Citizen Action of Wisconsin Platform

Statement of Purpose: Our goal is to improve prosperity for all while also dramatically reducing racial and ethnic inequality, which is the underpinning of on-going structural racism. A guiding principle in this platform is that outrageous levels of economic inequality are a fact of life for all of Wisconsin and communities of color are disproportionately affected. All of the major advances in this platform are designed to improve the lives and life prospects of all working class Wisconsinites, but at the same time disproportionately benefit communities of color because they are the most economically marginalized and impoverished.

Issue Statement: Create a progressive tax and revenue system that adequately funds all key public services and investments and counteracts massive income inequality and the increasingly regressive structure of federal and state taxation.

Progressive Revenue System

  • Shift highly regressive sales and property taxes, and municipal fees, to a progressive state income tax with more upper tax brackets to assure the wealthiest Wisconsites pay their fair share.
  • Dramatically increasing refundable tax rebates for working Wisconsinites and low income seniors such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and Homestead credit.
  • End use of the property taxes for school funding and other vital public services.
  • Restore a fair corporate taxation system that assures large corporations pay their fair share
  • Add additional tax brackets on incomes over $150,000, and after every $200,000 in additional income, in order to assure that the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes, and pay higher rates than the middle and upper middle class, based on wealth.
  • Tax all kinds of capital gains at the same rates income is taxed, which would dramatically improve equity and racial equity in the tax system as most who enjoy capital gaines are white.
  • Allow local governments to have more taxing authority that is in keeping with the principles of progressive taxation.

Issue Statement: Use the full power of the state government to rapidly transition to a resilient climate economy that meets the international greenhouse gas reduction targets in a way that makes equally dramatic progress on improving economic equity and racial equity.

Hold State & Local Government Accountable for Meeting Climate Goals

  • Wisconsin shall get on an immediate path to meet the international greenhouse gas targets: a 45% reduction by 2030 and 80% by 2050.
  • Regulate for-profit utilities to maximize carbon reduction, not the windfall profits demanded by Wall Street. This should include changing the incentive system so that profit and climate/environmental impact are aligned rather than in tension.
  • Require every utility regulated by the state to provide on-bill financing and other financing tools to dramatically increase the number of residential and commercial consumers who make energy conservation upgrades and install renewable energy.
  • Mandate that utilities achieve at least 50% of their energy generation through renewable energy by 2030 by updating Wisconsin’s badly outdated Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS).
  • End energy rate discrimination against consumers with solar power, paying them back the total energy value returned to the grid.
  • End discriminatory pricing against people who conserve energy by rolling back minimum charges to levels prior to the Walker Administration PSC.
  • Align utility incentives with the goals of decreasing greenhouse emissions, keeping cost of energy affordable for ratepayers, and building the reliability and resilience of our energy systems to provide the foundation for a clean energy economy.


Establish enforceable state benchmarks for progress towards the international climate goals (roughly a 5% net reduction per annum equalling 45% by 2030)

  • Public reporting on state progress at least annually.
  • Create climate scoring of all major bills for carbon reduction impact, including the biennial state budget.
  • Evaluate all state projects (buildings, roads, highways, bridges, etc) for carbon footprint, and reject project designs with large negative carbon impacts.
  • Plan and fund a massive expansion of public transit in order to meet public transportation needs and to produce the lowest possible carbon footprint in the transportation sector
  • Create parallel carbon reduction benchmarks for municipal governments and school districts, with state resources to enable the reductions.
  • Penalize municipal governments and school districts that do not meet the standards in their shared revenue and school funding formulas.
  • Overhaul state building codes to require energy conservation and renewable energy requirements for all new commercial buildings and residential housing. To keep up with evolving science, require reevaluation of codes every 3-5 years. 
  • Reform the Wisconsin tax code to include carbon pricing as a method of generating revenue and of incentivizing a rapid climate transition.
  • Invest in a large scale program to increase the supply of affordable housing, supplied by new Wisconsin manufacturing of low carbon modular homes.
    Wisconsin will set a good example for the whole economy by electrifying all state owned vehicles, making all state-owned buildings 100% renewable energy, and installing state owned public charging stations around the state.
 

Reestablish a state public intervener, but with an additional mission of advocating for a rapid transition to a climate sustainable economy.

  • Incentivize consumer behavior that contributes to carbon reduction benchmarks and goals.
  • Eliminate state tax penalties for people who own Electric Vehicles (EVs) while making massive investments in fast charging infrastructure


Incentivize farming transition to contribute to carbon reduction benchmarks and goals.

