Frederica Freyberg:
Governor Tony Evers left his post as state public school’s chief to become governor. Tonight we introduce you to his appointee in that position, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Carolyn Stanford Taylor. Taylor has served the past 17 years as the assistant state superintendent for the Division of Learning Support. She has an education degree from UW-Madison, was a classroom teacher and principal in the Madison School District and served as president of the local teachers union. Superintendent Stanford Taylor joins us now. Thanks very much for being here.

Carolyn Stanford Taylor:
Thank you for inviting me.

Frederica Freyberg:
Congratulations on your appointment.

Carolyn Stanford Taylor:
Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what will be your priority in this position now leading Wisconsin schools?

Carolyn Stanford Taylor:
So we’re going to focus on closing gaps. Our agenda will remain equity. I was a part of setting that agenda, as you mentioned. I’ve been at the department for 17 and a half years. And so that work is my passion. We will look at how we can address the gaps in Wisconsin, because we know that Wisconsin as a state really does well in terms of graduation and attendance rates. But when we start to desegregate the data, there are subpopulations that are not doing as well.

Frederica Freyberg:
Yeah. Because those achievement gaps, particularly between black and white students, are kind of intractable. This has been a problem for year after year after year.

Carolyn Stanford Taylor:
Yes. And while we’ve been doing some work, I’m encouraged by this new budget or the budget that we’ve submitted and hopeful that we will receive those dollars to do additional work, because we know that early childhood is really important. And we want to start on the preventive end to kind of front-load dollars, because we want to avoid the end result, which could be incarceration. So if we start to look at early childhood, invest in our 4K programs, 3K programs for our urban districts, look at afterschool programming for our students, some of the mental health work that needs to be done in schools, additional resources like counselors, psychologists, social workers to help those schools that have been under-resourced to finally kind of make a dent in that.

Frederica Freyberg:
The Governor Evers’ budget calls overall, over two years, for $1.4 billion.

Carolyn Stanford Taylor:
Yes.

Frederica Freyberg:
And then there are obviously large sums of money in these areas of which you speak, like mental health.

Carolyn Stanford Taylor:
Yes.

Frederica Freyberg:
And also special education, $600 million. Do you expect that number — that’s a big number — to be a heavy lift in the budget session?

Carolyn Stanford Taylor:
I would hope. Our governor has said he’s going to reach across the aisle. I think there are people of goodwill in the legislature who are looking to make a difference for our children and our families. They’ve heard over the years the needs. Needs expressed by us, needs expressed by families, communities, advocacy organizations. So the needs have been there. So to me now’s the time to do the right thing.

Frederica Freyberg:
Has it been a situation in years past, in sessions past, that there haven’t been the resources to address those needs, particularly when it comes to achievement gaps?

Carolyn Stanford Taylor:
I think the resources are there. It’s a matter of us prioritizing education. There are always going to be needs, but what we’re finding is that the needs in our schools continue to increase. And so at some point we’re going to have to stop and really start to look at prioritizing education and fund some of those things that are so sorely needed in our schools.

Frederica Freyberg:
And that includes, as you were suggesting, this early childhood education, 3K. Would that be in the state’s largest school districts where some of these gaps are the worst?

Carolyn Stanford Taylor:
Yes. That’s what we’re proposing for 3K. And of course 4K is in most of our school districts. But we’re talking about extending that to full day 4K because we know that a lot of our children come from environments where they’re not hearing language. They’re not in environments where they’re learning social skills. And so they start out with a deficit.

Frederica Freyberg:
We’ve been doing some reporting on trauma.

Carolyn Stanford Taylor:
Yes.

Frederica Freyberg:
In children. And what kind of provisions are there in this budget and in your priorities for addressing that among students, particularly perhaps in some of, again, the state’s largest school districts?

Carolyn Stanford Taylor:
So that’s the exciting thing about the budget and what that might assist us in doing. We’ve been doing some of the work. We’ve had some pilots out there, where we’ve gotten grant dollars and we’ve given those to certain districts to work on trauma-informed schools and classrooms, to look at the ACES work that was done. And you probably remember that First Lady Tonette had an initiative called “Fostering Futures” and that was around trauma. We did some collaborative work around that. So that’s in the work. We’ve come up with some impact for those areas that have gotten some of those grants that we’re hoping to use for other districts and schools as an example of how they can use those dollars to outreach and do work around trauma.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Superintendent Stanford Taylor, thanks very much.

Carolyn Stanford Taylor:
You’re welcome. Thank you.