Announcer:

The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Frederica Freyberg:

Another Trump indictment zeros in on Wisconsin in the fake elector scheme. Teacher turnover in Wisconsin soars and echoes of COVID reverberate.

I’m Frederica Freyberg, tonight on “Here & Now,” Zac Schultz explains the links between Georgia and Wisconsin in the latest Donald Trump indictment. New research points to record numbers of public school teachers leaving the profession. Dr. Michael Osterholm gives his latest takes on COVID and lessons learned, and Steven Potter brings the next story in our series on abortion. It’s “Here & Now” for August 18.

Announcer:

Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

Wisconsin is once again in the mix as former president Donald Trump and 18 others are indicted on charges of racketeering in Georgia this week. The charges are the result of Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, culminating in the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. While the focus of the investigation is on Trump’s efforts to flip Georgia’s electoral votes, the indictment refers to a similar plan in this state. “Here & Now” senior political reporter Zac Schultz explains while no one from Wisconsin was indicted, a couple of prominent state Republicans show up in the evidence.

Zac Schultz:

The indictment comes from the Fulton County prosecutor in Georgia, but it doesn’t take long for Wisconsin to enter the picture. The charging document alleges a conspiracy hatched by Donald Trump and his associates, referred to as the enterprise in documents, the plan was to have Republicans in key battleground states sign up as a slate of false electors to delay the certification of Joe Biden as president. The prosecutor says Acts 39 and 46 of the conspiracy involved Jim Troupis, a prominent Wisconsin Republican lawyer in a memo urging him to get a slate of false electors to meet in Wisconsin on December 14th, 2020. Acts 50 and 64 involve memos in a meeting with Brian Schimming, the current chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin. The documents say Schimming was given proposed language for the false elector documents, and during a meeting two days before the real electors met, Schimming was on a phone call with Trump lawyer and co-defendant Rudy Giuliani where he was told to keep news of the false electors away from the media. Schimming did not answer questions about the Georgia indictment during a press call this week, but issued a statement that read, “As stated previously, Republican electors met in accordance with state statutory guidelines on the advice of attorneys and with precedent to preserve all legal options still pending before the courts. Had the courts ruled differently, the alternate electors would have been needed.” However, Act 107 of the conspiracy says the false electors were not for the courts but for January 6th. It says Republicans were to contest the counting of electoral votes during the joint session of Congress. Then vice president Mike Pence was to not open votes from Wisconsin and five other states, declare the electoral votes in dispute and allow the false electors to swing the election to Trump. Two Wisconsin Republicans, Congressman Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald, did object to counting the electoral votes from two other states, but not Wisconsin. A top aide for Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson tried to coordinate a meeting with vice president Pence to hand over Wisconsin’s slate of false electors, but Pence’s staff said no. The count was stopped during the insurrection, but ultimately the correct votes were counted and Joe Biden became president. Reporting from Madison, I’m Zac Schultz for “Here & Now.”

Frederica Freyberg:

President Joe Biden visited Milwaukee this week to tout what he calls “Bidenomics.” His appearance precedes a Republican presidential primary debate next week, also in Milwaukee. While promoting his record on jobs and the economy, he took shots at Senator Ron Johnson.

Joe Biden:

Between the year 2000 and January 2021, Wisconsin alone lost more than 136,000 manufacturing jobs alone. I’d like to see Senator Johnson talk about — talk to those 136,000 people and tell them it doesn’t matter whether you manufacture things at home or overseas.

Frederica Freyberg:

In education news, just as the school year is about to begin, new research shows a record number of teacher turnovers last year in Wisconsin. That’s leaving their districts or the teaching profession altogether. What’s going on with these trends? The Wisconsin Policy Forum just released a report on turnover rates for teachers, spanning from 2009 to 2023, describing last year as a surge. The turnover rate was nearly 16%, with more than 9,700 turnovers last year, up from about 11.5% with more than 97,000 turnovers over the last 15 years. We turn to the Policy Forum senior education researcher Sara Shaw for more on this. Thanks for being here.

Sara Shaw:

My pleasure, Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:

Did these numbers surprise you at the end of this research?

