Holly Gilvary
RACINE — Racine County public school districts will continue to receive free educational programs at the Racine Zoo next school year, but they might look a little different, according to the zoo.
The Racine Zoo AmeriCorps Program is one of the several Serve Wisconsin programs being terminated because of federal spending cuts.
AmeriCorps placed most of its staff members on administrative leave with pay in April as President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency cut the program’s funding, according to reporting from the Associated Press.
On April 25, the Trump administration terminated federal grants for all currently operating AmeriCorps programs within Serve Wisconsin, according to a release from Gov. Tony Evers’ office.
Evers announced April 29 that Wisconsin would join several states in suing the Trump administration over the spending cuts.
The Racine Zoo AmeriCorps Program, established in 2019 through Serve Wisconsin, provides educational programs for kindergarteners, third graders, fourth graders, seventh graders and ninth graders in Racine County public school districts.
RZAP members also held pop-up educational programs for all ages and assisted the zoo’s animal caretakers.
The program contracted four AmeriCorps members per year. Those enrolled in the 2024-25 program, which would have normally ended in August, were effectively laid off April 25 upon the Trump administration’s termination of grants for Serve Wisconsin programs.
Racine Zoo Executive Director Beth Heidorn clarified that, while the RZAP program members are no longer with the Zoo, the RZAP-specific programs will probably still continue alongside the zoo’s other educational programs, but the zoo “will be able to do far less.”
“We’re never going to say (that) we’re never going to do (the kindergarten program), Classification Cadets, because we would never do that to the school district,” Heidorn said. “We’re always going to do these programs, it’s just a question of how many we can do, going forward.”
With the AmeriCorps cuts coming at the end of the 2024-25 school year, most RZAP participants won’t feel the effects until the fall, when the 2025-26 AmeriCorps program would have started.
Heidorn said that while she wasn’t “surprised” by the funding cuts to AmeriCorps, it was “just very abrupt.”
“With all the other things that were being impacted from the federal government, no one’s immune,” she said. “I just feel bad for the (AmeriCorps) members … I couldn’t do anything about it. Federal government said the program is done, and we had to honor that.”
In the meantime, Heidorn said, the zoo will “just keep fighting for money.”
Other AmeriCorps programs cut in Southeast Wisconsin include the statewide Wisconsin Math Corps and Reading Corps, and Public Allies Wisconsin, which serves Racine, Kenosha and Milwaukee counties, according to the Serve Wisconsin website.
For more information about the Racine Zoo and its programs, visit www.racinezoo.org.
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