Report says city slow to sell MPS buildings

At least 40 underused or vacant, it says

At least 40 Milwaukee Public Schools buildings are vacant or underused, according to a new report by a conservative law firm that wants to see them sold off to private and public charter schools that will compete with the state’s largest public school system.

The study by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which represents school choice advocates, says only five buildings are for sale, despite interest from potential buyers.

It accuses the City of Milwaukee, which owns the buildings, of violating a 2015 state law aimed at forcing the sale of surplus MPS school buildings.

And it calls on the Legislature to add enforcement measures, including the awarding of attorney’s fees “if the aggrieved party prevails,” a measure that could bankroll choice schools’ lawsuits against the city and directly benefit WILL.

WILL’s vice president for policy and deputy council, C.J. Szafir, called the vacancies “a scandal,” given MPS’ budget constraints, including a looming $50 million-plus budget gap for 2017-’18.

“The City of Milwaukee is acting like state law is optional,” Szafir said.

“With a struggling Milwaukee educational system and interest from charter and voucher schools, city officials would rather see them empty than put to good use and filled with kids,” he said.

MPS and Milwaukee’s Department of City Development said the report is misleading and contains a number of factual errors.

“We absolutely assert that the City of Milwaukee is following the law as it was written,” said Martha Brown, deputy commissioner of Milwaukee’s Department of City Development.

Brown said three of the buildings highlighted were under contract when the law passed, so they were never covered by it.

MPS said the four buildings featured on the report’s cover are occupied or in development for MPS’ own reform initiatives, and that the ALBA/Carmen South facility it lists as 55% filled is actually at 99.6% capacity.

The report released Friday expounds on a similar WILL study from 2015.

It says at least 15 MPS buildings are vacant, another 25 are operating at less than 50% capacity, and that the district has spent $10.2 million on them over the last decade on utility costs alone.

The report documents unsuccessful attempts by several private and charter schools to purchase MPS buildings.

Since the 2015 law was passed, it says, the city has sold just one building, to the charter school Southside Rocketship Community Prep for a north side expansion.

The battle over the buildings is one piece of the broader debate over school choice, taxpayerfunded vouchers for private schools and what critics see as an effort to privatize public education.

That debate is likely to intensify with the appointment of billionaire philanthropist and school choice advocate Betsy DeVos as U.S. secretary of education.

And public schools in Wisconsin would likely face increased competition if voucher school proponent Lowell Holtz ousts Tony Evers as Wisconsin’s superintendent of public instruction in April.

Milwaukee School Board Director Michael Bonds has likened WILL’s push to force the sale of the buildings to “asking the Coca-Cola Company to turn over its facilities to Pepsi so Pepsi can expand and compete with the Coca-Cola Company.”

School choice advocates argue that MPS should be forced to sell its buildings because it is failing to educate large swaths of students.

The report says 23,000 of the district’s nearly 80,000 students failed to meet academic expectations in the latest state report cards, down 8,000 students from its 2015 study.

MPS and public school advocates argue that voucher and many charter schools “cream off” the higher performing students leaving their more challenging classmates in the public schools with dwindling resources, that choice schools are not held to the same standards and that many perform no better than low-performing public schools.