Stop Special Needs Vouchers Wisconsin Coalition Fights Re-introduced Voucher Bill
Families of Students with Disabilities Oppose Re-Introduced Special Needs Vouchers Bill
Contact: Joanne Juhnke, joannethatsme@yahoo.com; 608-320-6165
Terri Hart-Ellis, terrihar6@hotmail.com; 414-217-8999
Madison, WI – Families of students with disabilities and their supporters across Wisconsin are responding with opposition and dismay to the January 21st return of the harmful special needs voucher proposal to the Wisconsin legislature. The unwelcome return of the special needs vouchers proposal, which failed to pass in previous attempts, would funnel critical taxpayer funding out of public schools and into private voucher schools which lack vital accountability. In addition, these private schools would not be required to abide by the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This re-introduction of a failed proposal comes at a time when the underside of Wisconsin’s voucher program has been on stark display given the sudden folding of Milwaukee’s failed LifeSkills Academy, a private voucher school whose owners had also recently opened a special needs voucher school in Florida.
For Nancy Gapinski, parent from Glendale, the failure of LifeSkills Academy looms large in her concerns about the new special needs voucher proposal. “LifeSkills Academy took our tax money, failed to educate their students, and left families in the lurch in the middle of the night, all while re-inventing themselves as a special needs voucher school in Florida. How can we be considering new vouchers in Wisconsin when this kind of disaster is happening with our current vouchers?”
The bill’s most prominent revision is reportedly a new requirement that voucher recipients must first be denied an open enrollment request to attend public school in a district other than the one in which they live. The
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