  • Invest in farmers to use low-carbon farming practices including no-till farming, and farm-based distributed energy production including solar, wind, and biogas.
  • Incentivize local agricultural production to reduce carbon impact of long range transportation.
  • Tax big corporate agriculture operations that use energy intensive and extractive farming methods, or have large negative carbon impacts (CAFOS, for example), and redistribute the revenue to farmers using low-carbon practices.
  • Initiate a Green New Deal for all public schools by making energy conservation and renewable energy retrofits to all school buildings and using the projects to connect students with green collar jobs.
  • A Climate Transition Which Increases Economic Equity, Creates Family Supporting Union Jobs


Chart a path towards a full-employment, living wage heavily unionized economy in which racial, gender, and regional disparities in income and opportunity are eradicated.

  • Mandate economic equity goals and benchmarks as bold as the international climate targets (such as reduce economic and racial disparities), and track progress to hold the state accountable for actual progress.
  • Make massive investments to create thousands of new green economy jobs in employment intensive fields of energy efficiency, local renewable energy generation.
  • Create large scale public jobs programs, such as Transitional Jobs Programs, to target people locked out of family supporting jobs and employ them in the fast growing green sector, especially low income, people of color, the formerly incarcerated, and all others without access to good jobs.
  • Incentivize the creation of union jobs in the green sector.
    Use our democratic government to shift our economy away from extractive exploitation of natural resources, people, and communities.


Sufficiently fund the DNR and give them sufficient authority direction from the Legislature to effectively regulate Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and prohibit any that threaten water quality.

  • Set aggressive farming standards that protect water, require big polluters to pay their fair share, and require practices with the lowest climate impact.
    Establish the “polluters pay” principle across the entire range of industrial and environmental regulation.


Improve Economic Equity in the Entire Economy

  • Raise the state minimum wage to $15 per hour for all employees, including tipped workers, contractors, and gig workers, and indexes it to inflation.
  • Mandate Paid Family Leave for all Wisconsin employees and gig workers, and implement a small payroll tax to resource the conversion.
  • Overhaul Wisconsin’s corporate-subsidy dominated economic development system by replacing the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation with a fully accountable public agency that provides job subsidies based on fully accountable employment and climate change metrics.
  • Restore full union rights in the public sector, repeal so-called Right to Work; end state preemption of Prevailing Wage Requirements and additional local organizing rights established by local governments, and guarantee organizing rights to contractors, gig workers, franchise employees, and every other worker not provided organizing rights by federal or state labor laws..

Issue Statement: Health care is a fundamental human right that must be guaranteed by our democratic government, not a commodity to be managed in the interest of profit crazed health insurance corporations, Pharma giants, and hospital conglomerates.

Health Coverage. 

  • Set a vision to achieve Medicare for All in Wisconsin and the U.S. by taking major steps in the direction of creating a progressively more public system.
  • Immediately launch a robust public option through BadgerCare that raises the BadgerCare level to 200% of poverty by adopting the basic health plan option under the ACA, sets fair reimbursement rates based on the reasonable cost of medical services, equipment, and medications, and where all individuals and all employers have a lower cost and higher quality alternative to for-profit insurance.


Expand the power of democratic government to regulate rapidly rising medical costs:

  • Set a fair price for health care services at 200% of the Medicare payment rate, and over time gradually lower to Medicare rates.
  • Measures to crack down on pharmaceutical price gouging and use all available state leverage to set a reasonable and affordable price for all prescription medications.
  • Transition in stages to BadgerCare for All, funded through progressive taxation, to become universal in stages, to guarantee that everyone in Wisconsin has high quality public health coverage.


Health Insurance Regulation

  • Massively increase enforcement of consumer protection against medical industry abuses by doubling funding for the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance (OCI), the state’s insurance regulatory agency.


Resources will be used to:

  • Enforce free preventative care rules under the ACA which are routinely violated by hospital and insurance companies.
  • Engage in robust annual rate review, and deny rate increases to insurance companies that cannot justify the increases.
  • Crack down on claim denial as a health care industry strategy by fining companies which deny valid claims as a business practice.


Dramatically increase Health Equity by moving from a health profit to a health care system.

  • Set a goal of eliminating all disparities in health based on race, gender, economic status, and residence in rural areas and hold the state government and the health care sector accountable to meeting that goal within 10 years.
  • Punish non-profit hospitals that disinvest in underserved areas, such as people of color and rural communities, by issuing fines and in chronic cases revoking non-profit (charitable) status.
 

