An audit of Milwaukee Public Schools found that a “culture of fear” inside the state’s largest school district has contributed to the need for a vast overhaul of the organization — from rewriting job descriptions in the central office all the way down to onboarding for new teachers.
The report found disarray and overlap among district jobs, a resistance among employees to change and poor teacher retention — all of which can harm student achievement. It also highlighted external issues facing the district, including the prevalence of poverty among MPS families and falling enrollment numbers.
Gov. Tony Evers ordered the review last year after financial mismanagement within MPS became public, which led to the departure of then-superintendent Keith Posley. The state withheld $43 million in aid due to MPS’s financial missteps.
The audit of the district’s operations was completed by Tampa-based MGT, which has previously studied K-12 school districts in California, Maryland, Louisiana, Indiana and Florida. It outlines a 29-point action plan to reorganize Milwaukee’s school district.
MPS characterized the report positively. It “validates the progress we are making while also serving as a guide for continued improvements,” according to a statement issued Thursday by the district’s board of directors.
State superintendent Jill Underly placed those improvements squarely at the feet of incoming MPS superintendent Dr. Brenda Cassillius, who was announced as the district’s next leader on Tuesday night.
Underly said she was optimistic that the district under Cassellius’ leadership will turn the report’s recommended actions into meaningful change.
But MPS employees, parents and community members told WUWM that they see longstanding issues in the district directly reflected in the audit.
“It is a culture of fear, it is. It’s a culture of survival," says Shae Harvey, a paraprofessional at Lloyd Barbee Montessori School. "Because everybody in these professions are essentially creative people, we learn how to adapt.”
Others are hoping the hiring of Cassellius and the release of the audit kicks off a period of restructuring.
"I would start with the fact that the primary job of a school district is to educate students. When just 9% of students are performing at proficient levels, when across all the tested grades and subjects Black students are performing at the lowest levels among MPS’s peers... We know there are challenges and problems," Colleston Morgan, executive of the City Forward Collective, told WUWM.
What does this audit mean for MPS employees, parents, the district’s 66,000 students and future generations of MPS graduates?
Here are the top three takeaways:
1. MPS Human Resources needs new tech, new staff
Auditors found that the district’s human resources department is inefficient and prone to “confusion and human error,” directly impacting the workforce tasked with educating and keeping MPS students safe.
Staff interviewed by MGT said they had no formal onboarding or training when starting jobs in the district, a concern nearly identical to issues unearthed in a 2019 study of the district’s HR department by the Council of Great City Schools.
Employees in 2024 described their training as “play-by-play” — only learning how to do something when an issue arose and they were forced to ask another employee how to proceed.
The report also found antiquated HR systems that did little to centralize information or automate themselves.
For example, the district maintains more than 300 separate job description documents that are manually updated. The report said these maneuvers are “time-consuming and prone to mistakes.”
Finally, the audit raises issues with data management that slow down the district and makes tracking programs more difficult. Payroll, human resources, and facilities data is all kept separately, “making it labor-intensive and error-prone to track metrics like retention rates and budget,” the report says.
Solution: The audit implores the district to update its HR systems and hire new top staff in the department.
2. MPS needs to reorganize its central office — fast
While students don’t interact with central office staff on a daily basis, the function of the school district has been diminished by “unclear reporting lines and siloed departmental structure within MPS’ Central Office.”
The report says these issues “significantly hinder the District’s ability to drive student success.”
Auditors found that one senior leader’s job title changed between the time they interviewed for the job and when they signed their contract. The report also highlights that the district’s department of technology services has been relocated across at least four departments, providing no clear reporting structure for its employees.
The confusion extends to important teams that directly support at-risk and potentially vulnerable students. Four different departments, including those that oversee equity and inclusion, behavior intervention, restorative practices and the department that specifically supports Black and Latino boys are effectively run by the district’s chief of academics although they fall under an entirely different department and are supposed to be run by the chief of staff.
“These Equity Departments are also examples of Board member-championed initiatives that have unclear, and likely overlapping, objectives,” auditors found.
Solution: The audit proposed a new organizational structure for the district by spring 2026 and suggests hiring chief communications and chief operations officers with experience overhauling school districts.
3. The school board and district staff must work together more effectively
Perhaps the most public-facing issue is the “strained relationship between the MPS Board and District Leadership,” which the report called a critical barrier to successful decision making.
“The Board often defaults to ad hoc decision-making based on anecdotal evidence rather than actionable insights,” auditors found.
This makes it difficult for Board initiatives to match district-wide goals for student achievement and wellbeing.
“The Board’s role was described as overly involved in the District’s day-to-day operations, such as participating in the hiring process of all staff roles rather than focusing on its core responsibilities of setting a high-level vision and holding the Administration accountable for student outcomes,” the audit found.
Solution: Four MPS board seats are up for election this spring, although only one race has more than one candidate. None of the incumbents chose to run again. At a time when the board’s membership is about to be shaken up, the report calls for comprehensive training of school board members so they know how to best effect change and operate efficiently.
