WISCONSIN— It's the only statewide race on the ballot for the April 6 election.
Former Brown Deer School District superintendent Deb Kerr and current superintendent of the Pecatonica School District Jill Underly are vying to lead the Department of Public Instruction.
If elected, Kerr said top of her "to do" list is to make sure "... all of our schools have the resources they need to open up successfully. We have five of our largest urban areas that are not open yet, and I want to make sure I provide the support to make that happen. They need leadership right now," Kerr said.
Underly has some early childhood education goals on her list, like expanding full day 4K and after-school programming expansion for K through 8th.
"I'd also work on tackling our teacher pipeline issue. We don't have enough people going into the teaching profession, and so we need to do our best to recruit the best and the brightest teachers for our kids," Underly commented.
When it comes to school funding the two candidates are on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Underly does not support using public money for school vouchers.
"I believe that our public dollars should stay in our public schools," she said. "When you look at the number of referendums that have to get passed every election it seems people vote overwhelmingly to support their public schools."
She believes it signals a larger problem, that our schools are underfunded. Underly told us, "certainly expanding voucher programs, which seems to happen every year takes money out of the education budget and so our schools have to go to the voters ... "
Kerr supports the school voucher program and emphasized the state superintendent is in charge of serving all kids across Wisconsin.
"That's really important to realize, and it's the law," she pointed out. "The most important thing is giving parents the liberty to choose where to send their children to school based on their circumstance."
She went on to say, "I believe that the question should be how do we provide high quality education for all kids in the great state of Wisconsin, and how do we work that system to be one system of accountability, transparency, equitable access and funding." Kerr said her goal is to bring people together to make those decisions.