By State Representative, Leon D. Young
Leon D. Young
There has been talk recently among “select civic leaders” in Milwaukee concerning the possibility of splitting the largest public school district in the state.
Under a plan discussed just last week, the lowest-performing schools in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) could be removed from the district’s authority and placed in a state-run district, which could turn them over to charter school operators or give them the flexibility to make significant staffing and leadership changes.
The private discussions that launched these ideas on school governance were hosted by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC). The meetings featured guest speakers Patrick Dobard, superintendent of the 10-year-old state-run Recovery School District in Louisiana, and Elliot Smalley, chief of staff for Tennessee’s new staterun Achievement School District, which will oversee more than a dozen schools in Memphis this year.
Invited guests included unidentified state legislators, representatives from the offices of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton. Interestingly enough, Milwaukee School Board members were not invited.
The very school board members that are vested with the authority to make policy decisions that specifically affect this school district.
MMAC and its president, Tim Sheehy, are no neophytes to hatching plots to wrestle control of MPS. Back in 2009, Sheehy and his organization were outspoken proponents of a mayoral takeover plan that garnered some legislative traction in Madison.
If the bill had passed, the mayor of Milwaukee, Tom Barrett, would have appointed the superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools and empowered him with control over the system’s purse strings, academic policy and collective bargaining.
The publicly elected school board, which now has jurisdiction over these matters, would have been reduced to a nearly powerless advisory body.
There is no question that MPS is in dire need of some major education reform, but to what degree? Choice schools, charter schools, state-run school districts are just some of the options being floated about to deal with the ever-increasing achievement gap between Black and White students in Milwaukee.
But, the reality is this: There are no shortcuts or quick solutions to educating EVERY child in Milwaukee or in America for that matter.
The achievement gap will only be arrested when educators are fullysupported in their classrooms; having parents that are fully-involved in their children’s education; and students coming to school fully-prepared to learn.
I would like to wish every Wisconsin student a very successful academic year.