Plugging the school funding leak

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: How is the MPS budget situation like the BP oil spill?

In the same way that BP has needed both to place a temporary cap on the well and drill a relief well to shut down the leak permanently, MPS—and Wisconsin’s public schools generally—needs immediate help as well as a significant revision to the school funding formula that can provide long-term stability and relief.

The immediate help can come in a couple of different ways. One is through work by some members of Congress to get additional emergency funds to states to address school budget shortfalls and rehire laid-off teachers. (Wisconsin, you are probably are not surprised to learn, is hardly alone in having a school funding crisis.) This one-time payment would offset some of the disappearing stimulus funds and hold back the flood of the estimated 300,000 teacher layoffs expected for the fall nationwide.

The amendment’s prognosis is poor, with a deficit-conscious Congress anxious about too much more spending.

Another immediate source of relief could be for Wisconsin to do what Kansas and Arizona did. They passed temporary sales tax increases to provide infusions to cash-strapped schools. The idea, known here as A Penny for Kids, is being pushed by a coalition called the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools. WAES Outreach Specialist Tom Beebe estimates that the tax could raise up to $850 million for schools, according to a presentation he gave for MPS parents in May.

Under normal circumstances, I am not a fan of raising taxes that are regressive—taxes that hit the poor particularly hard, like the sales tax. But the state’s school funding crisis is not normal circumstances, and the WAES proposal as written diverts $170 million of the sales tax revenue to property tax relief for low- and fixed-income taxpayers.

WAES is collecting signatures to petition the state Legislature to consider the proposal, and when the Milwaukee Board of School Directors formally endorsed the idea in June, it pointed to the petition in the district press release.

A grassroots group called Milwaukee Families for School Funding—which, full disclosure, I have been offering technical assistance to—is also organizing parents to pressure legislators to adopt A Penny for Kids. The group was started by Michael Mathias, a former school board candidate and MPS parent.

Mathias has been frustrated that school finance is not an issue anyone wants to talk about. “We just spent months having a lively conversation about the governance of MPS,” Mathias said in an interview. “But no conversation about funding.”

Mathias believes that A Penny for Kids is something people can understand and support. “We are used to, in this community, paying a little extra money in sales tax,” he said. “Why not for the school system, too?”

Groups like Mathias’ are springing up around the state, as parents in even wealthier communities like West Bend have organized to promote school funding reform.

The sales tax, like a cap on BP’s gulf gusher, will not create a lasting solution. Wholesale changes need to be made to an outdated state funding formula that does not keep up with inflation, as well as accompanying state polices like revenue caps for districts and the much-abused notion that the state will cover two-thirds of the cost of education. A big chunk of that two-thirds never makes it to schools—some $900 million a year in what’s called “state support” for schools actually funds property tax relief, not classrooms, according to a 2010 study by La Follette School of Public Affairs professor Andrew Reschovsky.

State Superintendent Tony Evers proposed some changes in June, including reallocating that $900 million of tax relief back to schools. But without the Legislature on board, and without a temporary fix like congressional action or A Penny for Kids, the financial woes of our schools will keep flowing like an uncapped well.

And even if all of the above could happen tomorrow, MPS and other state districts will still have years of cleaning pelicans—metaphorically speaking—before the crisis is truly over.

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

Faceblocked!

“So there I was, in my Communications Media class, ready to go on a lesson that I have done before. Students were to use the popular website Xtranormal.com to make a movie.” That website is a fun and engaging way to get students writing. Kids write a script, choose from a wide array of cartoon characters and settings, and Xtranormal animates the movie for them.

For my juniors and seniors, it’s more than just writing; there’s a chance to talk about advanced filmmaking techniques without needing a lot of cameras, actors, and editing equipment-the free website lets students choose camera angles, set dramatic pauses, add a soundtrack, and more.

Yet when students fired up their computers and aimed for Xtranormal, a familiar warning blared across their screens: “MPS Blocked Site!”

The Milwaukee Public Schools, like every public school district in the nation, has in place internet filtering software to block student access to inappropriate material at school. This is not just good policy; it’s the law.

But Xtranormal.com doesn’t have offensive content or pedophiles trolling for victims, and even has a portion of its site set aside for teachers to share ideas and examples for making the most of the site’s free tools with their students. So imagine my surprise.

A frustrating call to the district’s technical support line gave me a three-word answer to why the site was blocked: “Connect with Facebook.” See, Xtranormal allows-not requires, but allows-users to log in using their Facebook usernames and passwords and makes it easy for users to post the movies they make directly to their Facebook pages. Click on the “Connect with Facebook” button and you’re good to go.

This is a feature that you see more and more across the internet as Facebook grows more and more ubiquitous. However, MPS not only blocks Facebook itself, but also considers anything remotely connected to Facebook, even educationally useful sites like Xtranormal, to be dangerous.

Why? Facebook is as much a part of students’ lives as their physical neighborhoods, and conflicts that begin on the social networking site can make their way into schools just as easily as conflicts that begin, as the kids say, “on the block.” Though MPS doesn’t keep track of how many in-school incidents begin on Facebook, nearly every teacher I’ve talked to has a Facebook story to share.

So it’s blocked. Well, except for students who sneak onto Facebook on their internet-enabled phones. And students who know how to find sites that allow them to bypass the district’s filter and use Facebook anyway. And students who use any of about a million other ways to get onto Facebook from school.

(If you’re wondering, Facebook is blocked for the adults at school, too-though we can make movies at Xtranormal all we want.)

