Approach To Funding K-12 Separates 67th Assembly Candidates
Incumbent Says Private Vouchers Are Needed; Challenger Says Public Schools Need More Money
The candidates for Wisconsin's 67th Assembly District say they're seeing a tale of two states.
The district — north of Eau Claire — includes most of Chippewa County and much of Dunn County.
With low unemployment in the state, the incumbent state Rep. Rob Summerfield, R-Bloomer, a small business owner who is completing his first term, says he wants to keep the state moving forward.
"One bad legislative session would turn back the clock and go back to the mid-2000s where we were hemorrhaging jobs, unemployment was unbelievable, which we even thought we would never even see below 6 percent unemployment and now we are down below 3 (percent unemployment)," he said.
But while unemployment may be low in the state, Summerfield's Democratic challenger Wren Keturi, of Chippewa Falls, said the poverty rate in the state has increased in the past two years. She said while there is economic growth nationally, it’s not happening in the 67th District.
"Madison continues to choose the ultra-wealthy and to prioritize the needs of foreign corporations over the needs of regular working Wisconsinites," she said.
Keturi worked as communications director for an education labor union, the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin. Despite a $639 million investment in the last state budget, she said public education is about 10 years behind where it should be in state government funding.
"I’m really tired of politicians who use public education, use health care, as a political football," said Keturi. "I want long-term fixes. I know our school districts want those fixes and I know that constituents in the 67th want those fixes."
But Summerfield said he delivered on a campaign promise he made in his first campaign.
"To say that my priorities are not education, I can say, 'Hey, look at this last budget, my first budget.' 'Hey, I voted for over $630 million in K-12 education.' I said two years ago, this was going to be one of my priorities, and it was my priority," he said.
Keturi is also critical of Summerfield’s support for expanding Wisconsin’s private school voucher program which she said has had a negative impact on rural public schools.
"We have had a 30-year experiment with voucher schools here in Wisconsin and they have had no demonstrable effect on improving public education outcomes or educational outcomes for any student. In fact, what they’ve done is they’ve drained budgets from our public schools," she said.
Summerfield said he sends his children to a public school but he also supports private school options for students.
"If they’re not succeeding in one avenue of learning, I do not want to say, 'Hey, you can’t learn, you have to sit in this one situation.' Where there’s maybe an opportunity in another school district, in another choice, another charter, to say, 'This is the way we want to educate our kids.' This is actually going to get Johnny, in 15 years, out of school, be a productive member of our society," he said.
Summerfield and Keturi face each other in the general election Nov. 6.
-John Davis