Brittany Kinser Must be Stopped
One of the many important elections Wisconsinites will vote on in April is the race for State Superintendent. Current incumbent Jill Underly will face off against challenger Brittany Kinser. Many (author included) who are on the side of public education have the vague sense that they should vote for Underly, but are unsure of exactly why as this race has in many ways been overshadowed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Once you dig further into the details though, it becomes unarguably apparent that Underly is the better candidate and that Kinser poses a dire threat to Wisconsin’s public education.
During her tenure as Superintendent, Underly has clearly demonstrated her commitment to defending public education. She has defended programs that support children of color and LGBTQ+ students. She has criticized increases in charter school funding and under her leadership the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has pushed forward with creating public dashboards to increase transparency related to charter school funding, facing heavy opposition from Republicans. She has also supported lawsuits to reinstate collective bargaining rights for teacher’s unions.
And most importantly, Governor Evers seems at least willing to listen to Underly. His recent budget is very supportive of public education and directly includes many items Undely asked for in her proposed DPI budget. Granted his passed budgets are often very different from his proposed ones and the previous budget was disastrous for public education. What is important here though, is that Underly appears to have some influence over Evers and she may be a key ally in pressuring him to not sell out public schools during the budget process. Underly has called for $4 billion in new funding for public schools, implementing a free school lunch program, grants to ensure clean drinking water, and additional support for student mental health. All of these exact items are included in Evers’ budget. The budget also calls for freezing charter school slots, requiring schools to license teachers, and put the price of school vouchers on individuals’ tax bills. Considering Evers’ history of caving to Republicans’ demands during the budget process, it is unlikely that many of these items will be in the final budget unless Evers actually negotiates rather than just giving in to whatever Republicans want. It is unclear exactly how much influence Underly has over Evers, but she could at least publicly pressure him to veto any budget that does increase charter school seats or that does not provide funding for public education.
It is also important to note that she cannot always count on Evers as an ally. Evers joined Republicans’ criticism of DPI’s recently changed testing standards. While it is a fair critique that changing these standards will make it more difficult to compare previous year’s test scores due to the changing criteria, the changing standards follow a wider trend across the country with states from Oklahoma to New York also implementing similar new standards. Considering that a 2021 study by the U.S. Department of Education found test standards in Wisconsin were among the highest in the nation, these changes can hardly be considered the drastic lowering of standards that Evers and Republicans claim it to be. While it is unfortunate that the standards have changed so drastically that comparison across years is no longer possible, this controversy shows that Underly is willing to implement policies that she truly believes are best for Wisconsin schools and will not fall into the trap of believing Republican propaganda as Evers did.
And how does Underly compare to her challenger Brittany Kinser? Kinser would have you believe that she is a moderate and a ‘blue-dog’ Democrat. It is clear that this is all a smokescreen for her true far-right beliefs. Kinser was previously the president of scandal ridden charter school advocate City Forward Collective and has not been shy in her support of shoveling even more public dollars into unaccountable charter schools. She also has come out on record as being anti-Trans, saying students should use the bathroom and play sports that correspond to their ‘biological sex.’ Ironically enough, despite running to oversee Wisconsin’s public schools, Kinser would be unable to teach or be a principal in any of the schools she will be charged with overseeing as she has never had a Wisconsin teacher's license and her administer certification has since expired.
Furthermore, looking at her donors, it is not surprising that despite claiming to be moderate, Kinser is parroting fascist Republican talking points. Her campaign has received over half a million dollars, four times as much funding as Underly’s. Looking over recent campaign documents, it is truly astounding how many 5 digit donations her campaign received while Underly barely received any donations over $1,000. Her donors are a who's who of Republican backers. Her donors have previously donated to Tim Michaels and other fascist Republicans like Bob Donovan and Patrick Snyder, are staunch advocates of charter schools, supported Conservative Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly’s and Robin Vos’ campaigns, and includes many other Republican Mega Donors like Diane Hendricks. Hendricks happened to also speak at the Republican Convention this year, which included your expected amount of feverish nationalism, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, anti-abortion, resounding support of Trump rhetoric that you would expect. And these are only a handful of the individuals who have donated over $10,000 to Kinser’s campaign. One can only expect even more fascist-supporting mega donors to continue funnelling money into Kinser’s campaign from now until April.
Do not be fooled. Kinser is anything but a moderate and will surely implement her donor’s radical agenda to defund public education and direct more unaccountable dollars to charter schools. All you need to do is follow the money. The current state of the Superintendent race becomes even more concerning looking at recent polling which shows that Kinser generally is viewed positively but is also the candidate those polled know the least about. We must get the message out of Kinser’s true intentions. Hopefully Underly’s finances will improve, but it already is apparent that she will have an uphill battle given how much money is being poured into Kinser’s campaign. We need to defend public education and trans kids. To learn more and support Underly’s campaign visit here.
