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An early childhood education teacher’s apparent suicide earlier this month “was connected, at least in part, to the policies” that Gov. Scott Walker has proposed impacting education in the state, according to two co-workers who spoke to the national Progressive magazine on condition of anonymity.

“She was definitely very distraught about it,” one of them told the magazine. “She was feeling a lot of stress about the legislation that was going through.”

Walker’s proposed 2011-13 budget includes large cuts to education spending in the state and limitations on local government’s authority to raise property tax to pay for education, among other services. Also, a new law originally proposed by Walker limits collective bargaining by most public employees, including teachers. Walker has said that benefit concessions from teachers and other school district employees would cover proposed cuts in state aid, a point some school districts have disagreed with.

According to a Watertown police report obtained by the magazine, another co-worker told an officer that the teacher who had committed suicide had a “long history of depression” and was stressed out by the protests in Madison and “uncertainty involved in the teaching world.”

In writing the story, Editor Matthew Rothschild notes: “Figuring out all the contributing factors behind a likely suicide is a complicated problem. Such deaths are in some ways incomprehensible – and always tragic.”

Jefferson County Coroner Pat Theder said he’s awaiting toxicology results before determining a cause of death.

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