” It can be that for some people — Pierre said Hattie experienced that — but it’s not the only symptom. For example, people with dyslexia might struggle with slow, choppy reading, memorization or even constantly confuse left and right. It ranges on a spectrum from mild to severe.

For Hattie, reading was “labor-intensive.” She’d often read a sentence three times before she’d actually comprehend what it said. The first few reads were spent trying to identify the sounds for each letter and then trying to put them all together more smoothly, so she could get to the point of comprehension.

Currently, Wisconsin does not require students to be screened specifically for dyslexia, but the state passed legislation three years ago to create an informational guidebook on dyslexia and related conditions to be shared on the state Department of Public Instruction and all school distric websites.

In the years since the guidebook was created, Wisconsin and the rest of the country has turned up the volume on a discussion about literacy after standardized test scores have shown significant declines in language arts during the pandemic. 

But those conversations usually don’t include students with dyslexia. Families are often left on their own to get their children tested, diagnosed and supported through outside tutoring. And local tutoring agencies are feeling the burden of an increased need to support these students, who are now often even further behind because of the pandemic.  

“It’s something the public school should have done; they should have been able to teach her how to read,” Pierre said.

What Wisconsin school districts do to support students with dyslexia

By state law, schools are required to screen students in 4K through second grade annually for “literacy fundamentals.” This includes letter sound knowledge and something called phonemic awareness — the ability to identify individual sounds within a word — which are generally two areas of difficulty for students with dyslexia. 

DPI told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin these requirements are “generally agreed upon to be components of screening for dyslexia.” If a screening indicates they needs more testing, there are additional screening options listed in the state’s guidebook that parents and teachers can consider.

In 2021, Republican lawmakers proposed tripling the number of literacy tests for young students to boost low proficiency rates, but Gov. Tony Evers vetoed the bill, saying it lacked evidence and funding. 

The state may mandate early screening, but district by district, the overall approach to literacy can look different. 

The Menasha Joint School District is focused on being “diagnostic” with students, said Renae Braun, a literacy coach.

It does this by screening students in kindergarten through eighth grade three times a year. Those screenings look at students’ comprehension, fluency and knowledge of phonics. Through those, the district identifies a student’s strengths and areas of concern. 

For students behind grade level or who show other challenges on those screenings, the district creates an individual plan — called a Response to Intervention plan — to help them catch up. It focuses on strengthening areas of concern.

There isn’t one method that works for teaching literacy to all students. But Braun said students with dyslexia need explicit teaching and multiple modalities — a combination of visual, auditory and tactile.

“We do dipstick check-ins every two weeks or every week to make sure the plan is accelerating or growing our students,” she said. 

Both Menasha and Kimberly school districts see teacher expertise as vital to teaching students who struggle with literacy, whether it’s diagnosed dyslexia or other challenges.

The Kimberly Area School District added a phonological interventionist to its staff in August 2022. The role was designed to be “an in-house expert on decoding and fluency,” according to Holly Prast, assistant superintendent. 

This interventionist is trained in a specific dyslexia intervention, among other reading interventions, and works with students directly, Prast said. They also collaborate with teachers to provide new strategies to support students who are struggling.

Many districts have hired reading interventionists to support students through pandemic-induced learning loss, but Prast said Kimberly decided to add a phonological interventionist independently of that.

Carrie Willer, director of elementary education for the Appleton Area School District, echoed the need for a variety of teaching methods to support students. The number of students in any given classroom is the number of different learning styles teachers need to work with, she explained. 

“You need a full bag of tricks and a full bag of tools to meet each of those students,” she said. 

Appleton has interventionists, teachers trained in a one-on-one reading recovery program and other methods of support, including small group work and collaboration with parents.

Still, fewer than half of Appleton students are reading at or above grade level. 

A recent audit of the district’s English language arts curriculum showed a need for more emphasis on phonics and letter sound awareness — strategies that would better support students with dyslexia in the classroom. 

Many families with students with dyslexia have to turn to outside tutoring

When Hattie eventually qualified for special education, the district focused only on her ADHD diagnosis. So, not only did Pierre pay out of pocket for neurological exams, but she had to fight to get the district to even recognize the dyslexia diagnosis in her individual education plan.

It was around then that Pierre found Dyslexia Reading Connection, a nonprofit tutoring organization based in Appleton. That was four years ago, and Hattie has gone twice a week ever since — even through the summers. 

DRC has been around for almost 20 years, but there’s been increased demand since the pandemic, said Kimberly Stevens, executive director. Earlier this year, there were 50 students on the waitlist — five times as many as the organization had pre-COVID. And Stevens said new students are coming in for consultations every week.

Today, Hattie is caught up to grade level and has even become “quite an avid reader,” Pierre said. She credits that success more to the tutoring she paid for from DRC than what the public schools provided.

