Sparks fly in state superintendent race
Candidates launch barbs in attempt to separate themselves in close race
The gloves came off at least occasionally during an online forum held March 19 for the two candidates vying to be the next superintendent of public instruction.
The forum was hosted by the Milwaukee- based Wisconsin Policy Forum and both candidates sought to separate themselves from their opponent as voters decide who to elect to the nonpartisan office at the April 6 spring election.
The candidates are: Dr. Deborah Kerr stepped down in June 2020 after serving 13 years as superintendent at Brown Deer Schools, a majority-minority district with 80% students of color and 50% poverty. Altogether she has 21 years experience as superintendent of public rural and suburban districts as part of a career in education stretching over 40 years.
She has served in leadership positions within state and national associations serving as president of both the School Superintendents Association (AASA) and Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators (WASDA). She has worked in all sectors of education including parochial, charter, private and public schools.
Dr. Jill Underly is currently superintendent of Pecatonica School District. Over the course of her career she has worked in all levels of education from preschool through college. She also worked for the DPI for five years in both educator licensing and Title I. She has been superintendent at Pecatonica for the past five years.
Underly and her siblings are all first generation college students, having grown up in Northwest Indiana where their father was a second-generation IBEW industrial electrician and their mother a homemaker. She came to Wisconsin in 2005 to pursue her graduate education at the University of Wisconsin– Madison, as a doctoral student in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. She received her doctorate in 2012 with a dissertation about the Federal Title I program and the impacts the ad- ministrative requirements have on both rural and urban districts.
During the forum, candidates were asked a series of questions with a time to respond. Issues ranged from teacher recruitment and retention, ability to work with the legislature and the concept of equity in education in particular with the role of voucher programs which bring public funding to parochial and private schools. Beyond those issues, the candidates exchanged barbs with Kerr noting Underly’s ties to the teachers union while Underly cited recent news reports of a decade-old scandal involving her handling of a former financial manager at the Brown Deer School District who overdrew the school district’s accounts. In particular, Kerr wrote a glowing letter of recommendation for him to another district despite having placed him on administrative leave for nearly a year and a half.
Kerr responded to those allegations by suggesting that even bringing them up showed that Underly did not understand the personnel issues and actions that exist with running a very large organization.
Underly also criticized the “dark money” that has entered the campaign saying it has partisan roots to support Kerr allegedly wanting to privatize education.
While there were many issues the two candidates agreed on, such as the need to overhaul teacher recruitment efforts and the need to attract second-career teachers and minority populations to teaching, the forum also hit on points where they differed.
One such point was in the physical location of the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) which is located currently in Madison. Kerr favors decentralizing the DPI and moving functions of it around the state. Underly disagreed saying that she felt the CESAs (Cooperative Educational Service Agencies) serve that purpose already.
“Kids need to have stability, they need a DPI that is whole,” Underly said, adding that the millions of dollars it would cost to move the DPI offices could be better spent on other programs.
“We are not serving our customers,” Kerr responded. “It is time to do something different.”
One area where both candidates agreed was in the statewide expansion of the 3K and 4K programs. Kerr said these early childhood programs are a key to stop the school to prison line.
In stating how they would work with the legislature, Underly talked of an approach that was more relationship building and emphasized the broad bipartisan support there is for education and local schools. Kerr’s outlined a timeline where she said that in the first 100 days she would sit down for vision meetings with all the legislators and start working on policy from day one.
“I want every kid to succeed every day,” Underly said in her closing statements, noting that educational effectiveness relies also on kids having access to healthcare, adequate food and other societal issues.
During her closing remarks, Kerr described the educational system as being in crisis. She was critical of the state’s teacher’s union and accused the union of “changing the goalposts” when it comes to school performance.
