School board member’s son wants job back
Younger Bonds lost teaching position after fight in bar
The son of Milwaukee School Board Director Michael Bonds wants to teach again in Milwaukee Public Schools — a job he was fired from last year after being convicted of substantial battery, a felony, after a bar fight.
Michael Bonds, a board member since 2007 and former board president, said his son, Michael Y. Bonds, is appealing his termination from MPS. The situation has caused some rumblings in the district among those who believe Bonds is seeking special treatment for his son.
New information suggests the younger Bonds, 31, will face an uphill battle. He was disciplined twice by MPS during his run as a teacher from February 2015 to September 2016, according to his personnel file, which the Journal Sentinel obtained through an open records request.
And the Department of Public Instruction confirmed that Bonds never actually acquired an emergency teaching permit. Public school teachers must have licenses, or at least temporary permits, to teach in Wisconsin.
The elder Bonds said his son is not getting special treatment, and that if he was, he wouldn’t have been fired.
“He’s going through the appeals process just like anybody else,” Michael Bonds said. “I haven’t had any undue influence.”
Bonds said he’s always kept his family and work separate. His wife, Kathy Bonds, is a veteran district administrator who was a superintendent of instruction as of 2016-’17, according to MPS records. She led the old Custer High School until she was removed as part of a federal school turnaround plan in 2010-’11.
The younger Bonds was hired as a paraprofessional educational assistant in October 2014 at an annual salary of $17,823, according to his personnel file. He was promoted to a teaching position in February 2015 at a salary of $41,200. Records show he taught fifth grade at Sherman Park Multicultural School.
The younger Bonds agreed to file for a license when he signed a teaching contract with MPS. People with no education training but a bachelor’s degree can apply for a temporary emergency permit to teach in positions that are hard to fill. But DPI spokesman Tom McCarthy said that
Bonds’ permit was never approved due to “insufficient information.”
An MPS spokesman said the district “completed its part and provided Mr. Bonds with the necessary forms for him to submit to DPI, along with the instructions for additional documentation requirements” to get the necessary credential.
The Journal Sentinel could not locate the younger Bonds for comment; his cellphone number in police reports had changed and his father did not respond to an inquiry for new contact information.
Policy change on hiring
As board president, Bonds led a policy change in December 2014 to ease hiring restrictions on applicants with misdemeanors or felonies on their records. Several people in MPS who didn’t wish to be named thought the policy change might have helped the younger Bonds, who had several misdemeanors on his record at the time he was hired, including for disorderly conduct and for driving while intoxicated for a second time.
The elder Bonds said he pursued the policy change because he was contacted by at least five people with misdemeanors on their records who
couldn’t get hired by the district. One had applied for a custodial position, he said.
“At the time, my son had never thought about working in MPS,” Bonds said. “That policy occurred two years before he was a teacher.”
Actually, the younger Bonds was hired as a paraprofessional at Clarke Street School about two months before the policy passed. He was promoted to a teaching position two months after the policy passed. But MPS officials said the promotion would have happened without the policy change.
While Bonds was teaching, he was reprimanded twice for having “volatile and profane arguments” in school, according
to his file. Once, he used profanity toward a teacher in front of a class of second-graders, according to a letter in Bonds’ file.
Outside of school, Bonds hit a man in the face with a beer mug — unprovoked — at a bar in May 2016, according to a police report. A group of men then stomped and kicked the victim, police said.
After that incident, the district suspended Bonds without pay, then terminated him in September 2016 after he was convicted of substantial battery, a felony.
“The behavior and actions which led to your conviction of felony level substantial battery were extremely violent in nature,
caused extreme injury to a person, and it was especially concerning that this was unprovoked,” said a letter to Bonds from a hearing officer and regional superintendent Reginald Lawrence.
“Acts committed by a teacher which are so egregious in nature, even when committed outside of the workplace, cannot be tolerated by the District,” the letter said.
Bonds served jail time and said he would like another chance and that he would be a good example
for students, according to the administrative letter.
The Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association filed a grievance on behalf of Bonds to fight his termination, according to a source. When that was turned down, the union declined to appeal.
That meant Bonds had to act independently to appeal the decision.
When asked if he thought his son was wellsuited to teaching, the elder Bonds said that wasn’t his call.
“That’s up to the district to decide,” he said.