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Republicans critical as Regents pick Mnookin as next UW Chancellor

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The University of Wisconsin in Madison has its next chancellor. Jennifer Mnookin is the unanimous choice of the UW System Board of Regents.

Mnookin is Dean of the UCLA law school in Los Angeles. Mnookin has a long history has an educator. She’s been a professor at UCLA since 2005, and before that, taught law at the University of Virginia, and was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School.

Mnookin becomes UW Madison’s 30th chancellor, after Rebecca Blank’s departure to Northwestern. Blank’s last day is on May 31. Provost John Karl Scholz will serve as interim chancellor until Mnookin starts in August.

Mnookin will have to win over Republican legislators. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on Monday called the Regents’ unanimous pick of the UCLA Law School Dean a “blatant partisan selection.” Vos said Mnookin is a supporter critical race theory and campus  vaccine mandates.

State Senator Steve Nass, Vice Chair of the Senate Universities and Technical Colleges Committee, calls Mnookin a “West Coast liberal.” Both lawmakers also pointed out that Mnookin met with Hunter Biden in 2019 and supported having him join the UCLA faculty to teach drug policy.

In a statement to WisPolitics, Mnookin said she hasn’t had an opportunity to meet Vos yet but look forward to doing so, and that she plans to work with all legislators regardless of party to move the university and Wisconsin forward.

Evers vetoes more than two dozen Republican bills

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Democratic Governor Tony Evers has issued more than two dozen vetoes of Republican bills that made it out of the Legislature before recess.

Evers issued 28 vetoes on Friday. Among those bills were measures that would have made it easier to kick people off of unemployment and medical assistance, a bill that would have dissolved the Milwaukee Public Schools District, as well as massive expansion of the school voucher program.

“It is remarkable to me that many supporters of this bill, who commonly express concerns about property taxes when it comes to supporting more than 800,000 public school children in our state, are apparently unfazed by the fiscal impact this bill could have on families due to the way these programs are funded,” Evers said in veto message of the voucher expansion.

“If the Governor had bothered to read the bills we sent to him, he would see that we were giving him the power to be part of the solution for smaller, more accountable, community school districts for Milwaukee. He’s vetoing this bill because he wants to hide from the problem he helped create,” said state Senator Alberta Darling (R-River Hills), author of the bill to break up MPS.

The governor also vetoed a “Parental Bill of Rights” that would have required schools to tell parents their children wanted to change their gender identities and given parents broader leeway on pulling their children from lessons that they viewed as objectionable.

Evers unveils funding for school mental health services

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Governor Tony Evers (PHOTO: Larry Lee, Brownfield)

School mental health services in Wisconsin have received a financial boost. Governor Tony Evers announced at locations around the state  this week that nearly every K-12 district in Wisconsin will be awarded funding through the 15 million dollar “Get Kids Ahead Initiative.”

The funds are from Wisconsin’s share of the federal American Rescue Plan Act.

Schools will be able to use the funds for a variety of mental health support services for students and families. Every public school district in the state was eligible to opt in and was guaranteed a minimum of $10,000 dollars, with the remainder of the money allocated on a per-pupil basis.

Aimee Burazin, staff psychologist at Stevens Point Area High School, said they’ll use some of that to expand mental health navigator services. “To help eliminate some of the barriers that our students have in getting connected with outpatient counseling, whether it’s the difficulties with outpatient counseling, whether it’s the difficulty navigating the insurance part or scheduling and who’s even available, since it’s been really difficult even with waiting lists.”

Burazin said some of the funding will also go towards expand professional development to teachers, “who are really our frontline people who are working with our students, and are the first to probably notice that something is maybe amiss with the student and the student is maybe struggling.”

Brownfield’s Larry Lee contributed to this report

 

Super Bowl can be super tough on problem gamblers

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Super Bowl weekend is a big one for gamblers – including those with a problem. “It’s probably the biggest event of the year.” said Rose Blozinski, Executive Director with the Wisconsin Council on Problem Gambling. “There are millions and millions and millions of dollars that are spent, on betting on the Super Bowl.”

The American Gambling Association projects more than 31-one-million of us will pony up some $7.5 billion on the Rams– Bengals matchup. Blozinksi said some will be trying to make good on losses

“If you’ve been betting all season, and all of a sudden you’re losing, this is going to be the make it or break it.”

If you or a family member are struggling with a gambling crisis, call the Council on Problem Gambling at 1-800-GAMBLE-5

DHS letter urges K-12 administrators to adopt tougher COVID mitigation strategies

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Wisconsin school districts are being asked to step up their efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. A letter to school administrators from the Department of Health Services urges them to require masks for everyone, follow the CDC’s new quarantine guidelines, and offer school vaccination and booster clinics.