Sara Shaw:

The pandemic numbers as a whole, starting with 2021, which was that first full year impacted by the pandemic, were a little bit of a mystery box. We had been hearing concerns of turnover for years. It’s part of why we wanted to look into the issue. And in 2021, instead of seeing a surge, we actually see a dip to below average rates of turnover, and in hindsight, that seems like teachers who, in the midst of all of the instability of those first months of COVID, were staying put either because of the economic security and/or wanting to be there for their kids. And then 2022, it starts creeping up, and by the time we hit 2023, as you said, it’s the highest number of — the highest rate of turnover that we saw in the years studied. That included the highest rate of moves, so teachers moving from one district to teach in another district and leaves, which are teachers who are leaving the public school classroom in Wisconsin altogether for whatever reason.

Frederica Freyberg:

What did you find out about why this is happening?

Sara Shaw:

Those leaves in particular and the moves seem to be tied not only to some of the things that people think about specific to education, which is to say the strain of the pandemic, the increasing politicization and other external factors really putting pressure on the system, but also the broader economy. So in the same way that in 2010 and 2011 where we had the great recession and a lot of teachers were really staying put because teaching is, if not a large paycheck, a very steady paycheck, the reaction to the economy in the last year where it’s very low unemployment rates, a very tight labor market and high inflation seems to have given teachers more mobility, again, not just to leave the profession, but also between districts.

Frederica Freyberg:

Where is the turnover most acute in Wisconsin?

Sara Shaw:

So it is a generally widespread issue. We didn’t have a single district type that we looked at that was under a 10% turnover rate on average, but it is being felt most in our districts that can least afford to be able to have such turnover. So specifically our smallest rural districts were really hit hard. That’s both — that’s looking over the full-time period that we studied. In addition, our districts that are serving majority of low-income students and the majority of students — a majority of students of color were also seeing higher than average rates of turnover, and that’s particularly concerning during the COVID years when, of course, the pandemic created so much instability. A certain amount of teacher turnover is not a bad thing. It might be just the way that people move between jobs trying to find a good fit, but elevated levels is when we start to worry.

Frederica Freyberg:

So where do elevated levels of turnover leave the children that these teachers are teaching?

Sara Shaw:

It leaves children without consistency. So that means both without consistency of relationships, of being able to know there’s an adult in the classroom there for them, but also consistency in the school culture. It can be very hard in a school that is facing a lot of churn of teachers to maintain an identity or to maintain any kind of change in improvement processes that a leader or a district might be trying to undertake. So it can be done, and certainly in cases where perhaps there’s a less effective teacher being replaced by a more effective teacher, maybe that’s a good thing, but that’s often not the way the movement goes and typically it’s our students who pay the price.

Frederica Freyberg:

So Black teachers in your research had significantly higher turnover rates than white teachers. What explains that?

Sara Shaw:

Some of it is explained circumstantially in that these teachers who are Black are also concentrated in districts that saw overall turnover rates that were higher for all races and ethnicities of teachers. So it may be that it’s these districts that as a whole are experiencing higher than average turnover. It could also be something unique to the experience of the teachers, and the forum has in the past recorded on teacher diversity and the barriers that teachers of color face in getting to the classroom in the first place and then remaining there feeling like they are valued as part of a school.

Frederica Freyberg:

With really just about a minute left, what are the policy prescriptions for retaining teachers?

Sara Shaw:

Well, the first is to think about it as retention. Oftentimes when we think about the pay plan for teachers, there’s a lot of focus on recruitment and getting new teachers into the classroom. This report shows us that we need to be thinking about retention just as much as we’re bringing new teachers in and not keeping them in the classroom, the problem continues. There are also some tailored solutions that can help retain teachers, whether that’s figuring out hard-to-staff areas, hard-to-staff subject areas or schools and attaching whether it’s supports or financial incentives to really help target where the needs are to retain teachers there.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Sara Shaw from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, thanks very much.

