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Official predicts more interest in Madison than in Milwaukee

Two high-ranking Wisconsin corrections officials were suspended for three days without pay for breaking fishing laws in Ohio.

More than two years after it was created as part of the state’s 2015-’17 budget, the University of Wisconsin System’s Office of Educational Opportunity is taking steps to authorize its first charter schools.

The office issued two requests for proposals this week, one for a pilot for an addiction recovery school, which could be located anywhere in the state, and another for potential charter schools in Madison and Milwaukee.

Gary Bennett, the former chief of staff for Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) who was tapped last year to lead the office, said some municipalities and Cooperative Educational Service Agency, or CESA, networks have voiced interest in the recovery school.

As for the traditional charters, if there is interest at all, he said, it’s more likely to be in Madison than Milwaukee.

“My gut feeling is we will not get anything for Milwaukee,” he said of the city where the competition is already intense for students among Milwaukee Public Schools, charter and voucher schools.

“I’m not sure that there’s anybody waiting in the wings to apply, but it’s worth asking,” he said.

Bennett said he has had some interest in the Madison, though he declined to identify schools or individuals. If a school is authorized there, it would be the first in the city not chartered by the Madison Metropolitan School District, and only one of three independent charters — those not authorized by a school district — outside of Milwaukee.

Bennett’s office and post were created by the Republican-led Legislature to authorize charter schools in districts with 25,000 students or more — Milwaukee and Madison, effectively. The 2015-’17 budget plan proposed by Senate Republicans last month would expand that authority beyond those two cities.

Charters are publicly funded schools that allow for greater flexibility in the way they operate in areas such as staffing and curriculum. As of January, Wisconsin had 237 charter schools serving about 44,000 students, the vast majority of those authorized by local public school districts. Twenty-two others were independently chartered — all but two of those in Milwaukee — by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the UW-Parkside.

Though they are growing nationally, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools , interest has waned in Wisconsin in recent years. Only one new school, Pathways High, is slated to open in Milwaukee this fall. And independent charters have been slow to catch on outside of Milwaukee, in part because of a lack of funding and a push by parents for public school alternatives.

In Milwaukee, performance has been mixed. The Carmen Schools of Science and Technology’s south side campus, at 1712 S. 32nd St., was recently rated as Wisconsin’s top high school by U.S. News & World Report. But many charters fare no better, and sometimes worse, than traditional public schools with similar student bodies.

The school for recovering addicts, authorized by a special session Assembly bill signed into law by Gov. Scott Walker in July, would serve 15 students as part of a four-year pilot program. If it is successful, it could be replicated around the state.

Because recovery schools are expensive, Bennett said organizations that come with additional funding sources beyond the state dollars would score higher in the selection process. He said potential operators are looking at two models, one in Indianapolis that lets municipalities tap juvenile correction and local mental health dollars; and another in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, in which local school districts pool their funds to support a school.

The recovery school could end up being the only charter authorized in this round of requests for proposals, said Bennett. And, if so, he said, his office would focus on other priorities.

“This might be the RFP that fails, and if so, then it’s time to pivot to a new mode,” he said. “We could look at how the system could be a partner in teacher and leadership development ... in really coherently developing dual enrollment programs ... in breaking down barriers between k-12 and higher ed,” said Bennett.

“But that would be up to the Board of Regents.”