Let’s start with the money.
The Milwaukee public school board passed a $1.5 billion budget for next school year that sets aside $16 million for lead paint cleanup.
This comes after the Milwaukee Health Department discovered chipped lead paint in several MPS schools, putting children at risk of toxic exposure. A majority of the cleanup at the district’s oldest schools will take place this summer.
The fact that MPS can balance its budget and maintain its operations is in part due to the $252 million referendum voters passed last year.
For some, it also represents an important tipping point.
“This is not a resource-poor district anymore. And that’s a different place than we’ve been in over the decades," according to Colleston Morgan, of the education advocacy group City Forward Collective.
He describes himself as a “friendly critic” of MPS.
“The story has always been one of ‘MPS is under-resourced compared to suburban peers, they’re below the state average. None of that is true anymore," he says. "I don’t believe that the financial resources to be able to address these challenges are the primary barrier to being able to address them. Now, with a billion and a half dollars, there’s a lot that they should be able to do.”
Next, let’s talk about jobs. The new budget adds 61 jobs in the district’s facilities department, which is spearheading the lead paint project. It also cuts more than 40 teaching jobs from the central office, including literacy specialists and academic coaches. It moves those positions into classroom teaching roles.
“The expectation is that if we do something, it’s going to be in all 156 schools," Superintendent Dr. Brenda Cassellius says. "We need to figure out how to build the capacity in those schools so that we have greater equity and we don’t have this regional, disparate effort.”
The teachers’ union was critical of that move, but the school board ultimately approved it.
Audit finds inconsistencies in reading instruction across Milwaukee
But barriers do persist, and several are laid out in a new report about the way MPS teaches its students.
Last month, the state released the second of two MPS audits ordered by Gov. Tony Evers. Evers called for the audits after a financial mismanagement crisis in MPS came to light last year. The first report was focused on MPS’s operations and structure. This audit was focused on the instructional approach of teachers and principals across Milwaukee.
The most alarming finding was that there isn’t a coherent or universal approach to teaching students how to read. The district doesn’t offer much supplemental literacy training for teachers, and the sessions that are offered are poorly attended.
As a result of this and other factors, Milwaukee’s literacy rate is dismal. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, just 27% of MPS fourth graders can read at a basic level.
And that is terrifying data for people who work on literacy.
Carrie Streiff-Stuessy is the executive director of Forward Scholars, a group that trains community volunteers to tutor MPS students in reading.
“So if kids are reading by the end of third grade, they’re four times more likely to graduate from high school," she says. "If kids can’t read, they can’t access the world, they can’t read the signs as they’re walking down the street. They can’t read the directions on the manual that they’re supposed to be using at work. We really are doing a complete disservice to our children if we aren’t providing the instruction that they need in order to meet that third grade target.”
The instructional audit found that staff are stretched too thin to make changes they know are necessary in schools. Morgan, of the City Forward Collective, agrees.
“Good people, well-intentioned people, from classroom teachers into central office and everywhere in between, are being failed by the lack of a system, the lack of coherence, the lack of structure, in ways that are yielding worst-in-the-nation outcomes for our students.”
What's next for MPS?
Now, it’s on MPS to make the changes outlined by auditors. And it’s not clear where they’ll get money to do that.
Gov. Evers allocated about $3 million to MPS so it could implement the findings of the financial audit.
But Republicans stripped an additional $5 million he proposed to make the changes outlined in this second instructional audit.
Katherine Kokal is the education reporter at 89.7 WUWM - Milwaukee's NPR. Have a question about schools or an education story idea? You can reach her at kokal@uwm.edu