Repeal Wisconsin statute (still on the books) banning abortion, which will be automatically reinstated if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.

    • Guarantee BadgerCare funding to assure that low income women have the same access as middle and upper income women. 
    • Repeal legacy Wisconsin statute (still on the books) banning abortion, which will be automatically reinstated if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
    • Guarantee that all women’s health services are available within driving distance to every Wisconsinite. 
    • Remove all state regulations designed to reduce and eliminate the availability of women’s reproductive health services which are not clinically established to improve advance health outcomes.
    • Ban health care providers from providing a lower level of service to patients based on their form of payment or ability to pay.
    • Ban non-profit hospitals from hiring bill collection agencies and claiming as “charity care” bills they fail to coerce from patients.
    • Make major investments in public health services and infrastructure to promote a robust response to community health needs, emphasize prevention and management of disease, and dramatically reduce health disparities.


    Caregiving

    • Address the dangerous shortage in caregivers that help seniors and people with disabilities live independent and fulfilling lives by guaranteeing caregivers a living wage with health care, paid time off, and other benefits.
    • Dramatically increase Medicaid reimbursement rates dedicated to the salaries of caregivers to fully fund living wage jobs with benefits. Appropriate necessary state and federal funds for this purpose with guaranteed revenue sources.
    • Make access to long term care for seniors and people with disabilities a universal entitlement for everyone who lives in Wisconsin.
    • Recognize the tremendous financial and emotional burden on unpaid family caregivers by providing a $1,000 refundable tax credit to defray their lost wages and expenses.

    Issue statement: End Wisconsin’s structurally racist system of mass incarceration and biased policing, and replace it with an antiracist system that improves community safety by shifting from an exclusive emphasis on force and punishment and instead creates a balanced system that invests, to scale, in alternatives to incarceration, harm reduction, mental health and substance abuse treatment, rehabilitation, and dramatically reducing racial, economic, and social inequality.

    Rebalance Resources to Improve Community Safety

     Create a balanced system of community safety that does not dedicate the majority of the resources to policing and incarcerating marginalized communities but instead invests in public health approaches and other harm reduction interventions and alternatives to incarceration. Make these services available via the 911 hotline so that police will not be called to any nonviolent situations.

    • Replace the state fiscal system, which rewards local governments for incarcerating by paying the full costs while shifting the cost of public health, mental health, and harm reduction to the local level.
    • Invest in making overpoliced communities stronger and safer through quality, affordable housing, living wage employment, public transportation, education, and the full spectrum of guaranteed health care services.
    • Address opioid addiction and all other substance (drug and alcohol) use as a public health crisis by providing universal access to robust prevention and treatment services for all Wisconsin residents.
    • Build local capacity with community-based rapid response teams with public living-wage jobs (independent from police departments) of social workers, public health workers, and conflict resolution specialists to address community safety issues, and limit policing to situations where either force or the threat of force is the most effective response
    • Divert public funds used for surveillance, mass criminalization, incarceration, and deportation to public health interventions that meet community needs.
      Invest in community-based transformative violence prevention and intervention strategies that offer support for criminalized populations.
    • Uncouple guaranteed access to services, care, and support from the criminal punishment system.

     

    Decriminalization & Decarceration

    • Pass a state law that sets a 10-year deadline for cutting the incarceration rate in half, with annual accountable benchmarks for measuring progress. 
    • Invest savings from reduced incarceration in free universal access to mental health and substance use intervention and treatment services as alternatives to criminalization, and investments in economic development and housing for communities with high historical rates of incarceration.
    • Overhaul the contradictory and often unequal Wisconsin criminal justice code so that each sentence matches the severity of the crime. 
    • Immediately release all elders, people in comas, life support, or end-of-life care from prisons and jails.
    • Eliminate incarceration based on the inability to pay punishment fees and fines.
    • Decriminalize all drug and voluntary adult sex work and invest savings into programs for harm reduction. Expunge drug and prostitution, but not sex trafficking, records.
    • Create well-funded mental health courts with a robust and fully funded range of treatment options at their disposal as an alternative to incarceration.
    • Eliminate rule violations as grounds for revocation of parole, probation, and other community supervision and replace them with community-supporting and offender-supporting alternatives to revocation. Require court hearings for all revocations which result in further confinement.
    • Enact a moratorium on all new prison, jail, immigrant, and youth detention construction.
    • Ban transfer of military equipment to state and local police and campus law enforcement agencies, and end the use of military equipment by any law enforcement agency.

