{"id":11047,"date":"2024-06-05T19:33:41","date_gmt":"2024-06-05T19:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=11047"},"modified":"2024-06-05T20:00:19","modified_gmt":"2024-06-05T20:00:19","slug":"gov-evers-needs-to-intervene-in-mps-says-former-superintendent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=11047","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Evers needs to intervene in MPS, says former superintendent\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/gov-evers-needs-to-intervene-in-mps-says-former-superintendent\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Governor should appoint Special Master, step toward new governance\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n

Gov. Tony Evers, a former state Superintendent of Public Instruction, has a unique opportunity given his skill set to take charge of the Milwaukee Public Schools, a former MPS superintendent said.<\/p>\n

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\"Wisconsin<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Bill Andrekopoulos, MPS superintendent for eight years until his retirement in 2010, an educator in the district for 38, said that unless the school district was willing to yield completely to outside reform nothing \u2014 not the financial bungling or low student performance \u2014 would change.<\/p>\n

The governor, Andrekopoulos said, ought to appoint a Special Master, who would create an advisory panel of, maybe, seven members to run MPS for three to five years. The panel would then decide on a new structure for the district, perhaps giving responsibility to the mayor of Milwaukee. The mayor could then appoint community stakeholder board members.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that has never been disrupted in at least 40 years is the governance of MPS and it\u2019s time to be disrupted for the benefit of the kids and the community,\u201d Andrekopoulos told the Badger Institute in a wide-ranging interview. \u201cThe governor, the legislative leaders, the mayor, the Common Council president and the MMAC have an opportunity to make significant changes to the governance structure of MPS. It\u2019s time for a higher authority to intervene.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that MPS Superintendent Keith Posley had resigned, set to give up his $300,000 annual salary at the end of June and take with him a $160,000 severance, Andrekopoulos wondered if anyone would finally listen to those angry speakers at the\u00a0 Milwaukee Public Schools Board hearing Monday night.<\/p>\n

Nearly everyone who called for Posley to be fired also said it was time to clean house. Like the angry crowd Monday night at MPS Central Services voicing their disgust, Andrekopoulos said the public has been given far too few answers to far too many questions.<\/p>\n

His plan for reform is audacious. It\u2019s never been tried in Wisconsin. There will almost certainly be political resistance from the most powerful, controlling player in local education, the Milwaukee Teachers\u2019 Education Association, he said.<\/p>\n

District leadership, elected and administrative, and the DPI, have a lot to answer for\u00a0the events leading up to Posley\u2019s resignation under pressure, Andrekopoulos said.<\/p>\n

Chief among them is why or how district administrators could be so slow to respond to problems with some of its most basic funding sources. While it wasn\u2019t until mid-May that the public became aware that the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services was suspending MPS\u2019 Head Start program, a check of board meeting minutes by the Badger Institute found references to \u201cdeficiencies\u201d in the program going back more than a year.<\/p>\n

The federal Administration for Children and Families in an April 26 letter<\/a> to the board cited physically and verbally abused, maltreated and unsupervised children. Without some remediation, Head Start might withhold an estimated $10.5 million in funding for next year.<\/p>\n

Unlike some federal programs that are little more than slush funds for school districts, Head Start provides very specific guidelines and benchmarks for spending and performance, Andrekopoulos said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs superintendent, I went through an (Head Start) audit,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s shocking to me when Head Start provides a template for remediation that it could be ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n

Approximately a week later, Posley made public a letter<\/a> from John Johnson, deputy state superintendent for DPI, asking for six audits and reports for the years 2023 through 2025, several of them overdue by more than eight months.<\/p>\n

The language of the letter is brutal.<\/p>\n

The letter refers to a \u201cpattern of submitting incomplete data\u201d and warns the district that without swift compliance DPI would withhold a special education services payment for June that could be at least $15 million.<\/p>\n

State general aid payments in the \u201ctens of millions\u201d of dollars to the district were at risk, a DPI spokesperson told<\/a> a local paper. The failure of by far the largest school district in the state to provide required revenue estimates could potentially rob other districts of revenue, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Those few board members who responded claimed to be blindsided by the revelations in the letter. Requests for interviews with key board members and Posley by the Badger Institute were ignored.<\/p>\n

MPS board member Darryl Jackson has said he has been \u201cin the dark about quite a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

While it is possible Jackson, a member of the MPS\u2019 Committee on Accountability, Finance and Personnel and other committee members didn\u2019t know the financial records debacle was coming to a head, he and a quorum were in attendance for a board meeting<\/a> back on December 21 when district chief financial officer Martha Kreitzman responded to an audit critical of her office\u2019s financial reporting.<\/p>\n

