MADISON, WI – State Representative Angelina Cruz released the following statement in response to State Superintendent Dr. Jill Underly’s 2026 State of Education Address:
“Dr. Underly laid it out clearly: We have a constitutional duty to fund public education, and we’re failing to meet it. Our funding formula, as she said, ‘places value on the wrong things’ instead of what kids actually need. This has created, in her words, ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ – deep inequality between districts mere miles apart. A child’s opportunity to succeed shouldn’t depend on their zip code. And one of the biggest reasons this formula remains broken is the voucher program.”
“It’s time to stop funding a private system with no accountability while starving the public schools that answer to all of us. Public school students aren’t failing; the legislature is failing our children.”
“For years, we’ve been told public schools are the problem – they’re unaccountable, they waste money. That narrative is false, and it’s backwards. Public schools answer to elected school boards, open meetings laws, public budgets, and state academic standards. Every dollar is tracked and every decision is made in public.”
“Voucher schools answer to no one. They can reject students. They aren’t required to meet the same academic standards, report the same data, or hold public meetings. Yet they take hundreds of millions of dollars a year straight out of our public school funding — money raised from local property taxpayers and spent with almost no accountability. If we’re serious about accountability, we should start with the system that has none.”
“As a former public school teacher who watched this legislature strip collective bargaining rights from public workers in 2011, I know what happens when we let public institutions and the people who staff them get hollowed out. In the Assembly, I’ve worked to fund special education at the level the state promised, keep public dollars in public schools, and fix our inequitable funding formula so it’s based on student need instead of zip code. Dr. Underly’s address is a call to action. I won’t stop pushing until we end the voucher drain and build a funding formula that gives every Wisconsin kid a fair shot.”
