On the verge of closing, Fritsche stuffed full

Two months into what was to be a two-year process of merging Fritsche Middle School with its near neighbor Bay View High School, Fritsche is feeling something it hasn’t felt in some time-and may never feel again after this year: full.

A primary factor motivating the merger, recommended by the Bay View Community Schools Task Force and approved by the Milwaukee Board of School Directors one year ago, was declining enrollment at the middle school despite Fritsche’s storied reputation as one of the district’s best 6-8 programs.

If the board approves-they are expected to vote at the end of this month-it will mean bringing the middle school grades into Bay View High School next year instead of in 2011. 

That enrollment challenge is clear in the numbers. In 2001-02, its peak, Fritsche Middle School enrolled 1,102 students in grades 6-8. Last year, as the board made its decision to end the independent middle school program, Fritsche enrolled just 759 students. Today, the middle school enrollment is a mere 652-the lowest number in 25 years.

That low number is somewhat higher than it might have been, too, as Fritsche this year added a bilingual program moved from MEC, a complex on the near north side that closed at the end of last school year.

It was data like those that led to my first cover story at the Compass, as I wrote in January 2008 about a proposal floated by then-principal Robin Kitzrow-now Bay View’s principal-to expand Fritsche to include high school grades. Competition from the neighborhood’s many K-8 schools, in addition to cuts in busing and declining district enrollment overall, put Fritsche’s ability to thrive as a large school in jeopardy.

For a school like Fritsche, with expensive music, theater, art, and engineering programs, a large enrollment is vital. But it kept shrinking.

So how is Fritsche feeling full, if its enrollment is down by nearly half? Irony of ironies-a significant reason is Bay View High School.

As a condition of the merger, this year’s ninth grade students from Bay View, about 270 of them, are housed in Fritsche, along with more than a dozen Bay View teachers. That takes up quite a bit of space.

For years, Fritsche has also been home to the LEAP program, an alternative program for older students which this year has 61 students.

The nearly 1,000 students in the building at this very moment is more students than have been there since 2005, making the Fritsche building again full, lively, and bustling.

It is so full, in fact, that one of the key stops on the merger roadmap approved by the district is going to be simply impossible to make, according to Eighth District School Board Director Terry Falk. The plan called for this year’s ninth graders to stay at Fritsche for another year, in effect making Fritsche a 6-10 school in 2010-11 with Bay View High School standing mostly empty with just 11th and 12th graders.

But there is nowhere left to go in the middle school building, Falk said, causing Fritsche’s governance council to vote in late October to accelerate the move eastward into Bay View High School. If the board approves-they are expected to vote at the end of this month-it will mean bringing the middle school grades into Bay View High School next year instead of in 2011.

Where they will find the space for all of those students-and the very distinct demands of all the different programs-is another matter entirely.

For now, in a variation on the old cliché about things being darkest just before the dawn, it seems Fritsche is fullest just before it’s empty.

Jay Bullock is an English teacher at Bay View High School who blogs at folkbum.com. Contact him at mpshallmonitor@gmail.com.

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