ONLINE: What's Best for Our Kids
media release: Gov. Tony Evers announced a series of virtual Badger Bounceback L
The Badger Bounceback Live Session on What's Best for Our Kids will occur on April 8, 2021, at 6 p.m. Wisconsinites are invited to register to attend here. The live session will also be live-streamed and available to watch any time on the governor’s YouTube channel here.
Gov. Tony Evers will this week host the fourth of six virtual Badger Bounceback Live Sessions to discuss his 2021-23 budget proposal. As highlighted in a video message from the governor, the listening session will cover topics such as ensuring every kid has access to a high-quality, public education, providing mental health supports for students at schools, special education reimbursement rates, expanding access to early childhood education and childcare, and investing in our higher education institutions.
“I always say, what’s best for our kids is what’s best for our state and we know we have to kickstart our recovery by making sure our kids are better off than when we started this pandemic,” said Gov. Evers. “Every kid should have access to a high-quality education, and that starts from their first years of life all the way through our higher education system.”
The governor’s Badger Bounceback agenda ensures families, communities, and the state can bounce back and better by:
- Directs $140 million to address quality, access, and equity in our early education and childcare system;
- Restores the state’s historic two-thirds funding commitment for public schools beginning in fiscal year 2021-22;
- Invests more than $709 million for special education reimbursement aid to help close the gap in special education reimbursement for our schools;
- Fully funds sparsity aid for our most rural school districts;
- Invests more than $54 million in student mental health programs and support;
- Continues the UW tuition freeze and funds that freeze to reduce the burden on our students and on the UW System;
- Expands Bucky’s Tuition Promise to every UW campus which provides students from low-income families with 4-years of school tuition free; and
- Provides an additional $36 million for our Wisconsin Technical College System.
More on the governor’s proposals to invest in Wisconsin’s kids and education is available here. (PDF)
The full Badger Bounceback Live Session schedule and registration links are available on the governor's website here. Sessions will be streamed on the governor’s YouTube page here.
During the months of November and December 2020, Gov. Evers hosted four public budget listening sessions on areas including healthcare, environment, infrastructure and the economy, justice reform, and education. More than 1,000 Wisconsinites participated virtually, helping provide direct ideas and feedback for the governor’s 2021-23 biennial budget. On February 16, 2021, Gov. Evers announced his 2021-23 biennial budget, which makes historic investments in several key areas that have been highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and proposes several policy initiatives supported by a majority of Wisconsinites across the state. Although the governor’s Badger Bounceback agenda has already received extensive bipartisan praise and support, Republican leaders have indicated they intend to start from scratch during the legislative budget deliberations. Gov. Evers has hosted listening sessions before and after introducing his budget for two consecutive biennia. Unlike typical listening sessions, the governor’s listening sessions involve facilitated, smaller group discussions that allow participating Wisconsinites to engage in conversation and dialogue with other Wisconsinites who share or have different perspectives on an issue while Gov. Evers, members of the Evers administration, and other state and local elected leaders have the opportunity to listen.
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