Auditor Baker Tilly, a contractor with the district for a decade, had provided the district with a report<\/a> based on its audit for the 2021-22 school year. Auditors \u201cidentified control deficiencies that are considered material weakness surrounding the preparation of financial statements\u201d not in \u201cconformity with generally accepted accounting principles or the schedule of expenditures of federal and state awards that is in conformance with the applicable federal or state requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn addition, material misstatements in the general ledger were identified during the financial audit and subsequently corrected upon being questioned as part of the audit process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kreitzman presented the board with the administration\u2019s response, a 10-page outline<\/a> for correcting the problems.<\/p>\n

In response to a loss of lots of institutional knowledge in the department during the pandemic, Kreitzman said she\u2019d hired contractors for permanent roles as comptroller, reporting manager, budget director, manager and coordinator.<\/p>\n

She said she hired two contractors, Robert Half and Protiviti, to reorganize the Department of Finance. In addition to making financial reporting a separate entity, a financial reporting checklist had been created, she told the board.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you ever been faced with a challenge and didn\u2019t know what direction to go?\u201d she told the board. \u201cThe challenge seemed impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, she painted an optimistic picture for the board. \u201cThis year compared to last year we met most of all our deadlines now,\u201d she said. \u201cThings have gotten a little more difficult as we close out the financial reporting. We made all or most of our deadlines to the auditors.\u201d<\/p>\n

The issue of financial reorganization and deadlines is nowhere to be found in the minutes of the two meetings \u2014 January and February \u2014 available on the MPS website. There is no mention in the public discussion of a problem with DPI.<\/p>\n

\u201cStupid, yes. Incompetent, yes, but it seems more to me than that,\u201d Andrekopoulos said.<\/p>\n

There is also almost nothing in the public record of any role played in all of this by MPS\u2019 Office of Accountability and Efficiency<\/a>. The office was created in 2010 by then Board President Michael Bonds to act as a watchdog of the administration reporting to the board.<\/p>\n

Bonds was convicted in 2019<\/a> in connection with a bribery scheme involving a Philadelphia charter school operator.<\/p>\n

Matt Chason, the director of the office, has not responded to several requests by the Badger Institute to discuss his role in the financial reporting mess. Chason is responsible, however, for recruiting and hiring Todd Gray to meet the DPI requirement to help MPS meet its overdue deadlines.<\/p>\n

Gray is a former Waukesha School District Superintendent lauded recently for fixing up a financial mess in the Glendale-River Hills School District. \u201cIt\u2019s a perfect hire,\u201d Andrekopoulos said. \u201cThey are not going to be able to bullshit them.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are also questions about DPI and why it waited to publicly disclose the problems until after a $252 million referendum vote April 2 that was decided by two percentage points.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until May 29 that Sachin Chheda, DPI\u2019s executive director, issued a sternly worded statement <\/a>about MPS.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, after months of inadequate progress on filing statutorily required fiscal reports, the DPI was forced to inform MPS on Friday that further aid payments are at risk, immediately including both a special education aid payment and a general aid payment in June.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, when asked by a CBS 58 reporter<\/a> why this action didn\u2019t precede the referendum, he backpedaled, saying that although letters had been sent to the district in September and December 2023, \u201cI don\u2019t think in March as you were leading up to the referendum that it was clear that that they were as behind as they were.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not fair to suggest DPI knew the scale of the problem is what it is two months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

To which state Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dame, co-chair of the Assembly Finance Committee replied <\/a>on Twitter:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cConvenient how DPI didn\u2019t release info about MPS\u2019 failure to report financial data before a $252M referendum went to voters, despite the district missing deadlines months earlier. DPI was well aware of it, considering their frequent meetings with the district about the reports.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born told the Badger Institute that while it probably cannot be proven that DPI dragged its feet, Gov. Tony Evers and State Superintendent Jill Underly were vocal supporters of the referendum that was always expected to be close.<\/p>\n

\u201cDPI has been enabling MPS for a long time. This has been years in the making and finally it\u2019s coming to a head,\u201d Born said.<\/p>\n

Evers and several DPI officials, including Chheda, declined to respond to emails asking for answers to many of these questions.<\/p>\n

Andreopoulos said that the way DPI has handled the MPS problem is out of character from the usual vigilance and adherence to deadlines.<\/p>\n

Andrekopoulos said, however, that rather than covering something up, he thinks DPI might have thought any disclosures would have been interference in a referendum that rightfully should have been decided locally.<\/p>\n

When asked about Andrekopoulos\u2019 proposal to have Evers head a reform effort going forward, his frequent political sparring partner, Born, said he agreed that the change had to come from somewhere outside of the school district.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people should know that this is a big deal and that something like this just doesn\u2019t happen in the course of daily governance,\u201d Born said. \u201cWherever it comes from, the mayor, the county executive, wherever. It\u2019s time for leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Lisheron is the Managing Editor of the Badger Institute.\u00a0Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.<\/em><\/p>\n

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