The weekend brought us wonderful Mother’s Day celebrations, the Northern Lights, plenty of sunshine between rain showers and the inevitable pro-Hamas protests at the UW graduation.
Today brings us the Monday Key Reads.
Next week, prominent School Choice advocate Dr. Corey DeAngelis will be in the state. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty will be hosting him in Waukesha County on Wednesday the 22nd. DeAngelis is the author of the upcoming book The Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids From Radicals Ruining Our Schools.’
If tickets for the event at the Ingleside Hotel are still available by the time you read this, you can get them here.
Ahead of his appearance for WILL, DeAngelis spoke with the Badger Institute’s policy director, Patrick McIlheran,
The Parent Revolution: Q&A with Corey DeAngelis | The Badger Institute
In the book, what struck me is the role of the pandemic in changing the dynamics of school choice. There are suddenly a lot more people paying attention to this, aren’t there?
DeAngelis: Right, and I think it’s because the teachers union has overplayed their hand and awakened a sleeping giant — which happens to be parents who have more of a say in their kids’ education — when they’ve lobbied the (Centers for Disease Control) to make the schools close as long as possible.
They were threatening safety strikes in 2020. Some unions were posting interpretive dance videos to protest going back to work. Unions all across the country were using fake body bags, coffins, and tombstones to protest going back to work.
The silver lining was that families who thought their kids were in good public schools, based on the rankings from the state, started to see another dimension of school quality that’s arguably more important than a standardized test score — which is whether the school’s curriculum aligns with family values.
Parents seeing that their kids are being brainwashed with radical ideologies in the classroom was more, much more of a motivation for them to fight for real systemic change than something that can be captured by a standardized test, particularly because the most advantaged, politically savvy or politically powerful groups of parents weren’t as motivated before the pandemic because they thought things were okay.
All of a sudden, with the school closures, you have a much broader coalition of families fighting for school choice than we’ve ever seen before.
The students at UWM will end their tent city tantrum on Tuesday. They cut a similar deal as their fellow travelers in Madison.
UW-Milwaukee strikes deal with pro-Palestinian protesters to take down encampment | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
UWM and pro-Palestinian protesters reached an agreement Sunday afternoon, two weeks after tents went up on the lawn outside Mitchell Hall in defiance of a state rule banning camping on campus property…
Similar to the deal UW-Madison struck Friday, UWM protesters will meet with university foundation leaders to discuss divesting from companies connected with Israel.
“We recognized divestment is not an overnight process,” the student groups said, adding they expect a divestment timeline will come out of the first meeting.
The deal in Madison may have diminished the intensity of the pro-Hamas disruptions to graduation, but the capitulation did not prevent outbursts. While not as bad as what happened elsewhere across the country, there were a couple of dozen petulant protesters who defied the rules, yet again, and put their own desire to be self righteous ahead of the right of the thousands in attendance to enjoy a significant moment with friends and family.
Despite warnings to the contrary, there was no evidence that the students who disrupted graduation at Camp Randall would face any disciplinary action at all.
Here’s the sympathetic coverage from Wisconsin Public Radio…
Students protest war in Gaza at UW-Madison commencement | WPR
The first signs of protest happened when UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin began her speech. Roughly 20 students stood and turned their backs to Mnookin, and two students draped a Palestinian flag over their backs.
Others displayed messages painted on the top of their caps, including “Free Palestine” and “There are no universities in Gaza.”
Later in the program, a group of students carrying a Palestinian flag quietly left the arena, escorted by police. There was no noticeable shouting as they left, and graduation speakers continued as scheduled without interruption.
The college sports’ revolving door continues to spin furiously. This early unexpected exit, however, doesn’t involve a player.
Sundance Wicks leaving Green Bay for Wyoming after one season | WLUK
Green Bay head men’s basketball coach Sundance Wicks has been hired as the new head coach of Wyoming after just one, albeit successful season with the Phoenix.
Wicks is a Wyoming native and had been a former assistant in Laramie. Now he replaces former Cowboy’s head coach Jeff Linder who left in recent days to become the top assistant coach at Texas Tech.
The ones we hope stay, leave. The ones we wish would leave erect tents.
Such is life.
