Social studies teachers across Wisconsin are being told by administrators to stay away from teaching about elections because of fears of “indoctrination.” — the president of the Wisconsin Council for the Social Studies and middle school teacher Sarah Kopplin said parents are often bringing the complaints. With a recent sharp reduction in drug deaths, Paula Silha from the La Crosse County Health Department described the work of multidisciplinary teams that investigate drug overdose deaths.
 

Sarah Kopplin
President, Wisconsin Council for the Social Studies

• Kopplin teaches world geography and civics at Shorewood Intermediate School, and was recognized as a 2023 Wisconsin Teacher of the Year. She also leads the Wisconsin Council for the Social Studies, which conducted a survey of teachers and found 42% reported being restricted by administrators from teaching about elections. Kopplin said it is not happening in her district near Milwaukee.
• Kopplin: “So, the things that we hear from educators around our state in terms of parent complaints are that our teachers are conducting units of study where students are learning about how elections work, how votes are cast and counted, how the electoral Electoral College process works. And parents are hearing from their students that when they come home that this type of topic is being discussed and then immediately complain to principals or school board members that their children are being indoctrinated with political ideology.”

Paula Silha
Education manager, La Crosse County Health Department

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports a more than 10% drop in drug overdose deaths nationally since April 2023 – a decline mirrored in Wisconsin. This drop comes after a surge of deaths caused by the synthetic opioid fentanyl. To combat such deaths, communities have been conducting a process called Overdose Fatality Reviews to get at root causes of drug use with the aim of preventing overdoses. La Crosse County started reviewing fatal overdoses in 2018, and Silha says several changes have been made as a result.
• Silha: “One of the changes is a jail release kit that’s provided to all people who have been discharged from the county jail. We were noticing and doing and conducting reviews that within the first couple of months after getting out of jail, if the individual returned to their former lifestyle, they were at a great risk of overdose. And so a jail release kit was something that was put together by some of the groups that our agencies that are represented on the team. It includes Narcan and it includes a rescue mask for providing rescue breathing.”

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