A year after Gov. Scott Walker’s education reforms took affect, which included significant funding reductions to public schools, districts cut 2,312 positions in the 2011-’12 school year, according to Wednesday’s annual school staff report.
Cuts for the previous two years were between 1,400 and 1,500 positions.
According to the report, 60 percent of the staff cuts were teachers, and 73 percent of districts statewide reported cutting teachers during the academic year. The most significant cuts were to librarians, career and technical education, special education, and reading teachers.
“Losses in school staff erode our public education system,” said State Superintendent Tony Evers in a statement. “We want our students to graduate college and be career ready and we must make a bipartisan investment in public education instead of continually forcing cuts on school districts.”
But Walker spokesperson Cullen Werwie said the data is misleading because the majority of the cuts came from just three school districts, all of which have not adopted Governor Walker’s education reforms outlined in Act 10.
These three districts, Milwaukee, Janesville, and Kenosha, accounted for 40 percent of all teacher reductions while serving fewer than 13 percent of public school students.
“Gov. Walker’s reforms led to the least number of school districts increasing class sizes in the past decade, the smallest reduction in extracurricular activities in the last decade and less student fee increases than any other year in the last decade,” Werwie said.
Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts, D-Verona, who sits on the Assembly Committee on Education, feels that the data shows Walker’s reforms are not working. She said Wisconsin now has fewer teachers per student than in the past and teachers in important areas like reading and technical education are suffering the largest cuts.
“You cannot drastically reduce funding to public schools and expect no harm,” Pope-Roberts said in a statement.