Sara Shaw:

Thank you, Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:

The COVID pandemic is in the rear view for most of us, but is it? There’s a new variant circulating and several counties in Wisconsin report high concentrations of the virus in wastewater right now. Still, it’s nothing compared to the worst days over the last three years. Are we as a nation and a state prepared for the next pandemic? We turn to Dr. Michael Osterholm, formerly a Biden White House adviser on COVID, for his take. Thanks for being here.

Michael Osterholm:

Thanks. Good to be back with you again.

Frederica Freyberg:

So you say it’s not done with us yet. Why do you say that?

Michael Osterholm:

Well, first of all, I’m quite convinced that the big pandemic thrust that we saw from 2020 to 2023 is, in fact the pandemic behind us. What we’re really dealing with now is what will it look like going forward? Just like if you have an influenza pandemic. It’s a new virus. It causes real challenges for several years and then it basically adapts into the seasonal flu pattern. What we don’t know with COVID yet is what it will look like? Is it a seasonal virus? Well, right now it’s occurring in all four seasons. So I guess you can say in that regard it’s seasonal, but does it look like anything like the respiratory viruses like influenza or RSV we see? No. Do we see cases increase in the summer? We have. We’ve seen them increase in the fall. So we’re really unclear yet what this pattern is going to look like, but it’s very, very clear that the virus is still here with us.

Frederica Freyberg:

So you and fellow White House advisors wrote about your take-aways from the pandemic, including that as a nation, we should prepare now for whatever might come next, but didn’t our experience of COVID result in stockpiles of scientific knowledge, infrastructure, personal protective gear and all of that?

Michael Osterholm:

Well, you know, this is at best a very complicated topic. For example, you mentioned respiratory gear. One of the challenges that we had is early on a number of us recognized that this virus was being spread by what we call the airborne route, just breathing air that would move through a large room. And yet we had many who continued to use surgical masks, the kind of masks that are not tight fitting around the face, and while they may have thought they were protected or they were protecting others, they really weren’t. And so we still have many hospitals that are using outdated respiratory protection gear some three years after they should have switched to N95 respirators. So there we’re not really prepared. We still have a lot of work to do. I think the other thing that really is challenging is that public health has, as a discipline, always relied on basically the trust of the people. The belief that, in fact, you know, we were doing what was right for the population to protect them against, in this case, a virus. We’ve lost a lot of the trust and the support of the public over the last several years because they felt like we were not being truthful when we should have said we don’t know. We made statements that suggested we knew more than we did and then it turned out to be wrong, and so I think we have a lot of work yet to do for the next pandemic. And if I had to give you my best professional judgment, I would say we’re less prepared for a pandemic today than we were in 2019.

Frederica Freyberg:

It just doesn’t seem possible that that’s true with all of the efforts, including your own, that went into this during the worst days of the pandemic. But as to the public trust in public health, can that be regained?

Michael Osterholm:

Well, I think it can be regained, but we have lessons to learn and we have to realize we’re in a very different world today than we have been for the last hundred years with regard to how public health is viewed. I mean, we need to look no further than our political climate today in this country to understand the distrust, the mistrust in so many establishments or institutions of our society, and that is really a crisis. When somebody says you must evacuate now. You must get out now. That is not up for discussion or debate, but people will only do that if they trust that what you’re telling them is true. Now, we don’t have to evacuate for a pandemic, but we want, for example, people to get vaccinated. In this country, only 42% of the people who are at high risk for serious illness, hospitalizations or deaths, got the booster dose over the last year, and I think with the new booster dose that’s coming out in the next few weeks, an even smaller percentage of those who are at risk for serious illness are going to get evacuated. Why is that? Why would someone not take a lifesaving, and if nothing else, at least reducing your risk of serious illness vaccine? What have we done that has led people to not want to get those? So I think we still have a lot of work to do to understand that, and I keep saying time and time again, the first and most important lesson we should have learned is the critical, critical nature of humility. What do we know? What do we don’t know. What we know, how do we know it? And what we don’t know, what are we going to do to find out? And so I think that that’s still is a major lesson that we should all take home from this pandemic.

Frederica Freyberg:

I don’t have much time left, but I do want to ask you about another one of your important takeaways, and that is that schools should not be shut down except in rare cases, but I ask was not the COVID pandemic a rare case?