“I didn’t think this day would come,” she said.

When asked how often Dyslexia Reading Connection is screening students for dyslexia, Stevens said, “constantly.” It tries to keep screenings to about five students a week since the Appleton-based nonprofit is already tutoring more than 110 students online and in person. 

But it’s not just an increase in the number of students. Stevens said students are coming in further and further behind. Before the pandemic, students would come to DRC a year and nine months behind, on average. Now, it’s not uncommon for students to be three or even four years behind where they should be. 

“Parents are desperate to get their kids the right interventions,” Stevens told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.

While DRC can’t offer a medical diagnosis, the screening it offers is about an hour long and can usually tell with a high degree of certainty whether the student has dyslexia, Stevens said. After the screening results are explained to the parents, it’s up to them whether they want to move forward with tutoring. It’s first come, first served, since there’s a waitlist, but a family’s scheduling availability may be considered.

On average, students spend four years with DRC working through 10 levels of tutoring that will bring them up to a 10th-grade reading level.

The tutoring starts by breaking language into its smallest parts: individual vowels and consonants. As the levels progress, students move on to syllables, prefixes and suffixes, vowel placement in a word and even influences from foreign languages such as Latin and Greek root words. 

Karrie Brass, a tutor at DRC, said her husband, who has dyslexia, uses a car engine analogy to explain it: The brains of students without dyslexia works like driving an automatic transmission when learning to read, spell and write. They don’t need to work through every step of processing language. Most of it happens under the hood without conscious thought. 

But for students with dyslexia, their brains are more like driving a car with a manual transmission. They need to shift gears, understand the specifics of how letters make sounds and work through each step of the process; otherwise, it won’t be a smooth ride.

Life after high school for students with dyslexia

Hattie is still making her way through middle school, but Pierre said Hattie has dreams of going to college one day.

And she’s not alone.

Take, for example, Meghan Molthen.

A freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Molthen was diagnosed with dyslexia the summer before sixth grade. She struggled to spell simple words and saw her classmates read at much higher levels than her, but she didn’t understand why until she got her diagnosis. 

Figuring out that she had dyslexia helped give shape to the reason why she was struggling, but it didn’t fix everything. Molthen went to school in Fort Atkinson before moving to Pulaski her sophomore year, so she experienced two districts and their approaches to supporting her dyslexia. 

Although a diagnosis made accessing certain supports simpler, Molthen said there were still challenges because the school systems didn’t understand “how to fully accommodate students with learning disabilities.”

When she toured UW-Oshkosh in summer 2021, she asked the admissions office about accommodations for students with learning disabilities. They told her about a program called Project Success. 

Project Success is a remedial program for students with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities at the school. It starts with a six-week summer program focused on phonics and teaching students the relationship between letters and sounds. 

Director Jayme Reichenberger said the program has a reading and writing component, but it also supports students in other ways through the transition from high school to college. By completing the summer program, students can earn up to six credits, which can be a helpful GPA cushion for those early, stressful semesters of college. 

Students also learn about what laws protect their accommodations and what services are available to them. Reichenberger said many students come in not really understanding their diagnosis. They might have attended meetings during their K-12 education, but a lot of them didn’t put a name to their disability. 

It’s not uncommon for Reichenberger to hear students say that their dyslexia was essentially ignored, so she said they try hard to actually say the word “dyslexia.” There are even campus events where students will write messages like “Say dyslexia” on the sidewalk. 

“When a disability is hidden, it’s easy to stereotype and have misconceptions about it,” Reichenberger said.

For Molthen, the program gave her agency over her learning disability. She had a hard time even talking about her dyslexia before, but Project Success taught her how to see it as a benefit. 

“I’m so thankful I have it,” she said of her dyslexia. “It pushes me to be a better person.”

One in 5 could have dyslexia, but Wisconsin students, parents feel school support falls short is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

El ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) continuó este viernes 12 de mayo, el envío de múltiples vuelos con varias personas repatriadas a Colombia, El Salvador y Honduras, como parte de las docenas de vuelos enviados cada semana. El pasado 24 de abril, ICE reanudó el proceso de deportación de ciudadanos cubanos que han recibido órdenes finales de deportación

Según el comunicado de ICE, […] las deportaciones hacen parte de la política que hace mucho tiempo atrás se usa para  expulsar a los ciudadanos extranjeros que carecen de una base legal para permanecer en los Estados Unidos. Esta política se aplica a todos los no ciudadanos independientemente de su nacionalidad.

La oficina de ICE Air Operations facilita la transferencia y remocion de no ciudadanos via aerolineas comerciales o vuelos charter para apoyar las operaciones de ICE y DHS. 

Según los reportes de ERO en el  2022, se repatriaron a 72.177 personas a 150 países. 

