State school superintendent Underly campaigns at Democratic party meeting in La Crosse

The April election is now just two weeks off, and in La Crosse, races for mayor and state Supreme Court are getting lots of attention. But the job of state school superintendent will also be on the ballot, and incumbent Jill Underly came to La Crosse on Monday to campaign at a Democratic party gathering.

Underly worries about budget cuts from Washington that could hurt public schools in Wisconsin. “If they do take away the funding, for programs such as Title One, which is literacy and math interventions, that could be a piece of it,” she says, “also, a career in tech ed, that’s run through the federal government as well.”

The superintendent asked an audience at the Concordia Ballroom “Who’s fired up?” about the April election. Underly also spoke in support of Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford, suggesting that if the court majority goes conservative, a lot of programs that Wisconsin Democrats have fought for could go away. She believes that voters are becoming more educated about all the area races, including her own bid for another term.

Underly says proposed budget changes are “already impacting programs such as Head Start, but also we have a Farm to School program that was just recently, we were told, has been cut, and that gets local food from local farms to local schools.”

Underly and her April challenger, education consultant Brittany Kinser, will meet in a statewide virtual candidate forum on Wednesday night. The Democratic audience in La Crosse also heard from Congressional candidate Rebecca Cooke, and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley.