Dear Friends,

The 170th Wisconsin State Fair is underway! After being forced to cancel last year due to the pandemic, all of the fair's great traditions are back. Find out what's happening, what foods you can sample, and what shows to see here. The fair runs for the next 11 days and you are not required to wear a mask to attend.

As always, if you have any concerns or ideas on how to improve our great state, please do not hesitate to contact me by phone at 608-266-5830 or by email at Sen.Darling@legis.wisconsin.gov.

On, Wisconsin!
MPS Continues Punishing Their Few Good Schools
Too many schools in Milwaukee are failing their students. So why is their school board punishing the best ones? Last week, the Milwaukee Public School Board tried to pull the rug out from under two of the city’s top-performing schools.

Students at Milwaukee Excellence Charter School were forced to spend last year learning virtually and now will have to do it again. This time, it’s not COVID-19, it’s the union-controlled school board that is trying to keep kids out of the classroom. The high-performing charter school needs more space, but the board refused to approve it for weeks.

It's important to remember that charter schools are public schools. However, charters have more freedom in how they educate children - including not forcing their teachers to be in a union. That's a big reason why MPS doesn't want Milwaukee Excellence to succeed.

I am happy to report that MPS Superintendent Keith Posley is allowing the school to use emergency powers to move its high school grades to a floor in Douglas Middle School for one year. While still not a perfect situation, this compromise will help make sure kids in Milwaukee Excellence will have facilities to learn in for the upcoming school year.

MPS is also playing politics with the successful Milwaukee College Prep (MCP) schools. As a district, MPS “meets few expectations” on the most recent state report cards. Each of the four MCP campuses “exceeds expectations.” Despite being one of the top schools in the district, the school board continues to put up obstacles against the school. 

Kids already have a tough time succeeding in the many failing schools in the Milwaukee Public School System. Now the district is actively punishing the students in the few successful schools.
Audit Shows More Failures by Evers’ Administration
Governor Evers continues to fail Wisconsin workers seeking the unemployment benefits they deserve. According to another non-partisan Legislative Audit Bureau audit, Evers’ troubled agency is not complying “with federal regulations because it did not resolve appeal decisions promptly from June 2020 through May 2021.

This is just the latest in a long line of failures at Governor Evers’ Department of Workforce Development. People who are desperate for the benefits they deserve can’t get Evers’ bureaucrats to even pick up the phone, and when they do, they are rude and don’t respond promptly. It’s past time for the governor to take his agency to task start helping the people of the state.

Last year, a non-partisan Legislative Audit Bureau audit showed the Evers administration wasn’t even answering the phone from people desperate to collect the benefits they were owed. According to the audit, only 0.5% of calls were answered from March to June of 2020. Despite billions in federal funding and claiming to have cleared their massive unemployment backlog, Evers continues to mishandle claims and misrepresent the dire nature of the situation. 

Several constituents from our area stated that Evers’ Department of Workforce Development (DWD) is unprofessional, rude, and still takes weeks – sometimes months – to respond. DWD disbursed funds to several people but months later doubled back to inform them that they had been overpaid and suddenly owed thousands of dollars. With minimal explanation, DWD mailed threats to issue warrants and threatened to place a lien on claimants’ property to recover the alleged overpayment from earlier that year. DWD completely ignored the claimants when they tried to ask questions, both before and after the warrant threat was sent.

Quotes from constituents from the 8th Senate District:
  • “I need help getting my claim processed. I waited for April-September 2020 January-March 2021 and now again April 10-now. I can’t get a job without a working phone. I need to pay my bills, already experienced homelessness and bankruptcy.” 
  • “It has been 9+ weeks and still nothing”
  • “According to my portal, I am owed 26 weeks of UI…[I] was told if I didn’t like it then to contact my Republican [legislators] and let them know how I feel because it’s their fault. This was just one instance of a lack of professionalism. We have been told that it was representatives 4th week and didn’t know what to do. That did not fill me with confidence.”
  • “I am an unfortunate victim of DWD roadkill, called my unemployment claim that has been mismanaged since December 12, 2020. I waited a month and still have no new letter, I called DWD on January 12, 2021, for an update. I talked to the rudest person I can ever recall regarding the status of my unemployment claim. He was personally insulted for calling him (even gave me a lecture for doing so) and wasting his time. He was very demeaning, but I kept my composure, trying to find a solution.”

It's disappointing that the governor refuses to fix the mess he created.
Please Donate Blood, Plasma
One way you can help is by donating blood. If you have recovered from COVID-19, please especially consider donating your plasma.

You can find out where to donate here and here.
COVID-19 Vaccine, Testing Information
Around the 8th...