Por ahora los países se preparan con albergues para recibir a los cientos de ciudadanos que se pronostica llegarán en las próximas semanas. En Colombia el pasado 10 de mayo el aeropuerto de El Dorado recibió 209 migrantes, y la Defensoría del Pueblo de Colombia anunció que dará el acompañamiento necesario para estos repatriados. 

Algunos retornados a Guatemala manifestaron a Univisión 247 que por la situación actual que se vive en USA, no intentarán regresar a USA. Stuard Rodriguez, director de Migración en Guatemala, reportó la entrada de 100 menores de edad, que migraron con falsas ideas sobre el ingreso fácil a USA. 

MIWISCONSIN estará entrevistando a miembros de la comunidad y organizaciones que trabajan de cerca con el tema migratorio. Si usted ve cambio en el color de nuestro logo a azul será una alerta para la comunidad. 

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Reading Time: 6 minutes

Sandra Lane said she has been to the emergency room about eight times this year. The 62-year-old has had multiple falls, struggled with balance and tremors, and experienced severe swelling in her legs.

A paramedic recently arrived at her doorstep again, but this time it wasn’t for an emergency. Jason Frye was there for a home visit as part of a new community paramedicine program.

Frye showed up in an SUV, not an ambulance. He carried a large black medical bag into Lane’s mobile home, which is on the eastern edge of the city, across from open fields and train tracks that snake between the region’s massive open-pit coal mines. Lane sat in an armchair as Frye took her blood pressure, measured her pulse, and hooked her up to a heart-monitoring machine.

“What matters to you in terms of health, goals?” Frye said.

Lane said she wants to become healthy enough to work, garden, and ride her motorcycle again.

Frye, a 44-year-old Navy veteran and former oil field worker, promised to help Lane sign up for physical therapy and offered to find an anti-slip grab bar for her shower.

Community paramedicine allows paramedics to use their skills outside of emergency settings. The goal is to help patients access care, maintain or improve their health, and reduce their dependence on costly ambulance rides and ER visits.

Such programs are expanding across the country, including in rural areas, as health care providers, insurers, and state governments recognize the potential benefits to patients, ambulance services, and hospitals.

Community paramedic programs are operating in six cities in Wisconsin: Madison, West Allis, Racine, Menomonee Falls, Reedsburg and Greenfield, said Jennifer Miller, spokesperson for the state Department of Health Services. Eight others are working toward their community EMS provider licensure.

“Some of these programs have supporting data that shows positive outcomes while others are just getting their programs rolling,” Miller said by email. She said such services across the country “have proven success in a variety of patient care programs ranging from fall prevention to chronic disease management.”

Half of programs in rural areas

Gary Wingrove, a Florida-based leader in community paramedicine, said the concept took off in the early 2000s and now includes hundreds of sites. A 2017 survey of 129 programs found that 55% operated in “rural” or “super rural” areas.

Community medicine can be helpful in rural areas where people have less access to health care, said Wingrove, chair of the International Roundtable on Community Paramedicine. “If we can get a community paramedic to their house,” he said, “then we can keep them connected to primary health care and all of the other services that they need.”

Frye works at Campbell County Health, a health care system based in Gillette, a city of about 33,000 in northeastern Wyoming. Leaders of the community paramedicine program plan to expand it into two adjacent, largely rural counties dotted with ranches and coal mines on the rolling prairie that stretches more than 100 miles from the Black Hills to the Bighorn Mountains.

Gillette serves as a medical hub for the region but has shortages of primary care doctors, specialists, and mental health services, according to a community needs assessment. People who live outside the city face additional barriers.

“A lot of them, especially older people, don’t want to come into town. And basically, those tiny communities don’t usually have health care,” Lane said. “I think it’s just kind of a pain for them to drive all the way into town, and unless they have a serious problem, I think they tend to just figure, ‘Well, it’ll work itself out.’”

Not a ‘cookie-cutter’ operation

Community paramedicine programs are customized to the needs and resources of each community.

“It’s not just a cookie-cutter-type operation. It’s like you can really mold it to wherever you need to mold it to,” Frye said.

Most community paramedicine programs rely on paramedics, but some also use emergency medicine technicians, nurses, social workers, and other professionals, according to the 2017 survey. Programs can offer home visits, phone check-ins, or transportation to nonemergency destinations, such as urgent care clinics and mental health centers.

Many programs support people with chronic illnesses, patients recovering from surgeries or hospital stays, or frequent users of 911 and the ER. Other programs focus on public health, behavioral health, hospice care, or post-overdose response.

Community paramedics can provide in-home vaccinations, wound care, ultrasounds, and blood tests.

They can offer exercise and nutrition tips, teach patients how to monitor their symptoms, and help with housing, economic, and social needs that can affect people’s health. For example, paramedics might inspect homes for safety hazards, provide a list of food banks, or connect lonely patients with a senior center.

