Wisconsin
Wisconsin public schools facing retention challenges
EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU) – Wisconsin’s education force is in dire need of support, according to Wisconsin State Superintendent Dr. Jill Underly. A report released this week highlights challenges facing the K-12 system.
“We are losing our best and brightest educators at an alarming rate in this state,” Underly said.
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction released a report on the state’s education workforce, which highlights a need to address retention. It states only 55% of new Wisconsin teachers will stay in the industry after seven years. Only around 18% stayed in the same district. In special education, only around 46% of teachers stay in the industry.
“Let me be blunt, nearly half of the new teachers in Wisconsin leave the state or the profession entirely after just seven years and in special education, the situation is even more dire,” Underly said.
“Special Education is one of those positions that really takes the right person,” Brandon Wick, the HR manager with the Eau Claire Area School District, said. “We have an amazing group across our district for special education but that’s certainly an area that our special education team and leadership is really focusing on with teacher retention.”
Wick said retention is a priority in ECASD.
“We’re always looking to retain and recruit our best teachers and that’s really the lifeblood of our organization,” Wick said.
While the DPI report said staff retention is an issue across the state, locally Wick said at ECASD there’s an 8-10% turnover each year, including retirements.
“One of the things that we’ve done with our compensation plan is typically at about every six years, there’s a retention bump that’s built into our certified scheduled,” Wick said. “So we actually have that of trying to be proactive and make sure we have nice steps for our staff.”
But, the challenges with staffing in Wisconsin’s public schools are far from over. Underly said the schools need more assistance.
“It’s a crisis for our students, our families, our schools and our communities and we must do something now,” Underly said. “Our schools are telling us they need help with fewer teachers. The ones who stay on are stretched thinner and thinner, trying to meet the growing needs of every student. That is a recipe for educator burnout.”
“We want to keep the staff that come here and make sure that they retire here too,” Wick said.
Dr. Underly is running for re-election for the state superintendent seat. She is running against Brittany Kinser, a former special education teacher and elementary school principal.
Copyright 2025 WEAU. All rights reserved.
(WLUK) — Wisconsin State Patrol troopers are teaming up with truckers to better spot dangerous driving behaviors.
The annual Trooper in a Truck initiative kicks off next week in Wisconsin.
Troopers will ride along with with semitruck and bus drivers to use the higher vantage point to spot dangerous driving behaviors, especially near commercial motor vehicles.
Troopers will be looking for risky driving behaviors, including distracted driving, speeding, following too closely and seatbelt violations. When an officer identifies a violation from the truck or bus, they will radio to patrol cars in the area for appropriate enforcement action.
Drivers can expect to see Trooper in a Truck enforcement in the following areas:
BE THE FIRST TO COMMENT
- Monday, July 13: Eau Claire
- Tuesday, July 14: Waukesha
- Wednesday, July 15: Madison
- Thursday, July 16: Green Bay
- Friday, July 17: Wausau
New Wisconsin athletic director Shawn Eichorst, who spent the last eight years at Texas, believes his new and old schools have much in common.
Both are well-regarded research universities in state capitals that belong to major conferences and have relatively similar enrollments.
He also pointed out one difference.
“There’s swag at Texas, right?” Eichorst said Tuesday during his introductory news conference. “There’s 30 million people in Texas. We’ve got swag, too, but we have a little humility with that deal. We need to get our shoulders up. We need to feel good about what it is that we’re doing.”
Wisconsin could gain more of that Texas swagger if its football program gets back to winning the way it did the last time Eichorst was employed in Madison. Eichorst, who most recently worked as a deputy athletic director at Texas, received a five-year deal worth $1.6 million annually, with provisions for increases and incentives. He was hired 2½ months after Chris McIntosh left to become the Big Ten’s deputy commissioner for strategy.
Eichorst worked at Wisconsin from 2006-11 when Barry Alvarez was AD and Bret Bielema was leading the football program. He followed that up with stints as an athletic director at Miami (2011-12) and Nebraska (2012-17) before Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte hired him in 2018.
He returns to Wisconsin with the Badgers coming off back-to-back losing seasons in football, a notable fall for a program that had 22 straight winning seasons from 2002-23. Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell has gone 17-21 after posting a 53-10 record with one College Football Playoff appearance in his last five years at Cincinnati.