Michael Osterholm:

My message has always been is we should be basing what we do on data. Are we seeing infections in schools? If so, we may need snow days. We may need to take some time off to let the virus in a community basically come down some, but where we don’t see evidence of ongoing widespread infection, then we shouldn’t be closed down. And what we did was just put in blanket “do this or do that” without really understanding how we had to react to what was happening in the community. What are the data supports? In the period of 2022, early 2023, I thoroughly supported closing schools with omicron. We had up to half the teachers out sick. How do you provide education, and, of course, we worry about the kids, but in that first year of the pandemic, frankly, having closed schools was not likely anything that provided additional protection for the community. So this is, again, another very complicated message that public health has to get better at sharing why do we do what we do and why don’t we do what we don’t do.

Frederica Freyberg:

Dr. Michael Osterholm, thanks very much.

Michael Osterholm:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

Last week, we heard from three women who have had abortions. Tonight, continuing our series on abortion in Wisconsin, we bring you a story about what are called pregnancy resource centers. With dozens of these nonprofits across the state encouraging women to keep their pregnancies advocating against abortion. Republicans want to provide them with state funding, but critics warn of their non-accreditation and sometimes false information. Steven Potter has this story.

Gabriella Boldon:

At first, I wanted an abortion because I never wanted kids, but after I heard his heartbeat, it made it difficult for me to get an abortion, I guess.

Steven Potter:

Abortion became illegal in Wisconsin more than a year ago when the Supreme Court ruled that states would individually decide on abortion access. That left standing a Wisconsin law passed in 1849 that effectively banned abortion, and because of that, some organizations say they’ve become much busier.

Rita Flores:

We are seeing a lot more women coming in that, you know, are seeking options because the abortion isn’t readily available here.

Steven Potter:

That’s Rita Flores, manager for the two locations of a nonprofit organization in Waukesha County called Life’s Connection.

Rita Flores:

Life’s Connection is a medical, educational and resource center.

Steven Potter:

The organization offers pregnancy and STD testing, prenatal counseling and adoption support, among other services.

Rita Flores:

We can see anyone from a teen all the way through married couples that come in and just would like our labor and delivery classes or to prepare for pregnancy or newborn care. This is our ultrasound suite. Here is where we’re able to really connect mom with baby. Again, see that true development. We call it the window to the womb.

Steven Potter:

But one thing they won’t do at Life’s Connection is refer anyone who is pregnant for an abortion.

Rita Flores:

We don’t offer refer for abortion, but we do educate. We help them to understand what abortion would look like for them and for the baby now and in the future and how physically and emotionally they could be impacted.

Steven Potter:

According to Choose Life Wisconsin, there are more than 70 pregnancy resource centers like Life’s Connection around the state. And because of their prenatal support and the fact that these organizations don’t refer pregnant people for abortions and do actively discourage abortions, some Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin think they should receive state taxpayer funding.

Romaine Robert Quinn:

If you walk into a pregnancy resource center, they’re not going to refer you to an abortion, right? That’s not why they exist.

Steven Potter:

State Senator Romaine Robert Quinn has introduced legislation to fund these centers, which are sometimes called crisis pregnancy centers, with state money. He’s proposing giving the centers $1 million per year. That money would be funneled to the centers through grants administered by Choose Life Wisconsin. The senator says the state should provide the money because these centers do necessary work.

Romaine Robert Quinn:

They just give an enormous amount of support and service and a place for families to go that they’re questioning am I ready for this pregnancy or maybe it’s unexpected or maybe I’m fleeing an abusive relationship and found out I’m pregnant, so there’s so much good they do.

Steven Potter:

Gabriella Boldon says she wasn’t planning to get pregnant a year ago.

Gabriella Boldon:

I took a pregnancy test and it was positive and I started crying. It was not something that I wanted, I guess. I was going to Planned Parenthood first and it’s actually right next to the Life’s Connections in Waukesha, so I saw, like, ultrasounds and stuff right on the side so I was, like, we’re going to go here and see what, like, they offer.