Transportation a barrier to health care

Paramedics and patients said some rural residents struggle to access health care because of long distances, cost, lack of transportation, or dangerous weather. Some hesitate to seek help out of pride or because they don’t want to be a burden to others. Some limit trips to town during ranching and farming crunch times, such as calving and harvesting seasons.

Delayed care can let health problems fester until they become an emergency.

Advocates say providing in-home care, resources, and education can help patients reduce such crises and associated costs. Fewer emergencies mean fewer ambulance runs and hospital patients. That could help ambulance services and hospitals reduce costs and the time patients wait for help.

A 2022 scholarly review found that more studies are needed but that data so far suggests these programs reduce costs. It also found links to improved health outcomes and decreased use of ambulances and hospitals.

For example, a pilot program in Fort Worth, Texas, saw a 61% reduction in ambulance rides, according to an academic study of 64 patients. MedStar, the operator, made the effort permanent and says its 904 participants needed 48% fewer ambulance trips, saving an estimated $8.5 million over eight years.

But rural ambulance services, especially volunteer ones, can struggle to staff and fund community paramedicine programs.

Kesa Copps, a co-worker of Frye’s, previously worked as an emergency medical technician in Powder River County, Montana, which has fewer than 2,000 residents. Some people there must drive more than an hour to reach the nearest hospital. The area’s volunteer ambulance service started a community paramedicine program in 2019.

Copps said the program reduced hospital readmissions and extended some elderly patients’ ability to live at home before being admitted to a nursing facility. She visited patients between ambulance runs and had to leave early when a 911 call came in. That’s different from the Campbell County Health model, in which community paramedicine is a full-time position, not split with emergency work.

Adam Johnson, director of the Powder River ambulance service, said the community paramedicine program shut down in 2021 after everyone with the necessary training left the area. Johnson said paramedics are signing up for training to restart the program.

Community paramedic programs spreading

States are increasingly recognizing and regulating community paramedicine, and some require licensed paramedics to obtain extra training to work in the field.

Some ambulance services and health care organizations have piloted community paramedicine programs with the help of state or federal grants. If they find the service saves money, they may decide to continue the program and fund it themselves.

Private insurance companies are increasingly covering community paramedicine, Wingrove said. Wyoming and several other states allow operators to bill Medicaid for the services.

Advocates are now pushing Medicare to expand its limited coverage of community paramedicine, Wingrove said. That would benefit Medicare patients and could spur more private insurers to offer coverage.

The Campbell County Health program’s home visits cost up to $240 per hour and are billed to Medicaid or Medicare, said Frye. That compares with more than $1,300 for an ambulance ride and thousands of dollars for a visit to a hospital ER.

Community paramedicine may soon expand in neighboring South Dakota, another largely rural state.

South Dakota ambulance services have experimented with community paramedicine and lawmakers recently voted to authorize and regulate it.

‘You’re not alone’

Eric Emery, the state representative who introduced the bill, plans to start a program on the sprawling, rural Rosebud Indian Reservation, where he works as a paramedic. He said the operation will focus on diabetes and mental health care.

Emery, a Democrat, said some people struggle to pick up their medication and attend appointments because they lack vehicles or gas money and there’s no public transportation to the hospital. He said some parents and grandparents raising children also struggle to find time to drive to appointments.

“They’re putting the needs of the younger generation or their grandkids before their own,” Emery said.

Back in Gillette, Frye also checked in on Linda Quitt, a 78-year-old facing diabetes, depression, and a lack of social support after her husband was hospitalized with dementia. Quitt said her husband was her walking buddy and helped care for her.

“I had him to wait on me, and now I have nobody,” Quitt said.

Frye said he would see if he could help start a senior walking group that Quitt could join. He told her that socializing can improve health.

“You’re not alone,” Frye told Quitt.

Wisconsin Watch’s Dee J. Hall contributed to this report published by Kaiser Health News.

No emergency needed: Community paramedics in Wisconsin, elsewhere visit patients at home is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Move aims for transparency and to identify struggling water systems.

The water tower in Sunset, Louisiana. The town’s water system received a D grade in the state’s first report card. Photo courtesy of Patrick under Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA 2.0

By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue – May 11, 2023

In an effort to improve public communication, the Louisiana Department of Health published its inaugural water system report cards last week, becoming the first state in the country to use annual letter grades to highlight the failures and successes of drinking water utilities.

Water systems are already required by federal law to send an annual Consumer Confidence Report to customers with details about drinking water contaminants. The Louisiana Department of Health grading system, which was mandated by a 2021 state law, goes several steps further, combining a range of measurements into a single letter grade for each of the state’s 951 community water systems.

On top of water quality, the grade incorporates data on utility finances, operations, and customer complaints. Utilities must include the grade on annual reports sent to customers.

