What do you get when a teacher’s union stooge steeped in left-wing dogma runs your public school system? Sanctuary for accused groomers and sex offenders.
Such is the case at Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI), run by teachers union pet Jill Underly. The bought-and-paid-for superintendent has presided over an educator licensing scandal that is as abhorrent as it is alarming.
Kudos to Madison’s Cap Times for committing a brazen act of journalism. The left-leaning newspaper’s year-long investigation found DPI “investigated” more than 200 teachers, aides, substitutes, and administrators “accused of sexual misconduct or grooming behaviors toward students” between 2018 and 2023.
“The department’s internal records show these allegations included educators sexually assaulting students, soliciting nude photos from children or initiating sexual relationships immediately after students graduated,” the news outlet reported. “Licensing officials also investigated educators accused of grooming behaviors like flirting with children, spending non-school time alone and isolated with students, or invading students’ personal space by rubbing their shoulders, thighs and lower backs.”
The publication found at least 44 percent of the public education regulator’s license probes over the period have involved sexual misconduct or grooming allegations. Of the 461 teachers investigated over the period for all forms of misconduct, 207 kept their licenses and were allowed to continue to work with children in schools, the Cap Times reported.
‘Default for Progressives’
It’s all shocking but not surprising in a public school system long run by superintendents backed and bankrolled by the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), its powerful partners in Milwaukee and Madison, and union allies. While academic achievement continues to falter, particularly among the state’s black students, Underly and her Big Labor pals continue to protect bad teachers and failing policies and curriculum at the expense of the 750,000-plus pre-K-12 students DPI is supposed to serve.
“When you look at how to evaluate [DPI], the question is not what is best for kids and families, it’s maintaining the status quo for union power,” Will Flanders, Research Director for the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, said in an interview with The Federalist.
Flanders and WILL’s policy team have spent years tracking Wisconsin’s troubled public school system, particularly Milwaukee Public Schools where in 2024 just 12 percent of fourth-graders were considered at or above the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) proficiency ratings, commonly referred to as the Nation’s Report Card. Just 15 percent of Milwaukee Public Schools’ eight-graders were at or above proficiency, the report found.
“It’s definitely not a surprise,” Flanders’ colleague and WILL Deputy Counsel Dan Lennington told The Federalist in an interview. “I think the default for the progressives or liberals running DPI is not to do anything that would end with a teacher losing a license… We’re spending close to $20,000 annually per student in Wisconsin and results get worse each year.” And progressively more dangerous for students, the data suggests.
‘Education’s Best-Kept Secret’
The leftist Underly, who in April won a second term backed by all manner liberal cash and causes, has prioritized a DEI agenda (diversity, equity, and inclusion) in administration and in the classrooms. Top-down support for such “woke” programs have led to allegations of discrimination and racism in the name of “of social justice” and have driven the concept of “safe spaces” so far as to allow men to use girls bathrooms and showers.
Liberal-led school districts around the state have worked with or encouraged students to turn to TrevorSpace, “a social networking site (from the Trevor Project) that critics say is little more than an online dating community putting kids as young as 13 at risk of sexual exploitation,” The Wisconsin Daily Star reported in 2023.
The Daily Star review of TrevorSpace “found the site allows children and adults (strangers) to communicate directly while encouraging discussions of human sexuality, sexual attraction, and sexual fetishes.” An undercover investigation earlier this year by the California Family Council found TrevorSpace clubs include, “Our Dad Sucks Club,” “Moms Are Overrated,” “Chosen Family,” and even “Lovesick Lesbian Club.” TrevorSpace requires no age verification to join, the Family Council found.
The Cap Times report shows grooming and related behaviors were an alarming part of the sexual misconduct allegations in the Wisconsin teacher license investigations. Experts said the incidents are likely higher than the DPI records indicate. A lack of transparency inherent in the public school system only makes matters worse, education experts told the news outlet.
“Sexual misconduct and grooming by teachers is sometimes called education’s best-kept secret,” the newspaper review noted.
The word “grooming” is not in state law on educator misconduct. That’s a big problem. Children’s mental health experts and frustrated lawmakers say that has to change.
‘Safety, Not Silence’
Legislators are livid. They want answers. They haven’t gotten any from Underly.
The state superintendent of education failed to show up late last week at a legislative hearing on sexual misconduct and grooming in Wisconsin schools.
“Parents deserve safety, not silence,” Rep. Amanda Nedweski, chairwoman of the State Assembly Committee on Government Operations, Accountability, and Transparency, said in a statement. “While families are demanding accountability for grooming and misconduct in Wisconsin schools, Jill Underly is skipping town for an award ceremony. That’s not accountability—it’s a dereliction of duty. Wisconsin parents and students deserve more than absentee leadership.”
The legislator noted that Democrats have been in charge of the Department of Public Instruction for decades, including the decade-long leadership tenure of Wisconsin’s far-left governor, Tony Evers.
As Wisconsin Watchdog reported more than a decade ago, Evers as superintendent was slow to respond to questions about why a Madison-area science teacher didn’t lose his license after getting caught watching porn in his classroom. Evers eventually defended DPI, asserting that viewing highly inappropriate videos and jokes on school computers didn’t fit the legal definition to remove the teacher’s license. In fact, DPI said the “highly inappropriate behavior” didn’t fall under the legal definition of “immoral conduct,” as the law was written at the time. The teachers union fought like hell to get the educator reinstated. Yes, an arbitrator agreed with Evers and the union and demanded the porn-watching teacher return to the classroom and receive $200,000 in backpay. The school district spent more than $1 million in legal bills to defend its decision to fire him.
Lennington said the Republicans who control the legislature could move to impeach Underly for “corrupt conduct,” specifically her failure to do her job and protect children. The attorney said the state constitution includes a “broad definition” of what corrupt conduct means.
“If they are serious about this they should exercise their authority to do something about it,” Lennington said, adding that the legislature could subpoena DPI officials to testify under oath, and they could audit the agency. “If they are serous about this they should take action instead of holding press conferences. This is about protecting children from criminal behavior.”
‘Set Up to be a Failure’
But Mike Mikalsen, top aide for Republican state Sen. Steve Nass, told The Federalist that impeachment wouldn’t go anywhere in a Senate with narrow Republican control and a two-thirds vote requirement to force Underly out. Besides, Mikalsen said, the “convoluted” licensure process that protects teachers is greatly to blame for the limiting powers of DPI to pull certificates. He said the failures in the system go way back to the 1990s, when then-Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson was trying to play nice with the powerful state teachers union.
Back then, schools across the country were seeing a wave of “false” sexual abuse allegations lodged by students against teachers. Mikalsen said the legislature created a “firewall” to protect educators, including keeping investigations confidential. Times have changed, and the records available suggests abused kids are falling through the cracks.
“The system was set up to be a failure. It has to be dramatically reformed,” said the legislative aide who has worked at the state capitol for 35 years. He added that there is a “window” open for productive reform to take place, with some Democrats calling for changes.
Mikalsen said the state law “is a joke,” a “vestige of WEAC’s power from the late 1990s”. The teachers’ union saw its outsized power curtailed in 2011’s Act 10, which dramatically reformed public-sector collective bargaining in Wisconsin. With liberals in control of the state Supreme Court, Act 10 could soon go away, in a ruling that would muscle up the unions that already have the ear of the DPI chief and the incentive to put teachers before the safety of Wisconsin’s children.
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