The request comes as Wisconsin is experiencing an unprecedented surge in COVID-19 cases.

DHS on Monday reported the 7-day average of new confirmed cases at 9,063 – a one hundred and fifty percent increase over two weeks.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly supports the recommendations from DHS. “We cannot keep our children engaged in learning if we cannot keep our children and our school staff healthy,” Underly said.

 

Interim UW System President Tommy Thompson gives March departure date

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Interim UW System President Tommy Thompson will resign his post in March. In a letter to Board of Regents President Edmund Manydeeds, Thompson said he took the interim position with the understanding he was needed, and that it would be temporary.

Manydeeds said Thompson has worked to shepherd the UW System through the coronavirus pandemic while being “a relentless champion of the University of Wisconsin.”

“President Thompson stepped in during a critical moment for UW System and our state, and he has provided strong and decisive leadership” said UW Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank. “He has been an extraordinary advocate for our students, faculty and staff over these past 18 months, as he has been for the state of Wisconsin over his many decades of public service.”

Wisconsin’s longest serving governor was brought aboard in July 2020, after a failed search to find a replacement for the retiring Ray Cross. In his letter, Thompson noted the regents will soon identify a candidate to become the full-time president.

Milwaukee Dem is vocal supporter as Assembly sends GOP literacy screening bill to Evers

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Students would be screened for literacy skills at least three times each school year in kindergarten through second-grade, under a bill headed to the governor’s desk.

On the Assembly floor Tuesday, Racine Republican Robert Wittke explained the stark realities the bill hopes to address.

“Six-hundred thousand children in this state cannot read to grade level. We have the worst racial achievement gaps in the country,” Wittke said

Representative Don Vruwink of Milton, a retired educator, was critical. “It seems to me here in the Assembly we have continually slapped a band-aid and said ‘this is going to fix the problem.’”

Democrat and educator LaKeshia Myers of Milwaukee supports the Republican authored measure. “I’m tired of the same data, reporting the same thing year after year. It’s time for us to stop making excuses and actually do something,” Myers said. “I don’t care who introduced this bill, whether it was a Republican, whether it was a Democrat, whether it was Jesus himself, I will still go along with this bill.”

Democrats also said it doesn’t make sense to screen every student, and that the bill lacks a long term funding source. The bill is opposed by several groups representing school districts, and it’s not clear whether Governor Tony Evers will sign it.

UW-Madison Chancellor Blank takes leadership position at Northwestern

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Longtime UW-Madison chancellor Rebecca Blank will be leaving the university next year to take over as the president of Northwestern in Illinois.

The transition should happen sometime next year, and Blank says she’s happy to have helped UW-Madison through some tough times, including the pandemic.

“With the actions that we took last year between furloughs and budget cuts and then some money from the federal government, and the state gave back part of its lapse there at the end, we are entering this year without any financial hangover from last year.”

Blank says she’s happy to have helped both the university and the city grow and evolve during her time in office. 

“It’s economically more diverse and stronger now than it was 9 years ago when I came and I think that’s going to continue a lot of that is due to the presence of the university in this community.”

Under the Walker administration, Blank had to contend with major cuts to the UW-System, as well as a change in how the state treats tenure. She says she’s most proud of the creation of the Bucky’s Promise program which has helped over 4 thousand low-income students get a full education.

Assembly Republicans pass bill banning anti-racism messages and efforts in K-12 schools

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Assembly Republicans brought a number of bills related to anti-racism education to the floor on Tuesday.

One of the bills requires that districts be more transparent about what they’re teaching their students. Republican Representative Elijah Behnke says districts would have to put their curriculum on public display on the internet. 

“It doesn’t tell you what to teach it just makes what is being taught available to the public which is I think a great idea.

The measure comes in response to complaints from conservative groups that some anti-racism messages being taught in schools are harmful to white students. Democrat LaKeisha Myers says it’s a republican strategy to divide America and quoted one of the proponents of the push. 

“‘We have de-codified the term and will re-codify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.’ So there you have it, Southern Strategy 2.0. Go back and read Nixon and go to Reagan and here we are today.”

The bill passed the Assembly and is likely to be vetoed by the Governor if it passes the Senate. 

UW System back to pre-pandemic levels of in-person instruction

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The University of Wisconsin System has returned to pre-pandemic levels of in-person instruction for the fall semester.

UW System President Tommy Thompson announced in a Tuesday press release that systemwide, 85 percent of undergraduate courses are being delivered in person. That exceeds the goal of 75 percent Thompson set in February, when more classes than usual were delivered remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Madison, La Crosse and Plattville campuses are all above 90 percent in-person classes, and all but the Superior campus are at or above 75 percent.