Forty-one percent of water systems earned an A grade. Six percent received a D, and nine percent failed. Many of the failing systems serve small, rural communities, which often have fewer financial and technical resources.

Amanda Ames, chief engineer at the Department of Health, led the development of the grading system.

“It provides for accountability and for transparency,” Ames said. The public gets an easy-to-understand snapshot of their water provider, she said, while state agencies receive an overview of water utility conditions.

Though many states collect the same data that informs the Louisiana grades, a drinking water report card is a new step. But is it worthwhile to take it?

Manny Teodoro, who studies public policy and consults with water utilities, said that a report card makes intuitive sense. School systems use them. Health departments assign letter grades (or smiley faces) to restaurants based on their cleanliness. The American Society of Civil Engineers publishes an annual report card on the nation’s infrastructure. In the 2021 report card, drinking water systems received a C- and wastewater systems a D+.

All told, report cards have promise, Teodoro said. Still, details matter and he has reservations about how Louisiana designed its grading system.

The Louisiana system works mostly by subtraction, but also some addition. Water utilities start with a score of 100. Points are subtracted in seven categories of infraction that were spelled out in Act 98, the law that mandated the grades. Those categories include exceeding federal and state drinking water standards, failing to have evaluated their water rates, being the subject of customer complaints, and having deficient infrastructure. Utilities can earn up to 10 bonus points for having an asset management plan or participating in training programs.

Letter grades change every 10 points. Scores of 90 and above receive an A while scores below 60 earn an F.

Within the categories the Department of Health determined the point distribution. The highest point-value category is failure to meet federal drinking water standards. The maximum deduction for that category is 30 points, which Teodoro feels is too generous. A utility could have a slew of violations but its penalty is capped.

“This is a recipe for grade inflation,” said Teodoro, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who is helping to develop a water utility grading system in his state.

Teodoro also thinks that basing a grading system on deductions is more stick than carrot. In other words, even with the bonus points it does not encourage utilities to do more than the minimum requirement.

The Louisiana Department of Health, which developed the grading system itself, said that it looked at various designs, but “ultimately used a point deduction method because it was easy for the public to understand. These annual letter grades are a step in the right direction to increasing transparency and accountability and, ultimately, to increasing water system sustainability.”

Maureen Cunningham, director of water at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center, also called the grades “a step in the right direction” because they generate more information about utility performance. But she was not ready to endorse report cards, in general, as the best approach for improving drinking water outcomes.

“I worry that it’s not always a complete picture of what’s going on,” Cunningham said.

For instance, data on the number of customers who had their water shutoff is not a part of the Louisiana assessment. Nor is data on customer debt.

Cunningham also wondered how the report cards would be received. Could state agencies collect the necessary data and be transparent about the problems that certain communities face without condensing it all into a single letter grade? “I would be interested in seeing what motivates change better: giving someone a failing grade, or just pointing out, ‘Hey, this community needs X, Y, and Z to do a better job.’”

Though perhaps not a perfect system, the grades will be useful, said Leslie Durham, executive director of the Louisiana Infrastructure Technical Assistance Corporation, an agency set up to assist disadvantaged rural governments in applying for federal grants.

“I’m excited about it,” Durham said, referring to the report cards.

For years Durham has worked with rural water systems. In the past, she said it was difficult for some of these systems to acknowledge that they needed help. “They didn’t want to raise any flags or make any waves.” The grading system lays bare some of those struggles in an easy-to-digest format. Accessible information will lead to action, she said.

“Our organization plans on using that grading system to make sure we’re targeting the right folks,” Durham said.

Some are already getting help. Of the utilities earning a D or F, Ames said that more than 30 percent are in line to receive funding to upgrade their water systems.

The post Louisiana Becomes First State to Issue Drinking Water Report Cards appeared first on Circle of Blue.

Elected officials in Wisconsin must submit reports on their finances to the state. Here are the filings from the state’s Supreme Court justices.

A justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court will earn an annual salary of about $185,000 in 2023, more than any other elected official in Wisconsin state government, including the governor, who earns an annual salary of about $166,000.

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

The post The finances of the justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court – a look at their mandatory filings. appeared first on The Badger Project.

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The finances of the justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court – a look at their mandatory filings. was first posted on May 10, 2023 at 8:00 am.

El próximo Lunes, 8 de Mayo, se realizará el Dia Nacional Sin Cuidado Infantil (Sin Daycares) donde los proveedores de cuidado de niños cerrarán sus negocios para pedir apoyo del gobierno nacional por:

Un sistema de cuidado infantil equitativo, basado en la justicia racial y de género.
Salarios dignos para los cuidadores infantiles
Guarderías asequibles para todas las familias

Se estima que alrededor de 600 daycares estarán cerrando este lunes en todo el país.