Steven Potter:

During her visit with the nurse at Life’s Connection, she says they discussed abortion and she was given an ultrasound. She felt encouraged by staff at Life’s Connection to have the child and become a mother.

Gabriella Boldon:

I was asking her, like, what is — like how do abortions work and she was just trying to, like, weigh our options and to see which one was better and just to give us, like, well, give me, like, hope that I could do it. It was after we’ve seen him and we heard the heartbeat is where I said, no, I don’t want to get an abortion anymore and I just wanted to keep him.

Steven Potter:

Flores says that a foundational belief of pregnancy resource centers like hers is that abortions are harmful to women.

Rita Flores:

A woman that goes through an abortion is going to be impacted emotionally and physically, and so at no point would it ever be something that would be good for her in any way.

Steven Potter:

The National Institutes of Health, however, says that having an abortion does not increase a woman’s risk of the health dangers often cited by pregnancy resource centers. Nor does it increase the risk for mental health challenges. Sara Finger leads the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health. She says the pregnancy resource centers are spreading misinformation.

Sara Finger:

The kind of information that they’re giving is often actually full of lies. They have studies that are showing how these websites and the centers themselves are talking about falsely claiming that abortion will increase your mental health challenges. They’re falsely indicating that you can — abortions will lead to breast cancer or infertility, and these are all lies.

Steven Potter:

Finger says that physicians’ groups have raised red flags about pregnancy resource centers.

Sara Finger:

And the American Medical Association, who is a predominant leader in terms of healthcare in this country and the providers and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists both have briefs warning people about the dangers and the unethical behavior of these fake clinics.

Steven Potter:

Flores of Life’s Connection rejects claims that pregnancy resource centers provide misleading information to their clients.

Rita Flores:

We tell them exactly what it looks like to parent. What it looks like to adopt — to consider adoption as an option and also what abortion would look like for them, so I feel that we’re, you know, as truthful as we absolutely can be. We don’t hide anything. And then we guide them to whatever services that they might need with the exception of referring for abortion.

Steven Potter:

She adds that organizations like hers could certainly benefit from the state funding being proposed in Senator Quinn’s legislation.

Rita Flores:

We are a 501(c)(3), so that means everything that we do as a nonprofit is done by donations either by individual or by, you know, a church, and any other kind of a group that would like to donate to us.

Steven Potter:

But for Sara Finger from the Women’s Health Alliance, that connection between pregnancy resource centers and faith-based organizations is another reason that the centers shouldn’t get state funding.

Sara Finger:

I’m sorry, but if there’s even one dollar of taxpayer-funded money going towards to support these fake clinics, who are not licensed, who are not — they’re not regulated. They’re not accredited, and they don’t have to follow HIPAA regulations. They don’t have to protect your privacy and your confidentiality. Why are we even considering putting a single dollar towards these fake clinics in our state or anywhere in this country?

Steven Potter:

Senator Quinn says he’s unbothered by any faith-based connection that the pregnancy resource centers have and says the centers deserve funding.

Romaine Robert Quinn:

I don’t care who does the work, right? I mean they’re doing great work, so if it’s faith-based or not faith-based, it’s not a criteria that’s a must. So it shouldn’t be the other way that you can’t be that. I get frustrated sometimes when people call them fake clinics or things like that and it’s like, you know, not every baby is going to be aborted, and so for those families that wanted to raise a child but need support, why not support them? And why not support the very centers that give them the services, the classes, a shoulder to lean on and talk to?

Steven Potter:

Reporting from Mukwonago for “Here & Now,” I’m Steven Potter.

Frederica Freyberg:

Next week on “Here & Now,” a report on the lawsuit over the 1849 abortion ban now in place, with practicing physicians trying to understand how best to provide care to their patients. You can also tune into a special series of reports on Wisconsin Public Radio looking at abortion regulation since the state based its original abortion ban titled “How we got here: Abortion in Wisconsin since 1849.”

For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our website at PBSwisconsin.org and then click on the news tab. That’s our program for tonight. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a good weekend.

Frederica Freyberg:

Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.