Rather than Kicking the Can Down the Road, the School Board Should Drop Plans to Evict Carmen

The News: In an agenda posted last week, the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) Board indicated that they will delay their plans to evict two Carmen Charter Schools campuses from their buildings until October 2024. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) and other education advocates have previously stated that evicting the charter school would be bad for students and Milwaukee taxpayers alike.

With the MPS Board set to delay consideration of evicting Carmen Schools until October, WILL released a new analysis today that highlights the unfeasibility of one Board Member’s claims that a new home can be found for Carmen students. Low-occupancy and vacant buildings in MPS are located primarily on the northside of the city—far from where Carmen’s students reside on the southside. No single southside school has the space to accommodate the 1,138 students that would be displaced by this proposed eviction.

The Quote: WILL Research Director, Will Flanders, noted, “MPS should avoid another disaster and completely drop its plans to evict Carmen Charter. Not only would it be a huge negative for families and MPS’s finances, evicting this charter school is simply unfeasible and nothing more than an ideological attack on parental choice.”

Background: In April, the MPS School Board began the process to consider forcing Carmen Schools to leave two buildings that it currently rents from the district. Carmen runs a network of charter schools that historically have been some of the highest-performing schools in the district. The agenda for the Board meeting suggests that Director Zombor—who initially proposed the eviction of Carmen—will make a motion to hold this item until October.

Previous research from WILL found that MPS would lose over $2.2 million in annual funding from Carmen schools if they moved forward with eviction and deauthorizing the two schools.

Read More:

Analysis: How MPS is Misleading Parents and Taxpayers on Carmen Eviction

Analysis: Cutting Off Your Foot to Spite the Children: Carmen Eviction’s Fiscal Impact on MPS

Report: Apples to Apples: The Definitive Look at Test Scores in Milwaukee and Wisconsin

MPS Committee Agenda: June 21, 2024