{"id":13098,"date":"2024-10-03T21:51:21","date_gmt":"2024-10-03T21:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=13098"},"modified":"2024-10-03T22:01:10","modified_gmt":"2024-10-03T22:01:10","slug":"milwaukee-moves-but-slowly-to-deal-with-underused-buildings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=13098","title":{"rendered":"Milwaukee moves, but slowly, to deal with underused buildings"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/milwaukee-moves-but-slowly-to-deal-with-underused-buildings\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Consultants\u2019 figures prove critics right as state\u2019s largest district continues to shrink\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Andrew Douglas Middle School, 11% utilized<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Wisconsin\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The process isn\u2019t moving quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery little will happen even into the next school year,\u201d a district consultant put it to Milwaukeeans at one of a series of public hearings Wednesday night at Hamilton High School.<\/p>\n

The Milwaukee Public Schools is holding public sessions<\/a> to explain its Long-Range Facilities Master Plan, an attempt to \u201cright-size\u201d a school district with at least a score of schools operating at less than half capacity.<\/p>\n

The district came under fire<\/a> 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\u2019 permission to override its state-imposed revenue limits by $252 billion a year in perpetuity.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cThis is definitely not leading to any decisional points right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

What he made clear is the Milwaukee Public Schools\u2019 shrinking demographics. By the district\u2019s own numbers<\/a>, enrollment is down 14% in the last decade, a decline that comports with other tallies<\/a> showing student numbers down more than 40% since the late 1990s. The district projects a steady decline in enrollment for the next decade.<\/p>\n

Part of it is a 24% drop in the number of births in Milwaukee between 2010 and 2022. \u201cThat\u2019s really important,\u201d said Davis. Another part is that about half of the school-attending children in Milwaukee \u2014 127,000, by the district\u2019s reckoning<\/a> \u2014 now attend a school outside<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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