Eichorst hasn’t worked with Fickell before but said he’s encouraged by their initial conversations.
“Obviously he’s won every place he’s been,” Eichorst said. “My expectation is more of me than him, meaning I need to pour into him, learn more about his program, how he has things set up, how his athletes are taken care of, how we’re supporting that endeavor. And then we can figure out, as we move along, what that might look like.”
Football struggles led to Eichorst’s downfall the last time he was an athletic director.
He fired Nebraska coach Bo Pelini in 2014 and hired Mike Riley, who had gone 93-80 in 14 seasons at Oregon State. Eichorst was dismissed shortly after Nebraska suffered an early-season loss to Northern Illinois in 2017. Riley was fired at the end of that season after going 19-19 in three years.
When Eichorst’s hiring was announced last week, he spoke about how much he had grown from that Nebraska stint. Wisconsin interim chancellor Eric Wilcots led the search and has emphasized Eichorst’s accomplishments at Texas, which has won the Learfield Directors’ Cup all-sports standings five times in the last six years.
Texas ranked anywhere from fifth to ninth in the Directors’ Cup standings in the five years before Wilcots’ arrival. Texas’ football team went a combined 23-27 from 2014-17 but has made two College Football Playoff appearances in the last three years.
“Everybody looks at the end result of what we did at Texas,” Eichorst said. “When we got there in 2018, we weren’t very good in a lot of areas. And that didn’t change overnight.”
Eichorst said one thing that has caught his attention about Wisconsin is the overall quality of its head coaches.
“You’re going to be as good as your coaches,” Eichorst said. “That’s it. If you have an elite group of coaches who are working together and uniting and galvanizing and learning from one another and taking it out to their individual programs, I think you can start to build something special. I go back to Texas. We built a room of really elite head coaches and put them at the top of everything we did to help guide us.”
Eichorst said this job is particularly important to him because of his Wisconsin roots. He was born in Lone Rock, about 45 miles northwest of the Madison campus.
He treasured his previous stint at Wisconsin and says he believes this school “represents everything that is great about higher education and college athletics.”
“Nobody will work harder for Wisconsin athletics,” Eichorst said. “I love this state, and I love everything that it represents. The passion is there. You can see it. I don’t have to make it up. I’ve lived it. It’s in my heart.”
___
AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports
Wisconsin
South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, officials in standoff with homeowner over year-round skeleton display
The city of South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has ordered a homeowner to take down his year-round giant skeleton display or face fines, but the homeowner is standing firm and refusing, even as the deadline to remove the display has passed.
Now there’s a skeleton standoff.
The city cited ordinance violations in their order for Sean Oster to dismantle the lawn decorations. The notice specifically references “large Halloween decorations being displayed not during the appropriate time of year.”
Oster was also ordered to make other improvements to his property.
But Oster has refused to take down the display, which is re-dressed as the year goes on and is currently sporting a Fourth of July theme. The Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, has come to his aid, saying the city’s actions violate Oster’s First Amendment rights.
City administrators declined to comment, citing a pending investigation. Neighbors have been divided by the display; some say they’re fine with it, and think it brings fun and positivity to the neighborhood, but some others want to see it removed and say the lawn should be kept up better and more consistently.
Oster said he’s hoping to reach an agreement with the city, and said he’s corrected all other violations outside of the display.
-
Tennessee12 seconds agoTennessee State men’s hockey cancels 2026-27 inaugural season for second straight year
-
Texas5 minutes agoTed Cruz warns Talarico has ‘real chance’ to flip Texas’ U.S. Senate seat
-
Utah12 minutes agoMan suspected in 2006 Utah murder left suicide note in Las Vegas jail cell: police
-
Vermont15 minutes agoOUTDOOR ACCESS FOR DISABLED IN VERMONT
-
Virginia20 minutes ago4 indicted in Virginia double homicide; second victim ID’d as grandmother of 6
-
Washington27 minutes agoWashington Commanders are retiring Hall of Famer John Riggins’ No. 44
-
Wisconsin30 minutes agoWisconsin State Patrol rides with truck and bus drivers to spot violations in five areas
-
West Virginia35 minutes agoWest Virginia town fires entire police force after chief resigns, sergeant alleges evidence room break-in