     

    Police and Corrections Accountability

    • Create mandatory state certification of police, similar to the major medical professions, and require biennial recertification in order to hold a law enforcement job in Wisconsin. Establish an independent and publicly-accountable state agency empowered to investigate all police conduct which violates professional standards established by the certification board, and to suspend or revoke the license of officers to practice in Wisconsin. Retain local accountability as well, as with medical facilities that can have higher standards than required by medical licensing.

    • Create a state mandatory certification process for law enforcement agencies, and grant authority to a state board to put departments under receivership which fail to discipline police misconduct and violence, violate constitutional rights, engage in racially disparate law enforcement, allow officers to fraternize with extremist political groups, surveil and target peaceful protesters and elected officials, and all other chronic violations of professional norms of contact.

    • Include in professional practice standards for police prohibitions on unnecessary use of force, excessive force, racial profiling, and violations of the 1st Amendment rights of free assembly and peaceful protest, including targeting of protesters and elected officials, surveillance, and abuse of curfews.
 
    • Crack down on racism within the Department of Corrections, and facilities run by the DOC and by counties. 

    • Exclude police departments from all investigation of incidents with the general public, and set up a separate review process. Give custody of all footage of incidents to the independent investigative body.

    • As in the U.S. armed forces, dismiss all police who join, fraternize with, or make social media posts connected to white supremacists groups, groups that promote violence, and militias. 
    • Create state capacity to monitor social media posts by police which violate this standard. Establish an independent state commission to investigate police membership and interaction with white supremisist and militia groups.
    • Require collection of data for all police officer detentions, including traffic stops, based on race and zip code. This data can be used in the state certification process, and to fine and discipline departments with unequal enforcement of violations.

    • Make police disciplinary records and body cam footage public records.

    • End Qualified Immunity from civil lawsuits for police officers and police departments.

    • Punish departments that use public resources, such as communications staff and departmental social media feeds, to disseminate misinformation, mischaracterize peaceful protests, and release confidential information on protestors, those accused of crimes, and others who have come into disagreement or conflict with police.

    • Forbid the police, national guard and others from detaining or arresting people, or imposing unreasonable civil fines or applying them in a discriminatory manner, for breaking curfews, stay at home orders, shelter in place orders, or other provisions enacted as part of a state of emergency except when there is specific proof of violent intent or where white supremisit groups, or militias organize the actions.

     

    Guarantee Equality Under the Law

    • Eliminate gang databases and related information sharing, including provisions giving individuals placed on gang databases with notice and an opportunity to seek removal.

    • Enact ban the box/fair chance legislation applying to employment, housing, licensing, and educational opportunities, including financial aid.

    • Repeal bans on receipt of social assistance based on prior convictions.

    • Remove all records that did not result in convictions from Consolidated Court Automation Programs (CCAP). Provide public funding for expungement services to remove criminal records for people who can show they have been rehabilitated. Automatically expunge convictions after a set period of time, based on the severity of the crime (with shorter sunset provisions for less severe offenses)

    • Allow all incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people to vote, and end the modern 3/5th clause by counting prisoners in their home communities for purposes of legislative apportionment, not the location of their confinement. 
    • End profiling, criminalization, law enforcement violence, and prison violence against Black trans and all gender nonconforming people.

    • Provide lawyers for all defendants facing the loss of liberty or property who cannot afford to hire a lawyer including those facing eviction or foreclosure.

    • Forbid sheriffs departments from executing eviction and foreclosure orders when a federal or state emergency establishes a moratorium, or foreclosures when a bank or processing agency can not establish the chain of title on a property.
 
     
    Youth Justice 
     
    • Always treat children as children by amending state law to eliminate criminal prosecution of youth under age 25 as adults.

    • Transition away from holding youth in prison-like settings and dramatically reduce the number of beds in juvenile correction facilities.

    • Reinvest in communities by investing in restorative practices to all children with the intent of halting new admissions to the juvenile justice system.

    • Use savings from reduced incarceration and over policing to provide comprehensive mental health services in all public schools, provide wrap around services and reinvent schools as community hubs, and other evidenced based reform to break the schools to prison pipeline.

    • Replace police surveillance in schools, and direct resources toward violence prevention.


