Kaufert and School Start Dates

According to an AP story on 11/30/07, freshman Republican Jim Ott of Mequon wants to remove the 2000 law that prevents schools from beginning before September 1.

The move to eliminate this law is supported by the Wisconsin Association of School Boards as well as, according to Ott, many school superintendents.

According to the article:

If Ott wants a hearing on the bill, he will get one, said Tourism Committee Chairman Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah. But Kaufert said he didn't expect the idea to get much support.

"I don't hear an outcry from people," he said. "I
thought this was pretty much behind us."

The original bill in 2000 strikes me as a "Big Gov in Madison excessively sticking its control hand into local communities" law. What makes one think that a rep in Madison from, say, Neenah, knows what is best for a local community education system in Milwaukee or Bayfield when it comes to a start date for the school year.

I would hope that communities would be able to work together to determine what works best to facilitate a healthy economy while serving the educational needs of the children. It seems that the current law does not allow this to happen. If so, then the proposal to allow communities and school districts to determine what serves them best would seem to make the most sense.

Hintz and Mayor Tower at BGC

A side story that is great - public leaders engaging local youth. From the Oshkosh Northwestern:

Getting children involved in making decisions is just one of the goals of the town hall style meetings that are being held at the Boys & Girls Club as part of the leadership program designed by Teen Center Director Ben Perkovich.

"The goal is to get people to think about rules, why we have laws and government," Hintz said. "The earlier that you can stress the importance of involvement of any kind, the better."

Perkovich hopes to bring in local leaders, historians or business leaders about once every three months to talk to the children about their backgrounds, what they do and how they got there. But the town hall style meetings aren't just about the kids listening to the speakers, Perkovich said he hoped the children become involved and ask questions, allowing the speakers to"rap with the kids."

Hintz was the second person to speak to the group. Oshkosh Mayor Frank Tower kicked off the meetings when he spoke earlier in the week.

Another positive is Rep Roth participating in a program with the Harbor House. Agreed, Rep Roth, that anytime you are able to learn about the important things affecting the lives of your constituents, it is a positive.

Hintz, UW, and Responsibility Wishes

Rep Hintz was interviewed by the Badger Herald regarding UW funding in the latest budget. According to Hintz:

"...I just wish we were more responsible with the funding.”

Gordon, I imagine you're not alone.




Photo by Kate Brenner of the Badger Herald, Monday, November 5, 2007 article Hintz: Students must get political

Owens, Roth on Employee Discrimination

Reps Owens and Roth are sponsors of AB 30. According to the LRB:

This bill specifies that it is not employment discrimination because of conviction record for an educational agency to refuse to employ or to terminate from employment an individual who has been convicted of a felony and who has not been pardoned for that felony, whether or not the circumstances of the felony substantially relate to the circumstances of the particular job.

On May 16, the assembly passed AB 30 with all four Winnebago Assembly Reps voting in favor.

This bill joins a list of recent proposals from the Assembly that seek to weaken the protections of ex-felons. While is some cases the results of this bill may be reasonably effective, note that these employers are already legally able to deny employment if the crime is at all related to the employment position.

The issue with the continual assault on common societal protections for ex-felons is that we create an ever-increasingly difficult atmosphere for an ex-felon to succeed in. To the extreme, we create a class of individuals who are long-term reliant on taxpayer-funded social welfare programs and who are more likely to re-offend. Of greater significance, we suggest that our corrections system is entirely inadequate of addressing the needed protections of society while assisting their service population in becoming safe and productive members of society.

Of course it is always unfavorable to oppose legislation that negatively impacts an un-liked population. In addition, it is unlikely that AB30 by itself would cause negative effects in many cases.

UW Oshkosh instructor, author, and convict criminology expert Stephen Richards has impressive credentials that likely exceed most of those in the state Assembly (See Here). He also is an ex-con who spent 4 years in prison. Yet he is doing some of the most impressive and innovative work in Wisconsin (Listen to his interview with UW Oshkosh instructor Tony Palmeri). While we want to ensure that our society is safe and protected, we also want to make sure that we strive to harness the positive potential of everyone. We want to ensure that an ex-felon who is committed to following the law, who works hard, and who positively contributes to society will be welcomed and supported. We also want to make sure that when our lawmakers are discussing emotionally and politically driven topics as with AB30, they are consulting with knowledgeable people like Steven Richards.

