This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/milwaukees-list-of-half-used-school-buildings-rises-to-21/

Big high school using only 39% of its capacity

The number of school buildings controlled by Milwaukee Public Schools that are most dramatically underutilized totals 21, a look at the district’s complete filing with the state confirms.

Among the buildings with enrollments that use less than half their capacity is the Washington High School of Information Technology, the massive facility on Milwaukee’s prominent Sherman Boulevard. According to the district’s own figures, the building last year could accommodate 1,294 students but was being used to educate only 511.

The 39% utilization comes after similarly low utilization rates for the building — 44% and 36% respectively — in MPS’ pre-pandemic filings in 2016 and 2019.

The district describes Washington as a “magnet school” despite the persistent low enrollment. According to district figures made public on the school’s state report card, about 4% of its students were proficient in reading and about 91% were chronically absent in 2021-22, the most recent year available. MPS’ overall chronic absenteeism rate is 58%.

The district’s underutilization of school buildings has become an issue in an April 2 referendum, in which the district will ask voters for $252 million in annual revenue over its legal limit.

The district’s enrollment has declined about 40% in the past two decades, but its leaders have been slow to right-size its roster of buildings. MPS’ superintendent Keith Posley has contended that closing underutilized schools wouldn’t save much money. Critics, including retired long-time superintendent Bill Andrekopoulos, have said that the scale of MPS’ underutilization over time shows the district is not properly planning the use of its resources.

A district spokesman declined to respond to questions sent to him Thursday morning with a 3 pm Thursday deadline, and added that 3 pm Friday “would be ideal.”

MPS has also been slow to respond to earlier requests for information.

The district is required by law to file a report on building usage with the state every summer. A 2023 report was filed with the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee last summer but the publicly available version posted on the Committee website was incomplete, leaving off some of the district’s schools.

The Badger Institute filed an open records request with MPS on March 4 but was informed by the interim director of the Office of Board Governance, Jill Kawala, that the district’s interpretation of state law is that while a requestor is entitled to a “timely response,” he or she is not entitled to a response within “any specific time.”

Kawala wrote that the Badger Institute could go to court but also noted that “in the event a premature public records lawsuit is initiated, MPS may seek an award of costs, fees and other remedies associated with the burden and expense of responding to the action.”

The Badger Institute chose not to file a lawsuit to obtain the record because it was able to obtain it from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction on March 13.

According to the list MPS sent to DPI and then obtained by the Badger Institute, the tally of MPS schools that are less than half utilized according to the district’s own calculation now includes two large high schools, Washington and Madison High School, where 762 students last spring used about 47% of the building’s 1,629-student capacity. Like Washington, Madison High School was less than half-used not just in the latest figures but in 2019 and 2016 as well.

Another large MPS high school for which 2023 figures previously hadn’t been publicly available is Marshall. According to the list obtained from DPI, its 2023 enrollment of 968 students comes to 62% of the building’s capacity of 1,566 students.

There are a total of 141 schools listed in the MPS filing the Badger Institute secured from the Department of Public Instruction; after removing charter schools not controlled by MPS and schools with multiple sites, there are 129 — or 22 more than listed in the earlier version obtained from the Committee on Joint Finance. Of those  22 schools for which MPS’ figures are newly available, five have enrollments less than two-thirds their stated capacity, while eight have enrollments greater than their stated capacity.

In all, MPS’ own figures show that 43 of its school buildings are less than two-thirds used. Thirty of them were less than two-thirds used not just in 2023 but in 2019 and 2016 as well. Seventeen of them are more than one-third over their stated capacities.

The referendum will ask voters in the City of Milwaukee whether the district can override state limits on how much it collects, combined, in property taxes and state aid, which together constitute about 81% of the $18,822 per student in revenue available to MPS, according to the most recent state figures. The district’s per-pupil revenue is about equal to the $18,035 it spent per pupil in 2021-22, the most recent figures available from the state. After adjusting for inflation, the spending figure is about equal to the district’s peak of spending in 2010, before state public-sector labor reforms lowered benefits costs.

If voters approve, the district has said, the property tax rate will rise $2.16 per $1,000 in assessed value, or about $324 a year on a $150,000 house. Property tax payers in Milwaukee now pay about $9.55 per $1,000 of value for MPS, so the increase is considerable. The district is one of 91 in Wisconsin asking for such a levy limit override in the April 2 election.

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.

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