El evento es organizado por Community Change Action, una organización nacional que se encarga de crear movimientos sociales para luchar contra la injusticia y poder del voto para el cambio.

“Después de la pandemia, el American’s Child Care se encuentra en crisis. El COVID-19 devastó una industria que ya contaba con fondos insuficientes y ahora los padres y los proveedores de cuidado infantil están luchando por mantenerse. Los líderes en el movimiento como Parent Voices han estado recopilando historias y voces de costa a costa. Necesitamos que el Congreso actúe ahora para aprobar el paquete de reconciliación con $450 billones para el cuidado de niños” se lee en el website.

Los daycares(jardines infantiles) que quieran  participar deberán llenar la forma para unirse y revisar los materiales para el día de acción. En Wisconsin, varias ciudades y negocios planean cerrar este lunes.

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Reading Time: 8 minutes

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Around noon on an overcast April Election Day, dozens of canvassers returned to a second-floor conference room of the Greater Spring Hill Missionary Baptist Church on Milwaukee’s North Side.

They were dressed for the weather: Layers, winter hats and a few with ponchos. Within an hour, they would be back out in neighborhoods and knocking on doors. Walking a careful line between helpful resources and yet another person asking them to vote for the sixth time in less than 16 months.

The gathering of Black Leaders Organizing Communities represents a bulwark against an alarming trend in Wisconsin electoral politics: The state has transformed from one of the easiest places to cast a ballot 30 years ago to one of the most difficult. That trend is particularly pronounced among Black and Latino voters, according to recent research.

If BLOC’s canvassers were tired of talking about elections, executive director Angela Lang told them to imagine the fatigue voters felt.

“We had four elections just in 2022. Four,” she said. “The last one was in November. We slept for like a day, and we’re back at it. If we were doing all of this, imagine being a voter that’s not involved and engaged.”

There’s evidence the increased difficulty voters face compounds the election fatigue.

“If we believe in this experiment of democracy, one of the basic tenets of it … in our current iteration is that everyone who is a citizen at this point has the right to engage with the process,” said Andrea Benjamin, an African American studies professor at the University of Oklahoma who has researched and written about race and politics.

“And we shouldn’t be doing anything that makes that right harder to exercise.”

How it’s gotten more difficult to vote in Wisconsin 

For nearly 20 years, Wisconsin was a model for making the voting process easy, with the state’s same-day registration a major factor, according to the Cost of Voting Index. In 1996, Wisconsin ranked fourth among the 50 states.

In 2022, Wisconsin was among the most difficult places to register and vote, ranking 47th.

The Index, started by researchers at Northern Illinois University, ranks each state using 33 different variables, with registration deadlines carrying the most weight. As other states began to adopt measures already present in Wisconsin, such as same-day voter registration, Wisconsin’s ranking dipped slightly, but remained in the top 10.

Then Republicans took control of the Legislature and governor’s office after the 2010 election and implemented several measures that made voting more difficult. They extended residency requirements, shortened the time frame for early voting, increased residency requirements from 10 to 28 days and enacted the state’s voter ID law, which after several court challenges took effect in 2016.

“As soon as Wisconsin adopted that, it really caused the state to drop in accessibility,” said Michael Pomante, a Jacksonville University political science professor and co-author of the Index. He added that the drop suggested Wisconsin voters faced a “significantly” different landscape compared to other states.

More recently the state Supreme Court disallowed ballot drop boxes — even as some states expanded use — pushing Wisconsin even further down the list.

“It needs to be said or at least noted to Wisconsinites that their voting has become significantly more difficult for their voters over the years compared to other states,” Pomante said. “I mean, they are one of the states that has seen the most dramatic shift in the difficulty of voting over the last two decades.”

Republicans enacted the voter ID law and other restrictions in the name of election security. Then-Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, described the voter ID law specifically as making it “easier to vote and harder to cheat.”

There’s no evidence that the laws have significantly affected election fraud. 

From 2012 through 2022, there were 48 general, primary and special elections in Wisconsin. Prosecutors brought only 192 election fraud cases, or 0.0006% of all votes cast, Wisconsin Watch previously reported. And only 40 cases dealt with fraudulent actions like double voting or voting in the name of a dead person. The data didn’t show that the new laws had reduced the number of cases, the majority of which related to voting, often by mistake, by those on probation for a felony conviction.

And while it’s possible the laws make it harder to cheat in ways that elude prosecution, they also make it harder for many to vote.

Complicating matters over the past decade: changes to law or procedure coming right before an election, usually as the result of a lawsuit. That’s one of the biggest challenges for election administration, said Claire Woodall-Vogg, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission.

Those late changes, along with lack of voter education funding makes matters more difficult, she said, adding that groups like BLOC can help fill those gaps. 

