https://www.wortfm.org/grilling-of-wisconsin-dpi-continues-in-assembly-hearing/
The meeting under scrutiny at Wednesday’s public hearing happened in the Wisconsin Dells nearly two years ago, when Department of Public Instruction staff and educators convened with a private vendor to review the state’s test questions. Critics say the meeting violated open records law and the department has been slow to fulfill records requests, with right-wing advocacy group Institute for Reforming Government (IRG) leading the charge.
The Department of Public Instruction has also garnered criticism around testing standards after it changed benchmarks early last year, in a decision that critics contend moved the goalposts to raise achievement statistics.
The closed-door meeting in 2024 effectively shut the public out of essential policy decisions, IRG General Counsel Jake Curtis argued at Wednesday’s hearing.
“Working groups created by DPI are not exempt from Wisconsin’s open meetings law. Tax payers funded this process but DPI shut them out,” Curtis said. “A state agency doesn’t get to spend public dollars, make consequential decisions, and then hide the process from public scrutiny.”
But DPI says that the meeting didn’t violate open records law, because it was organized by private vendor Data Recognition Corporation (DRC). Andrew Hoyer-Booth, the department’s legislative liaison, maintained that stance today.
“So I think our testimony has been fairly clear on that,” said Booth. “In terms of DRC being a private entity, and not a governmental agency or body, and the work that the DPI contracted for, they completed. I think that, as leg. counsel referenced the complaint filing, the great thing about Wisconsin and our country is if you have a difference in opinion, there is a venue and a body to bring that case forward. But we feel clearly and pretty strongly that the work that was done by DRC complies with what they needed to do to complete what was outlined in the contract with DPI.”
The meeting’s hefty price tag, more than 350,000 dollars for a four-day trip, has been a favored target for Republican legislators; DPI’s 2 million dollar budget request was stuck in limbo for several weeks earlier this year, until the Legislature’s budget-writing committee agreed to release just 1.75 million of the request in March.
The Dairyland Sentinel finally obtained financial records on the Wisconsin Dells meeting more than a year after they made the request. That’s an unreasonable amount of time, Republican Representative Amanda Nedweski argued today.
“I just think that when we connect all of the pieces of why we’re here, we have just yet another example of taking a really long time to fulfill public records requests, okay,” said Nedweski. “I understand you have your reasons but I would say it’s unreasonable that it took fifteen months.”
Defending the lagging request fulfillments, Assistant State Superintendent Rich Judge said the department is overburdened, under-staffed, and under-funded.
“It would be great if we had more legal support in our office of legal services, but that is not something that we have. And it would be great if we had more investigative resources, but the Legislature currently holds back 10 percent of our license fee revenue just to add to the general fund,” said Judge. “Every cycle we ask for that money to be allowed to be used and we don’t get it. So, it would be great to have more resources for this and I think that would help to expedite not just open records requests, but help to expedite our other legal processes as well.”
Representative Mike Bare, a Democrat, agreed. He argued that DPI is under-resourced as part of a conservative agenda to dismantle public education and urged his colleagues to support an increase in DPI funding.
“Mistrust is growing because of theater like this, and we also have an obligation to point to good things that are happening in our schools, good things that DPI are doing,” Bare said. “So I would be interested, Madam Chair, and we’ve got a leadership member here too, if you’re interested in pushing in the next budget for DPI to have the resources that they need to be responsive in a more timely way, would you be interested in a bill now?”
Image courtesy: Chali Pittman / WORT News.