This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/milwaukee-moves-but-slowly-to-deal-with-underused-buildings/

Consultants’ figures prove critics right as state’s largest district continues to shrink 

Wisconsin’s largest school district, whose voters narrowly approved a quarter-billion dollar increase in funding last spring, is breaking the news to those voters that it may have to close some schools.

The process isn’t moving quickly.

“Very little will happen even into the next school year,” a district consultant put it to Milwaukeeans at one of a series of public hearings Wednesday night at Hamilton High School.

The Milwaukee Public Schools is holding public sessions to explain its Long-Range Facilities Master Plan, an attempt to “right-size” a school district with at least a score of schools operating at less than half capacity.

The district came under fire from a retired and long-serving superintendent for failing to address the cost of maintaining so many underused buildings last winter as it asked for voters’ permission to override its state-imposed revenue limits by $252 billion a year in perpetuity.

There is still no list of schools that would close, or even a number. Patrick Davis, who works for Perkins Eastman, the consultant working with the district, explained to several dozen Milwaukeeans Wednesday the details of the unfolding process of developing options and hastened to add, “This is definitely not leading to any decisional points right now.”

What he made clear is the Milwaukee Public Schools’ shrinking demographics. By the district’s own numbers, enrollment is down 14% in the last decade, a decline that comports with other tallies showing student numbers down more than 40% since the late 1990s. The district projects a steady decline in enrollment for the next decade.

Part of it is a 24% drop in the number of births in Milwaukee between 2010 and 2022. “That’s really important,” said Davis. Another part is that about half of the school-attending children in Milwaukee — 127,000, by the district’s reckoning — now attend a school outside of the conventional MPS district system, between public charter schools independent of MPS, private schools in the parental choice program, and Milwaukee kids open-enrolled into other school districts or virtual options.

The result, according to Perkins Eastman’s calculations, is that the district’s enrollment equals about 80 percent of its capacity, with only 66% of its high school space in use. The district, now required to file annual reports with the Legislature on its building utilization, in August said 22 of its buildings were less than half full, including two large high schools. Washington High School of Information Technology, with room for 1,294 students, enrolled 494, a 38 percent usage rate. Madison High School, with room for 1,629, enrolled only 659 students last May, a 40 percent rate.

Just over a quarter of MPS schools, by Perkins Eastman’s reckoning, are oversubscribed. The district is unusual in allowing all children to choose which school in MPS to attend, Davis said. The district offers a great many specialized programs, including several high schools that select students on academic ability. One of those, Reagan High School, had half again as many students as its building’s capacity in the MPS’ most recent figures.

MPS families take ample advantage of the district’s enrollment options. Fewer than one in five students and only one in 10 high schoolers attend their neighborhood school.

As a result, many of the district’s least-used schools are clustered in the center of Milwaukee’s north side, a generally a low-income area. Many of the oversubscribed schools are on the south and east sides.

Authorities are unlikely to want to concentrate school closures in low-income neighborhoods, as Davis pointed out. In coming days, the consultants expect results from a survey of about 12,000 district residents, including parents, students and MPS staff. The survey answers may shed light on why parents are shunning some schools and flocking to others.

There is another complication: During a Q & A on Wednesday, one Milwaukeean pointed out that if the district closes schools, it leaves school buildings available to be used by independent schools that have attracted about 30,000 students in Milwaukee and are still growing. The district has resisted selling disused buildings to private schools, despite state law against such discrimination.

Among the options the consultants will offer the district for unneeded schools are potential uses such as recreation or community centers, “so that MPS can keep them in its portfolio,” Davis said.

The district has already gotten public pushback on the entire planning process in meetings this week. Attendees expressed distrust of the process and the of district’s leadership.

MPS, long the state’s worst-performing district academically, has struggled in the past year to meet even its basic financial reporting obligations. Its superintendent resigned after state authorities revealed — after voters already approved the referendum by a 51% to 49% margin — that the district was about a year late in its financial reporting.

State officials threatened to suspend its aid.

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute.

Any use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written permission. To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute President Mike Nichols at mike@badgerinstitute.org or 262-389-8239.

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