Waukesha County

Since July 2011, Waukesha County school districts have been some of the most aggressive districts in Wisconsin in using Act 10 to wipe out 50 years of improvements to teachers’ salaries, benefits, and working conditions that were negotiated through fair collective bargaining laws that were wiped out by Act 10.

Following the implementation of Act 10 in July 2011, many Waukesha County school districts eliminated fair and objective career salary schedules for often haphazard “merit pay schemes” that gave inconsistent pay raises to teachers on often sketchy criteria like “value to the school” or “ supports the principal’s authority”. In reality, most Waukesha County districts’ “merit pay” schemes boil down to having the amount of your raise determined by whether your principal likes you.

As with every Wisconsin county, some districts are better places to work than others. For instance, the majority MAGA GQP Republican voting New Berlin school district has a sordid history of making extreme cuts to teacher salaries and benefits. In high cost of living Waukesha County, New Berlin rolled back starting teacher salaries to $33,000 for years following Act 10, only increasing them after they had difficulty finding teachers willing to work for such low salaries to replace the multitudes of teachers resigning from their district.

Other districts effectively cut teacher salaries by adding days or even up to 2 weeks to the Contracted Calendar, with no additional compensation. Following Act 10, the Menomonee Falls school district added numerous days of required work to their standard teaching contract, following the lead of several nearbyWaukesha County school districts.

More than any other county in the state, numerous Waukesha County school districts have used Act 10 to terminate scores, perhaps hundreds of older teachers since 2011 and replace them with younger lower salaried teachers. Wisconsin is the ONLY state in America where school districts can conduct massive “purges” of older teachers and replace them with younger ones. In some of the smaller Waukesha County school districts, there are only a few teachers remaining who survived these “purges” that occurred mostly between 2012 and 2017.

Recent events lead us to believe that teacher salary and benefit cuts and teacher “purges” will be returning in the near future. Accelerating an initiative began in 2022, the Waukesha Republican Party (WisRED) ran a large slate of candidates with the goal of electing anti-teacher, right wing school board majorities in every Waukesha County school district. Supported by thousands of dollars in free advertising on right wing AM talk radio, this coordinated slate of candidates won.

As reported by the Journal Sentinel, 80% of the school board members in Waukesha County were endorsed and supported by this WisRED initiative to “take over” Waukesha County school boards.

These candidates ran on largely coordinated platforms that were supported by up to $500,000 of independent expenditures by large Republican donors. (according to talk radio hosts). During many hours of free airtime on right wing talk radio, various WisRED supported candidates promised to eliminate the homosexual agenda, stop the non-existent problem of boys using the girls bathrooms, stop another non-existent problem of boys on girls' sports teams, take the non-existent cat litter boxes out of the bathrooms, remove the non-existent CRT from every classroom, and cut taxes by targeting those over-paid lazy teachers’ salaries and benefits.

During their interviews on AM talk radio, many WisRED Waukesha County school board candidates repeated the same attacks on teacher pay, saying that no teacher should be earning more than $60,000 for six months of work teaching five hours per day, with the rest of the time paid vacation. Many candidates said that they would balance school budgets by getting rid of all the highly paid teachers and replacing them with beginning teachers that could be “molded” by the district.

When candidates tell you what they are going to do after they’re elected, we think you should believe them. Rich Republican donors didn’t spend up to $500,000 to elect majorities of right wing MAGA school board members on every school board in Waukesha County (except Elmbrook), if there wasn’t a Master Plan already in place.

We think that any teacher interested in a teaching position in a Waukesha County school district should be aware that the teaching and working conditions in the majority of school districts may be on the cusp of taking a dramatic turn for the worse as the new MAGA school board members dictate extreme cuts to teacher salaries and benefits, and likely more rounds of “purges” of older, more highly paid teachers.

Remember that Wisconsin is the ONLY state in America where all teachers, especially experienced teachers have to be afraid of being terminated every time a bunch of MAGA right wing whack jobs achieve majority voting levels on the school board. This is the main reason why we so strongly advocate that teachers with less than 15 years of experience leave Wisconsin.

Whatever the Master Plan details are, we think teachers in Waukesha County school districts should plan for several years of attacks & turmoil as these Republican school board members carry out the orders of the Republican Party and the Republican donors who financed their campaigns.

.If you are planning on relocating to accept a teaching position in a Waukesha County school district, we urge you to explore the far better teaching opportunities available in northern Illinois and throughout Minnesota. If you’re moving anyway, why not move to a state where teachers are financially rewarded and respected far more than teachers in Wisconsin?