MPS budget: Board OKs raises, early retirement, new hires and busing plan
Milwaukee Public Schools restored an early retirement plan that was eliminated after Act 10 and will distribute as much as $25.5 million in raises next year as part of the preliminary 2020-’21 budget approved in a marathon online session that ended early Friday morning.
Those benefits were a major victory for the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, which has lobbied hard for both and spearheaded the $87 million referendum approved by voters this spring that makes them possible.
But board members also trimmed about $11 million out of various line items — in early childhood, advanced academics and elsewhere — to advance other priorities.
About $3 million in savings will come with the implementation of a new busing plan that has drawn hundreds of complaints from families. Board members initially rejected the plan, but reversed themselves, in part because it will give them flexibility if social distancing requirements imposed in response to the coronavirus pandemic remain in place come fall.
“It was very difficult. It meant some compromises,” MPS Board President Larry Miller said of the deliberations, which ended around 3:30 a.m. Friday. “You want to put in place a budget that moves the district forward, teaches kids and supports them and their families. And I think we did that.”
MTEA President Amy Mizialko called the budget “a win for our students, for public education workers and for the city of Milwaukee.” The retirement benefit and investment in a new salary schedule adopted last year, she said, will help to stabilize MPS’ current workforce and attract high-quality educators.
“These are things we’ve been fighting for for years,” she said.
The state’s largest school district, with about 75,000 students and nearly 10,000 employees, MPS is projected to spend $1.28 billion next year, up from $1.16 billion in the current year — with much of that provided by $57 million in referendum funds.
As always, the final budget won’t be approved until the fall, when enrollment and state aid figures are finalized. But the coronavirus has introduced a new level of uncertainty this year. And MPS officials are bracing themselves for wholesale revisions if state funding is cut, federal relief dollars fall short or they have to make costly changes in the way they educate children.
For now, at least, the budget calls for the district to begin implementing many of the improvements it promised voters when it launched the referendum. That includes hiring more than 100 teachers, about a third of them in early childhood classes, and dozens of other staff, including librarians, counselors, therapists, nurses and aides.
It plans to expand instruction in art and music. And it calls for the district to spend almost $30 million to hire and retain certified educators; however, most of that is for increased wages and benefits for existing employees.
Several amendments and the first year of the new early retirement program, totaling about $11.1 million, were added Thursday, forcing cuts elsewhere, in a process at-large board member Bob Peterson likened to “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”
Those included the early retirement plan; raising the district’s minimum wage to $15 an hour; adding staff and funding for an ethnic studies program; diverting $100,000 in funds used to pay for police services to hire restorative practices coaches; and adding $200,000 for MPS University, a district-run alternative licensing program.
The early retirement plan will allow employees hired before 2013 who meet certain criteria to retire with districtsubsidized health care at age 55, at a cost of about $7 million annually. A similar plan, along with a salary schedule that increased wages over time, had been in place for years in the district. But those were discontinued in 2013 when contracts expired, two years after Act 10 stripped most public workers of their right to collective bargaining.
Public outcry over busing system
Most controversial among families is likely to be the decision to move to the three-tier busing system, which will stagger school hours across the district, with some starting as early as 7:20 a.m. and some ending as late as 4:10 p.m. Hundreds of parents have complained, some saying they would have to quit their jobs, leave children home unattended or transfer schools.
It marks the first time in years the district has succeeded in an effort to alter its extensive busing network, one of its most costly expenditures at about $70 million a year.
Board members initially rejected the plan on a 5-4 vote, saying parents were not given enough warning and that it would be too disruptive for families, many of whom are already struggling from the effects of the pandemic.
They later passed it, apparently swayed by the argument of transportation director David Solik-Fifarek, who said failure to adopt the plan could force the district to cut busing to thousands of children if social-distancing requirements remain in place next year.
“If that is part of the plan, we won’t have enough buses,” he said. “We’re really in a precarious situation here.”