The Lie: Rebecca Kleefisch said, “Tony Evers closed schools for a year and a half.”
The Truth: Tony Evers believes what’s best for our kids is best for our state. As a former educator and state superintendent, he’s always doing the right thing by students and families.
When a health crisis hit in 2020, Gov. Evers worked with health professionals to determine what would keep our kids the safest, and that meant temporarily switching to virtual learning. Every parent knows that our students learn best when they attend classes in person, which is why Gov. Evers took steps to get students back in the classroom as soon as possible.
While he left the final decision with school districts and local officials, Gov. Evers took steps to help our students learn safely and quickly return to the classroom. He directed $110 million to schools in pandemic relief funds and provided the largest increase in general aid to public education in more than a decade. [WLUK, 12/2/21; PolitiFact, 7/23/21]
By March 2021, only two school districts in the state were virtual, and by April 2021, every district in Wisconsin had returned to in-person instruction. [PolitiFact, 3/29/21; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 3/17/21]
And when the omicron wave hit our state, Gov. Evers quickly provided our largest districts with tens of thousands of high-quality masks and resources to stay open and continue to learn safely, even through the variants.
So there you have it: schools in Wisconsin were not closed for a year and a half, and the final decision was actually left to school districts and local officials, who were able to make decisions based on the situation in their specific region of the state. With support from Gov. Evers, every school district in Wisconsin started in-person by the fall of 2021.