MADISON – Representative Robert Wittke (R – Racine) released the weekly radio address on behalf of Wisconsin Legislative Republicans.
Good afternoon this is Robert Wittke, 62nd Assembly District.
We’re here this afternoon to talk about the just-released report by IRG, which indicates how the $1.5 billion in ESSER funds that were sent to the state are being dispersed and spent by our school districts.
Some of the troubling things that I see in their report is the fact that 52% of our districts have not switched out their reading curriculum. We have roughly 640,000 students in the state that cannot read to grade level. That hugely impacts how well they do at the math level as well.
These funds would be a great one-time source to switch out that curriculum and get the training that our teachers need to be successful with our students.
It appears that not enough money is being spent on learning loss categories that the federal government has prescribed.
Also, it’s surprising with all the requests we get from school districts on mental health funding, that only 70% of the allocated funds right now are being spent on those initiatives.
Especially coming out of the health emergency that we had, we all know students are needing more support to get back to where we had them before 2019.
These will be things that we will be digging into deeper as we get into this session.
We all need to take this seriously, this is not a partisan issue. The education of our students should be a priority for everyone.
Thank you.