To Hintz From Nass On UW

Letter Issued on May 16, 2007 to Rep Hintz and Rep Jeffrey Smith from Rep Steve Nass regarding UW System Financial Aid Staff and Conflicts of Interest:

Dear Representatives Hintz and Smith:

I am writing in response to your request for a public hearing of the Assembly Colleges and Universities Committee on the potential conflicts of interest in the relationships between student loan companies and UW System financial aid staff. As you both know, the scandalous actions of some student financial aid administrators has brought national attention to this serious issue and appropriate reactions from authorities in several states and the federal government.

On May 11, 2007, the UW System Board of Regents took timely action by mandating the development of an ethics code dealing with the activities of financial aid officials within the System. While Wisconsin Ethics Law requires the UW System to already have such an ethics code in place, it is appropriate that UW System President Kevin Reilly and his staff be given reasonable time to develop a draft ethics code for financial aid staff.

I have decided that the Assembly Colleges and Universities Committee will hold a public hearing on this issue in mid-July. At the July hearing, I will request the representatives of the UW System, the Wisconsin Technical College System and private higher education institutions testify on their actions to clean-up the situation in this state. The July public hearing will focus on specific steps being taken by these institutions of higher education.

I am not interested in pomp and circumstance from the leaders of higher education in this state. If the testimony from these leaders is not satisfactory, I assure you that our committee will move promptly on legislation to protect the interests of students from unsavory practices between colleges/universities and private student loan companies.

Additionally, I will require the leaders of higher education to specifically address if the questionable activities already identified at various Wisconsin institutions violated either existing campus policies or state law. Our response to this issue shouldn’t only be about going forward with reforms. It must also be about holding individual administrators accountable for past actions. A concept that is particularly foreign within higher education.

Sincerely,

Steve Nass, Chairman
Assembly Colleges and Universities Committee

Kaufert and School Safety

Press Release from Rep Kaufert dated 5/15/07:

KAUFERT SUPPORTS SCHOOL SAFETY INITIATIVE

MADISON….. State Representative Dean Kaufert (R-Neenah) urged his colleagues on the Joint Finance Committee today to consider loosening the state’s spending cap on public schools for enhanced safety measures in the state budget.

“It’s a different world out there these days,” said Kaufert. “We use to assume our kids were safe when we dropped them off at school.”

Kaufert’s proposal would allow school boards to exceed the state spending cap by $25 per student to help support expenses related to school safety in Wisconsin high schools.

“It’s a relatively small adjustment but it sends a clear message that safety is a priority and we want schools to make the investment,” said Kaufert.

Hintz holds budget forum in Oshkosh

Gordon Hintz held a forum on the state education budget Monday night. The Oshkosh Area School District is depending on the state budget to pass before it passes its own 2007-08 budget later this year.

Hintz on Budget and UW System

AT reporter Jessica Koehler covered a recent budget session by Gordon Hintz at UW Oshkosh on 4/30/07. You can read the entire story from 5/3 here. Coverage of Hintz included the following:

Rep. Gordon Hintz, D-Oshkosh, said the open forum was meant to show the public where the state’s dollars have gone in the past, what the current budget proposal is for 2007-09, and how those changes affect students and faculty at UW-Oshkosh. “I’ve largely believed that we ask people to participate in elections, but rarely are decisions being made as they are affecting us,” Hintz said. “My goal is to put everybody in the decision-making seat.”

Hintz said the UW System is one of the top five general-purpose revenue programs funded by the states budget, but due to declining state support, students and staff at UW-Oshkosh have been negatively affected over the past few years. Hintz showed that during the 1992-93 school year, the state spent 11.1 percent of the budget on the University of Wisconsin. In 2006-07, the state spent only 8.0 percent of the budget on the UW System. Since 1991, tuition prices for the UW System, excluding UW-Madison, have gone up almost $3,000, and during the 2006-07 school year, students were paying more than half of their tuition on their own.

However, Hintz added that the budget proposal for 2007-09 includes additional funding for UW-Oshkosh for the first time several years. Hintz said the new budget proposal addresses the problems the campus and the city are facing. One goal of the proposal is called the UW-Oshkosh Growth Initiative, which allocates $2.6 million to raise the number of graduates in higher demanding programs at the university, such as biology, microbiology, medical technology, psychology and business.

