Why I’m Running
I am a progressive who believes every Wisconsinite should be able to live their best life.
- Amy Zimmerman
Sustainable School Funding
Our public schools are hubs and hearts of the community, where parents and students alike make new friends, learn new things, and expand their horizons. Our schools today are suffering for lack of funding, unable to keep up with inflation. In 2024 alone, school districts in Wisconsin put budget referendums on their local ballots a resounding 241 times!
Public schools are not adequately reimbursed by the state for providing students with disabilities the services they need. They are also restricted from managing themselves, through state revenue limits that overreach and starve them from accessing the funds needed to educate.
A robust public education system is not just a public good and a constitutional right, but it’s also an important investment in our economy. It is the key to a prosperous future for our youth, and our society. Properly-funded schools are the foundation for a lively community.
I support increasing the state’s special education reimbursement rate to public schools and to lifting the revenue limit that caps districts’ property tax levy, and continued funding for the Wisconsin Tuition Promise program.
Support Working Families
Parenting today is so hard that parents' mental health and well-being amount to an urgent public health issue, as noted by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. While raising children has always been hard, today’s parents face unique challenges that evolved over the course of several decades. Between young children and aging parents, many workers are forced out of the paid workforce for want of high-quality, affordable caregivers.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The stress and its long-term effects, as well as the injuries from inadequate care, are avoidable. And, state-supported childcare has a tremendous return on investment, estimated as $4-7 for each $1 spent; it’s foolish not to do it. Wisconsin should reinstate the Child Care Counts program to ensure early childhood educators earn a living wage.
Healthcare is a Right
Today’s healthcare crisis is a moral failure that will haunt our society for generations to come if we do not make a substantial change. Women must be trusted to manage their own reproductive health care needs.
Workers must have access to timely, affordable healthcare, and to the treatments their medical providers recommend for their unique circumstances - not the treatments that for-profit insurance analysts deem appropriate.
I support expanding Wisconsin’s Medicaid eligibility (as so many other states have), to include women longer into the postpartum period.
Small Business Competitiveness
As a wife to a small business owner, coming from a corporate background, I have been floored at the gaps for small business employees. No job-protected medical leave, often no paid leave, few options for employer-sponsored health insurance, the list goes on.
Small businesses are engines of innovation and growth; but today’s environment makes it too risky for many savvy professionals to launch new ventures and bring their unique offerings to market.
Further, small businesses not deemed “too big to fail” lose out against their behemoth rivals - who spend millions on lobbyists, lawyers, and work-arounds to avoid all sorts of regulations and tariffs.
We need to level the playing field and make Wisconsin friendly to small businesses and their workers.