Milwaukee has 2 top schools. Why is MPS treating them so badly?
To me, it is a factual statement that Milwaukee College Prep and Milwaukee Excellence Charter School are two of the best schools in Wisconsin.
High levels of success year after year while serving low-income Black students from Milwaukee’s north side. High energy school cultures, high academic goals that are genuinely pursued, strong emphasis on positive character traits and conduct, great leadership.
These schools are not perfect, but they are inspiring models. Milwaukee needs more schools like these.
So why does the education system — especially Milwaukee Public Schools — treat them the way it does? Each of these schools has a long and discouraging history of getting hassled (or worse) by the system.
You want to know what’s wrong with Milwaukee’s overall response to its education crisis? Start with looking at the situation of these schools. Start with what happened — and didn’t happen — at the Milwaukee School Board meeting Thursday night.
Milwaukee Excellence
Since it opened in 2016 serving sixth graders in a building owned by MPS at 4950 N. 24th St., Excellence has lived up to its name. One year, it had the highest score on Wisconsin’s school report cards of any school in Milwaukee and one of the highest scores in the state. It has grown a grade a year and this year expects to serve 650 students in sixth through 11th grade.
But it has outgrown the current building, which, in any case, is an elementary school without things a high school should have, such as a decentsized gym and an auditorium.
The school has worked with MPS leaders to find a new location since 2018. Two plans died previously. The current plan called for moving Excellence’s ninth through 11th grades, with about 300 students, into the third floor of the Andrew Douglas school at 3620 N. 18th St. The first two floors are used by an MPS middle school with about 300 students; the third floor has been vacant. (Sixth through eighth grades would stay at the 24th St. building.)
The MPS administration and Maurice Thomas, the founder and leader of Excellence, appear to have agreed on
the plan. It was put on the agenda for the School Board meeting Thursday night. Excellence arranged for movers for next week. School is scheduled to start Aug. 16.
And then the item was deleted from the board agenda on Wednesday.
Why? Thomas said he has not been told. A likely explanation is that the union objected to the “co-location” of having two schools share the same building. It has objected strongly to colocations involving the Carmen charter schools in the past. The union is staunchly opposed to charter schools, whose teachers are not unionized.
Thomas said Friday the news was devastating. “I feel as though Milwaukee Excellence has worked well with the district and we have done all the right things to be a great partner,” he said. “Unfortunately, the love and support we have given to the district has not been reciprocated, and it is getting harder to love a district that doesn’t love you back.”
In a statement from a spokesman on Friday, MPS said, “Milwaukee Excellence Charter School has been a non-instrumentality partner with Milwaukee Public Schools since the fall of 2016 and we recognize and value this strong partnership. MPS is committed to working with them to secure a facility to accommodate MECS students and staff for the 2021-22 academic year.
“In the process, concerns and questions were raised that are causing us to consider other options. While this process is taking longer than anyone would like, we are continuing to work with the MECS team on ensuring students and staff have a location for this school year.”
What’s next? Thomas said Friday that he didn’t know.
“Wednesday (when he heard that the proposal was off the table) was the hardest day I ever had at work because I feel like I failed all those families and 70 staff members in doing my job, which was to get more space,” he said.
The Douglas building is in the 53206 ZIP code, an area with deep problems, and Excellence would have been by far the highest performing school in that area. Is that important enough to mean anything? Even if an acceptable answer emerges, is this the way to treat a top school?
Milwaukee College Prep
Thursday night brought success — sort of — for Milwaukee College Prep, which has 2,000 students in four buildings on the north side.
After unwelcoming treatment by the school board, College Prep decided months ago to switch from being authorized (“chartered,” to use the formal term) by the school board to being authorized by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
To a large degree, this is a bureaucratic matter that doesn’t affect the way the schools operate. But it would have meant that MPS would lose 2,000 students and, separate from funding it provided to College Prep, MPS would also have lost millions of dollars every year from state aid and property taxes.
In exchange, MPS would have gained nothing. Losing College Prep drew major heat directed at MPS from business leaders and others. It appears regrets developed within MPS ranks.
In the meantime, College Prep leaders made an unhappy discovery: Due to federal rules for distribution of the huge wave of pandemic relief money that is coming to schools nationwide, College Prep would have lost more than $10 million if it changed authorizers. Robb Rauh, the leader of College Prep, said this would have harmed students.
So an unexpected turn occurred. For reasons on each side almost entirely related to money, negotiations reopened and it was agreed College Prep would stay under the MPS umbrella.
With little good feeling on both sides, six School Board members voted to give College Prep a new five-year contract, while two members abstained and one was not present. One board member audibly sighed while voting in favor. The board and College Prep also agreed in private negotiations to end a lawsuit in which the school sued MPS for payment of performance bonuses it argued it had earned for the 2019-20 school year.
So College Prep will move forward into the upcoming year and the several years beyond. What will happen to Excellence is unclear.
Frankly, I’m tired of the sector wars involving MPS, charter schools, and private/voucher schools in Milwaukee. We need good schools — and more of them — in all sectors. And what does it say when the good ones we have are treated shoddily?
In recent months, I have called the College Prep episode “self-defeating” for MPS. In reality, the treatment of both of these schools — and others — is worse than that. It is just plain defeating for the future of Milwaukee’s children.
Alan J. Borsuk is senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk @marquette.edu.