Hintz said the initiative should aid in planning the budget and help the university to adapt to the way Wisconsin has evolved.“We’ve never been good at making long-term budget plans at the state level,” Hintz said. “Our revenue and tax system is built for an outdated economy. We’re moving toward a service economy. The global economy will require more graduates with bachelor degrees to keep up with the high-skilled jobs.”

Another goal of the UW-Oshkosh Growth Initiative is to increase the number of students on campus by 480 by the end of 2009, to help increase the number of adults with college degrees in Wisconsin. Hintz explained that Oshkosh would have to increase its annual degree production by 36.1 percent by 2025 to match some of the best-performing schools in the country. “Wisconsin lags in bachelor degree holders and that’s something that these budget proposals are aimed at,” Hintz said. “This is something we need to put in our goals of what higher education should provide. The state needs higher education to play a bigger role in increasing the skills of our citizens.”

Hintz on Financial Aid Loan Issue

Below is a letter sent by Rep Hintz to the chair of the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities:

Dear Representative Nass,

Recently a number of colleges and universities across the country have had their student loan operations fall under a cloud of suspicion due to a wide range of apparent conflicts of interest. Unfortunately, several schools in our own University of Wisconsin system are now facing similar scrutiny. I am writing to request that the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities convene a hearing to investigate this matter further and to ensure that hardworking Wisconsin students and their families are receiving fair student aid guidance from the schools they attend.

According to numerous published reports, student lending companies have employed a variety of methods to promote their services, including:
· Offering university administrators lucrative “consulting” fees in return for nebulous services.
· Giving schools money in exchange for leaving the federal government’s loan program.
· Supplying financial aide officers with lender-funded training.
· Paying universities an annual fee for being granted “preferred lender” status.

While the first two of these examples have yet to be reported in Wisconsin, evidence of their existence elsewhere should lead us to inquire if they are practiced here. The second pair of examples has occurred within the UW system; and while neither are perhaps technically violations of the conflict of interest guidelines in state statutes, each raises ethical questions with regards to lending.

When schools and lenders adopt such practices competition in the lending market is stifled and results in the appearance of collusion against the best financial interests of the student. It is incumbent on the members of our committee to find out which schools in the UW system are using such methods and to assess the impact on the students of our state. With the cost of tuition increasing and more Americans carrying debt, we owe it to the students of Wisconsin to ensure that they have an affordable and fair method to help them provide for their education.

Sincerely,
Gordon Hintz

_____________

The Milwaukee JS also covered the story here, including a breakdown of issues in Wisconsin including:

"• A student loan company called Education Finance Partners paid UW-Oshkosh a cut of its student loan volume in exchange for being placed on the university's preferred lender list for private loans.
• The director of financial aid at UW-Eau Claire owns stock in the parent company of Citibank, one of the university's preferred lenders.
• Wells Fargo, a preferred lender at UW-Green Bay and UW-La Crosse, paid for financial aid officials from those universities to attend out-of-state training.
• The director of financial aid at UW-Milwaukee served on the advisory council of Student Loan Xpress, a company that does more business at UWM than at any other university in the country. She has since resigned from the council."

The Oshkosh Northwestern covered the story here, including the following statement by UWO professor Kevin McGee:

"I would feel the same concern about any financial arrangement where the university is benefiting from any kind of financial transaction involving our students," McGee said. "I think it's appropriate that we have an educational role in when it's smart to borrow money and when it's not, but when the university starts to make a profit out of it, is there a temptation to become morally compromised."

Hintz, Wells, and Building

UWO received the approval of the regents for several UWO building projects totaling $97 Million.

The Oshkosh Northwestern today posts that the additions include:

• What taxpayers will be paying for:
  -- Academic Building - $40 million
  -- Student support and Development Center- $8.5 million
  -- Acquisition of Cub Food lot for Facilities Management- $5.9 million
• What UWO pays for:
  -- Academic building – $8 million
  -- Residence hall- $34 million
  -- Cub food acquisition - $350,000
  -- Softball stadium- $500,000

The article also included the following information regarding Rep Hintz:

Rep. Gordon Hintz, D-Oshkosh, said the biggest hurdle UWO faced was getting approval from the building commission. Hintz said he knows that the chancellor has spent considerable time at that commission.

"One of the reasons why I believe this plan will be successful and will have the support of the legislature is because UWO and Chancellor Wells have done a good job planning it," Hintz said.