    Issue Statement: Shift power back to the people, and away from the corporate and big money interests, by creating a vibrant democracy where voting rights are universal, elections are owned by voters, and the public interest is the major driver of public policy.

    Voting Rights

    • Create a democracy where 100% of voters have easy access to the ballot box, and racial and economic barriers to voting are completely eliminated. 

    • Make it easy to vote by ending all restrictions which reduce voter participation including voter ID, voter purges, and all other neo-Jim Crow provisions of state law. 

    • Eliminate outdated voter registration requirements and replace them with automatic registration of all voters, including automatic updates for people who move or change their names.

    • End the practice of disenfranchising felons and those currently incarcerated and guarantee the right to vote for everyone 18 years or older, which can never be taken away. The votes of incarcerated people will be counted in their home districts, not in the districts their prisons are located.

    • Expand early voting to three weeks before the election at a large number of locations (at least 1 for every 15,000 residents).

    • Institute a right to vote by mail without any preconditions nor Voter ID or witnessing requirements. 

    • Replace the current primary system with Ranked Choice Voting to ensure the candidate with the most overall public support is elected.

    • Establish a fair process for drawing election maps that restores power to the voters to choose their elected officials. 

    • Institute an independent nonpartisan system for drawing legislative districts at all levels (based on the Iowa model) that also ensures equal representation of communities of color. 

    • Include competitiveness as a redistricting criterion because having two evenly matched candidates gives voters the opportunity to meaningfully hold elected officials accountable for their records by giving them a realistic alternative.
    • Join interstate compact to award Wisconsin’s presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote for President.

    • Pass a state constitutional amendment to ban the State Legislature from interfering in the certification of vote counts and the naming of Wisconsin presidential electors.


     

    End Legalized Bribery in Elections by Big Money Interests

    • Create a public financing system, which matches small donations, with sufficient resources to run an effective campaign without dependence on large donors and sufficient to withstand dark money attacks.
    • Wisconsin should enact a “Citizen’s Right to Know” law that requires all political “issue ads” to include a full listing of all donors to the organization making the claims in the ad.
    • Require all entities funding political ads to file financial reports which include the amounts donated and their original sources, not only the last organization money passed through.
    • Outlaw collusion between candidates, Super PACs, and other dark money groups.
    • Require media corporations to provide free advertising time to all political candidates during elections and create a state version of the equal time rule.

     

    Election Integrity

    • Revamp election law enforcement by creating an independent and nonpartisan enforcement agency with independent funding and investigation capacity.

    • Ensure the accuracy and integrity of our elections by keeping a paper record of every vote (which must be visible to each voter) and requiring random public audits based on hand counts of paper ballots and records. 

    • Ban elected officials at all levels from working for or having any ownership stake in companies that design, manufacture, or maintain voting equipment. 

    • Ban use of private entities for recounts or election audits.


     

    Ethics & Public Control

    • Close the revolving door between elected officials, staff, and administrative officials and corporations they are supposed to regulate. 

    • Ban all lobbying by government contractors and recently retired elected officials. 

    • Prohibit elected officials and government employees from using inside information to enrich themselves.

    • Require elected officials to disclose all investments in enterprises potentially impacted by legislation and to recuse themselves from introducing or voting on any legislation that might affect those businesses.

    • Create a right to peacefully protest in Wisconsin state statute which may not be abridged by government, law enforcement, or private actors.


     

    Expand the role of the people in lawmaking:


    • Amend the Wisconsin Constitution to allow voters to veto state legislation (only immediately after a law’s passage) through a referendum process similar to the Ohio model.

    • Repeal state laws that preempt the local power of cities and counties to create higher employment standards such as minimum wages, living wages, prevailing wage, union rights, and paid sick days; environmental standards such as clean water protections, and renewable energy and energy efficiency standards; or the right to determine the structure of local governments.


    Issue Statement: Stop the criminalization of communities of color by establishing that everyone in the United States, regardless of their immigration status or criminal record, has the same fundamental human and constitutional rights.

    As interim steps before this goal can be fully achieved:

    • End discrimination in the issuing of driving licences based on immigrations status.

    • Ensure equitable access for immigrants to healthcare, higher education, and affordable housing, and all other state benefits, that individuals already invest in with their taxes

    • Wisconsin will promote access to higher education by enacting equity policies that allow all students to attend public institutions at the same in-state tuition rates as their fellow high school graduates, regardless of immigration status.

    • Expand BadgerCare to all residents in Wisconsin regardless of legal status (by providing a wrap-around program paid for by the state); and create affordable health coverage options for everyone above the BadgerCare income cap, regardless of immigration status.