Woodall-Vogg said she’s “cautiously optimistic” that things could improve after last month’s Supreme Court win by Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz, which ended 15 years of conservative control of the state’s high court.

“But I will also say it’s cautious,” she added, “because the length of time it takes to get a lawsuit there would again come right in the middle of a presidential election year.”

Additional barriers for Black and Hispanic voters

Barriers to voting disproportionately affect certain racial groups, according to research from UW-Madison journalism and mass communications professor Michael Wagner.

Black voters spent about 9 minutes getting to the polls during the 2018 midterm election, compared with about 6.5 minutes for non-Black voters, the research found. Researchers also found that Hispanic voters spent about 11 minutes in line, more than twice the wait for non-Hispanic voters.

Additionally, they found that Black and Hispanic voters were less likely to use early voting measures, which could ease those time burdens.

In researching the 2022 midterm election, Wagner’s team found Black voters spent 10.8 minutes getting to the polls and 15.6 minutes waiting in line. For white voters, those times were 6.8 minutes and 7.7 minutes.

“It’s really a tale of two states. On the one hand, Wisconsin has incredibly high voter turnout. We’re always in the top three,” Wagner said, adding that same-day registration and tradition of civic engagement help. “But things are clearly getting worse for Black, Hispanic and lower income voters.”

Closed polling locations and continued underfunding of elections could help explain growing times from 2018 to 2022, he said. 

The researchers who maintain the Cost of Voting Index have linked increased difficulty and a drop in voter participation, but impact varies between groups.

“It actually disenfranchises the undereducated and the lower socioeconomic populations more,” Pomante said. “But if we were to strip those things out and were just looking at racial features, when states have made voting more difficult, it actually spurs Black voters to come to the polls more.”

One reason for that might be the role of community organizers, Pomante said.

Benjamin, the University of Oklahoma researcher, agreed.

“I think that these local organizations … they're priceless,” she said. “I mean, it's just worth everything because they have the community's trust. They have a reputation. The community wants to earn those people's trust and show that they are also good stewards.”

Wisconsin’s increasingly divisive and contentious politics may also help turnout, Wagner said. 

“More people see it as valuable to have their voice heard on Election Day,” he said. “Even if it’s harder, many people still show up.”

Current proposals to address voting issues

Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, proposed a range of voting-related changes in his most recent budget proposal that would elevate the state’s Cost of Voting Index ranking.

Pomante said automatic voter registration has propelled many states toward top rankings. Evers has proposed that the Department of Transportation provide identifying information to the Wisconsin Elections Commission so it can automatically register eligible voters. The proposal also allows people to opt out.

The governor also proposed removing restrictions on how early a voter can return their absentee ballot and lowering the residency requirement from 28 days to 10 days. Evers’ budget also includes changes to the type of ID technical college or university students can use and would restore previous requirements that high schools be used for voter registration, something Republicans ended in 2011.

The budget proposal also includes additional funding for local election officials and would allow election workers to start processing absentee ballots before Election Day, a measure that would speed up ballot counting. Republicans plan to remove all those and hundreds of other measures from the budget bill during the first votes in the process Tuesday.

Last year, Evers vetoed a number of election-related bills passed by the Republican Legislature. They would have prevented a voter’s friend or family member from returning their absentee ballot, required clerks to verify voters are U.S. citizens, and given the Legislature control over guidance to clerks from the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

State Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville, said that if there are issues with the time it takes voters to cast ballots, those are “the fault of local municipalities failing to address the needs of their communities.”

“This trend of higher participation holds up across nationwide elections since passing Voter ID,” he said. “Wisconsin voters routinely rebut the premise of voter disenfranchisement through their actions.”

How BLOC and community organizers find solutions 

BLOC doesn’t plan to put politics on the shelf until the 2024 spring primary. Politics and voter education is baked into everything it does, Lang said.

“If we’re having conversations in the field about what does it look like for the Black community to thrive, nine times out of 10, those responses have a political connection, whether it’s the city budget that’s going to come out this fall or it’s the state budget,” she said weeks after the election. 

“And so there’s so many different ways that civics plays a role indirectly that people may not necessarily see, but every single aspect of our lives has been politicized.”

BLOC reaches voters by building trust. It intentionally set up its headquarters in the 53206 ZIP code, among the most-incarcerated places in the state. BLOC’s members grew up in the community and share the same experiences as the people whose doors they knock on.

They see voters walk into their polling place carrying BLOC literature handed out or placed in doors. 

But it wasn’t always like this, Lang said, recalling the group’s first election in November 2017 when residents viewed them like just another group dropping in. They could see through the “transactional electoral organizing” done time and time again by groups parachuting in for the runup to an election.

Attitudes toward the group changed once people saw that they didn’t leave.

