Milwaukee Public Schools leaders found out last week that the state was releasing the final portion of money it withheld after the district missed financial reporting deadlines in 2024.
The financial woes led to the resignation of former Superintendent Keith Posely and three subsequent audits of the district.
Now, Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction has released $8 million to the district after it submitted all its late financial audits. Following this payment, MPS will have recouped all $42 million the state originally withheld.
It represents another major turn for the state’s largest school district as it tries to re-earn both the trust of the public and state regulators.
WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal caught up with current MPS Superintendent Dr. Brenda Cassellius on Jan. 16, the day the district announced the final payment.
Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Katherine Kokal: The school district announced today that this final chunk of money from the state is going to be released. What does this mean to get these final dollars back?
Dr. Brenda Cassellius: Well, it is just an exciting day for us here. You know, we worked so hard to get to this point. It is three audits within just over a year. The team just kind of dug in and got this done. It wasn't without a lot of scrutiny and difficulty, but we got it done and it means a great deal to us personally. Also I think it means a great deal to our students, our teachers, and our public, our families, that we are going to tighten our belts and know where every dollar is and get back to fiscal prudence and good reporting and transparency in our reporting. More importantly, the state can depend on us. And I think that that's really important.
This chunk of $8 million from the state was for "achievement gap reduction." Can you explain what that is? The district said that there was no stop in services, how is that possible?
That's possible because we had a fund balance. We have a $1.6 billion budget. So there's always some funding that is available, in terms of our month-to-actuals. So we're able to cover the funding that way. And then AGR is the "achievement gap reduction" funding, and that's used for class-size reduction. It's also used, it can be used for coaching. So those schools that get that funding, were still able to get that funding, you know, from us and our general fund. We just carried that until the funding came through.
We are hearing a lot right now about potential school closures. Can you explain if there is a relationship between this chunk of money and the potential need to close schools?
[The consulting firm Perkins-Eastman] was able to present to the board their findings around our building use, utilization, deferred maintenance, and condition. Within that, they recommended some mergers or closures. Obviously, that would give some cost savings to the district over many, many years. And so what we are doing is creating a proposal to the district around investing in our neighborhoods that we believe have had disinvestment before.
This is from the construction fund. It's not from a grant resource or from state or federal funding to the district or from our general operating fund. So there's very different categories of restricted funds. What we were talking about around these investments in particular, were coming out of the construction fund. That's not the achievement gap reduction fund.
Even with this fiscal accomplishment today, many people believe that it was mismanagement of funding, and it really wasn't. What it was was that our two systems did not talk to one another, and so it was more about accounting and reporting and making sure that the state had full sight of our finances here in Milwaukee Public Schools.
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