    • Mental health services should also be expanded to reach a larger number of immigrants and refugees, particularly those who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and those who have been negatively impacted by increased immigration enforcement.

    • Provide public housing regardless of immigration status at state expense.

    • Ban local law and state law enforcement from cooperating with ICE or any other federal immigration authorities.

    • Protect Worker Rights from Employer Abuse

    • Protect all Wisconsinites, including immigrants, who come forward to report labor violations or worker intimidation from retaliation and provide access to a fair grievance process.

    • Hold employers accountable for violations of all worker rights, including immigrants, by prioritizing the enforcement of labor and employment laws across the economy, including discrimination and sexual harassment protections, wage and hour laws, and health and safety rules
.
    • Create a state office of immigration integration to help all immigrants, regardless of status, become full participants in our state. 


    Issue Statement: Establish in Wisconsin law that members of the LGBTQ community are equal citizens in every since of the term.

    Marriage Equality

    • Recognize same-sex marriage in Wisconsin statues and provide mechanism for legal parentage for same sex couples
    • Eliminate the constitutional restriction that only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state.


    Non-Discrimination

    • Impose far-reaching state statutory prohibitions against discrimination in on the basis of a person’s gender identity employment, health care, housing, public accommodations, public education, credit, and federal jury service on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
    • Prohibit mental health providers from engaging in conversion therapy with a minor. Conversion therapy is any practice that seeks to change an individual’s gender expression, gender identity, or sexual orientation.


    Criminal Justice

    • Eliminate the so-called LGBTQ panic defenses in Wisconsin, stating that defendants cannot assert adequate provocation or self-defense if the criminal act resulted from the discovery of, knowledge of, or potential disclosure of the victim’s gender identity or expression or sexual orientation.

     

    Issue Statement: Guarantee and fund a world class education for everyone in Wisconsin from preschool through college. 

    Early Childhood Education

    • Fully funding universal high-quality childcare with certified early education professionals, run by local school districts.
    • Fully funding public preschool starting at age three with all-day four-year-old kindergarten in every public school.

    Primary and Secondary Education

    • Eliminate property taxes as a source of school funding because it provides more resources to districts with high property values. Replace it with progressive funding system that guarantees equal resources for every public school in Wisconsin.
    • Provide greater funding for schools with higher poverty rates and proportion of special needs students, and fully fund special education costs.
    • Provide a world class education to every child in Wisconsin.
    • Guarantee a class size of no more than 22 students per class in every public school with a qualified and certified teacher.
    • End “test and punish” approach to education. Replace standardized testing with comprehensive evaluations that assess what is needed to help schools and students succeed.
    • Attract the next generation of great educators into the profession
      Guarantee every public school in Wisconsin the resources to raise starting salaries and fund salary steps.
    • Set a goal of doubling the number of educators of color in all grades. Include a robust program to assist students of color in becoming educators.
    • Reform school governance and decision making to give frontline professional educators a greater voice in learning conditions by requiring all school boards to include among their members a frontline educator elected annually by their peers in the district.
    • Require school districts to adhere to public health guidance from CDC, DHS, and local health departments. When they are in conflict districts must follow the highest standard.
    • Require all school districts to enact accountable and measurable safeguards against bullying on school grounds, on-line, and in local communities.


    Privatization

    • Limit charter schools to those authorized by democratically accountable public-school districts. Phase out voucher schools and non-instrumentality charter schools within eight years.
    • Require all voucher and charter schools to meet the same transparency, accountability, and teacher certification requirements as public schools. Also require these schools to accept and fully accommodate all children, including special needs kids.


    Higher Education

    • Raise the guarantee of public education in Wisconsin from 12th grade to 16th grade by providing free public university, technical college, and junior college tuition (and all attendance related expenses for low income students).
    • Set in motion a massive expansion of public college education access that puts Wisconsin on a course to achieve a dramatic increase in the college attainment rate for two-year or four-year degrees (it is now 41% in Wisconsin).
    • Dramatically increase the racial diversity of all UW 4-year institutions by forcing the UW system to work directly with public High Schools to prepare more students of color to be college ready and financially able to afford the full cost of attendance.
    • Enact accountability and transparency measures that make it possible to control hyperinflation in the cost of public colleges and universities.


    Union Rights

    • Restore full collective bargaining rights so that educators, who are at the heart of our education system, have a strong voice in our schools.