“The team (here at BLOC) came up with this idea last year to do monthly neighborhood cleanups as a way to engage residents around other issues and do something that's beautifying the community,” Lang said. “I think by just having a constant presence allows us to be those trusted messengers.”

Three weeks after the April 4 election, BLOC’s second-floor conference room was once again filled with dozens of people, some of whom endured the rain to canvas on Election Day. But they weren’t there to talk about the next election or even voter registration.

The meeting was about plans for community wellness programs.

It may be the electoral offseason, but BLOC has plenty of work to do

The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Voting has gotten harder in Wisconsin. Organizers have found ways to help is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Wisconsin Republicans voted Tuesday to kill proposals to legalize marijuana, pay for renovations at the Milwaukee Brewers’ stadium and create a paid family leave program, moves that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers derided as “foolish.”

The Legislature’s Republican-controlled budget committee killed more than 500 proposals from Evers with a single vote.

Evers had proposed tapping the state’s record-high $7 billion budget surplus to pay for a wide array of spending priorities that Republicans ultimately rejected.

“These aren’t fringe ideas, controversial concepts, or Republican or Democratic priorities—they’re about doing the right thing,” Evers said on Twitter after listing more than a dozen items being killed. “With a historic surplus comes historic responsibility, and today, when we can afford to do more, this vote is foolish and a wasted opportunity.”

The move comes as no surprise after Republicans, who control the state Legislature with large majorities, did the same with Evers’ past two budgets and said they would do again this year. The vote kicks off the committee’s work reshaping the nearly $104 billion two-year budget that Evers submitted in February.

Republican co-chairs of the committee said they were optimistic the final spending plan would find bipartisan support and be signed by Evers.

“We’ll build a budget that’s a good budget for Wisconsin that he’ll want to sign when we send it to him because of all the good things in it,” said Rep. Mark Born ahead of the committee’s vote.

Democrats accused Republicans of acting against the wishes of voters on issues like Medicaid expansion and marijuana legalization that polls show have broad support.

“This is a popular budget,” said Democratic Rep. Evan Goyke, a member of the budget committee, at a news conference prior to the vote. “People like the policies in the governor’s budget. They support the policies he proposed.”

Starting Tuesday, and likely continuing into June, the Joint Finance Committee will take a series of votes to build its own two-year spending plan which will then go to the Senate and Assembly for approval. Once passed, Evers can make changes through his powerful veto, which is what he did with the past two budgets he signed that included both Republican and Democratic priorities.

Evers proposals stripped from the budget on Tuesday include: a 10% income tax cut targeting middle- and low-income earners; $270 million to add more mental health providers in schools; and freezing enrollment in the state’s private school voucher program.

Republicans have been working on their own plans to cut income taxes, increase mental health services in schools and expand funding for the school voucher program.

Other Evers proposals that Republicans have long opposed, and also killed, included accepting federal Medicaid expansion, raising the minimum wage, implementing automatic voter registration and repealing the state’s right to work law.

Evers won reelection last November, while Republicans increased their majorities in the Legislature — taking advantage of maps they drew that strengthened their hold on legislative districts.

Evers, citing broad support as measured by public polls, called for legalizing both recreational and medical marijuana. Republicans have long resisted legalizing recreational marijuana, but Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said last month he hopes to bring a medical marijuana bill to a vote this fall.

Evers’ paid leave plan would have created a program for both public and private sector workers giving them 12 weeks of family and medical leave starting in 2025.

Evers also called for spending $290 million to repair American Family Field in Milwaukee, where the Brewers play. Vos said in March that the plan would not pass and that Republicans were working on their own alternative to extend the team’s lease, which is scheduled to expire in 2030. Evers’ proposal would have extended it by 13 years, through 2043. The Republican stadium plan is expected to be debated outside of the budget.

Other big aspects of Evers’ budget remain, for now, but will almost certainly be changed by Republicans.

That includes Evers’ plan to increase special education funding by $1 billion and allow schools to spend $350 more per student in the 2023-24 school year and $650 more the following year, increasing state-imposed revenue limits. There was no increase in the revenue limit the past two years, which is the maximum amount school districts can bring in through property taxes and state aid. Currently, schools get $742 per student.

Born said Evers proposals not removed Tuesday were still being negotiated.

Wisconsin Republicans kill legalized pot, stadium repairs is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Elected officials in Wisconsin must submit reports of their finances to the state. The Democratic governor’s filing is very limited compared to politicians, for one major reason.

The governor of Wisconsin currently receives an annual salary of $165,568.

Compared to other elected officials, Gov. Tony Evers’ Statement of Economic Interests is sparse. In 2019, the year after he was first elected to the position, Evers put his assets into a blind trust. The document describing that situation is linked here, and also at the bottom of his statement.

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

The post The financial interests of Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers appeared first on The Badger Project.

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The financial interests of Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers was first posted on April 27, 2023 at 9:52 am.