By blocking access to Facebook and sites only vaguely connected to it, MPS is wasting a tremendous opportunity to meet students where they are and integrate learning into the kinds of things they do every day for fun.

A Google search for “using Facebook in the classroom” returns literally millions of hits. There are scores of sites dedicated to helping teachers and students use Facebook’s social networking tools to enhance learning. Facebook even offers an application called “Courses” that allows teachers to maintain professional relationships with students (as opposed to being “friends”), along with apps to record videos for students and share slideshows or other presentations.

By pretending Facebook doesn’t exist, MPS is missing a huge teachable moment: If students are behaving badly online, let’s teach them proper online etiquette. Whether students are cyberbullies or being cyberbullied, whether they are spreaders or victims of rumors, whether they are predators or prey, they all need some guidance from responsible adults who can help encourage good uses of the internet and stop bad behavior before it turns into fights at school-or worse.

In the end, my students watched-kind of, they seemed sleepy-clips from films like Citizen Kane for hints about how to make great movies, but without ever getting to make one themselves. It didn’t have to be that way.

It’s time for MPS to reconsider the block on Facebook.

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

Much ado about empty Fritsche building

Last fall, I wrote in this space about a bittersweet irony-the Fritsche Middle School building is both as full of life and students as it has ever been, and about to stand empty.

It will likely not stand empty for long-it is a newish building, big and inviting with features like a beautiful auditorium and fiber everywhere for technology. Already, people are staking claims.

But it will sit empty for the 2010-11 school year, according to Terry Falk, who represents Bay View on the Milwaukee Board of School Directors. “The administration simply did not want to deal with it at this time,” he said in an interview. “They kind of punted.”

Why? For one, there is likely to be a shortage of time and personnel to do any more moving. MPS is closing up to eight schools next year, in addition to merging two more and moving the current Fritsche program up the hill into Bay View High School.

Another reason is that deciding what program or programs would best use the space has been, Falk said, “contentious.”

One school with its eye on Fritsche is Tippecanoe School for the Arts and Humanities, a K-8 school with 315 students crammed into a tiny space (capacity is 264) at Howard and Whitnall avenues. It has strong parent support for a move and expansion.

Michele Peña, Tippe’s principal, rattled off a long list of space-related complaints: halls double as storage; students must haul over to Lincoln Middle School of the Arts to give performances; half the school’s gym/cafeteria was needed for an artist in residence, leaving lunch tables in hallways; and students often have to walk a block to the Tippecanoe public library to access computers and research materials.

The Fritsche building has space enough to alleviate all those problems and allow Tippe to expand to two classes per grade level, something that their present waiting list suggests would be no problem.

“We all have a dream,” Peña said, “and my dream would be a grand old arts school.”

Tippe would likely share the 1,100-capacity space with another school, possibly Wisconsin Career Academy, a 6-12 charter school. WCA, along with Kilmer South High School, rents space in the former Red Carpet bowling alley near the airport. The cost to lease that building is over $750,000, money that MPS doesn’t really have and probably shouldn’t be spending while it owns empty buildings like Fritsche.

This is where Falk’s biggest concern lies. “The Fritsche building being empty is not my issue,” he said. “Three-quarters of a million dollars in rent is my issue.” Kilmer could move into the vacated Tippecanoe building while Tippe and WCA share Fritsche-and MPS could stop paying rent.

However, Fritsche’s proximity to other schools-it’s less than half a mile from Dover Street elementary, Humboldt Park K-8, and the Bay View Middle and High School that will debut as a 6-12 program in September 2011-complicates any decision about what to do with the space.

Principals in these nearby schools have made it clear that they do not want competing grade-level schools so close, whether it’s a middle-high school like WCA or an elementary-middle school like Tippe. Falk calls this the inevitable result of decades of treating schools like a marketplace and students like customers-a “crazy system,” in his words.

“People look at a neighboring school as competition,” Falk said, “and they want to put it out of business.”

Tippe’s Peña is not interested in competing for the same students Dover and Humboldt Park attract, but rather wants to draw students from the suburbs or back to MPS from private schools. She blames MPS’s declining commitment to art and music for the district’s decline in enrollment.

“Parents want more for their kids than they had,” she said, and now parents choose schools outside of MPS because the public schools offer less.

Eugene Vlies, principal of Humboldt Park, doesn’t want to see a school move into Fritsche at all, writing in an email, “I certainly don’t think that opening another school within a half-mile radius of other schools is an appropriate use.”

Instead, Vlies suggests using the building as a professional development facility. For the last several years, MPS has used excess space in the Marshall High School building on the city’s north side for teacher training. This fall, Morse Middle School moves into Marshall (and another school moves into Morse), meaning that MPS loses that space.

My own idea, if I were King of MPS and money grew on trees, would be to use Fritsche and a handful of other buildings around the city as intensive ninth-grade academies like the ones in North Carolina that halved drop-out rates-but that’s another column.

Everyone makes a good argument: Tippe needs more space, other schools don’t need the competition, and we have to stop paying to lease buildings like the Red Carpet. But no decision is going to make everyone happy, and I hope that MPS takes a public and deliberative approach working this out.

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

Revision to No Child Left Behind should mostly be left behind

Last month, President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released a “blueprint” of how they want to reform the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known since 2002 as No Child Left Behind.

For an educator like me, a lot of aspects of their plan raise significant questions-though some additional help may be on the way for the most needy schools.

It is hard not to laugh at the most obvious proposed change. When President George W. Bush signed NCLB into law, the bill required all students to be proficient by 2014, meaning that the proverbial fan would be hit safely beyond the end of Bush’s presidency.

Obama and Duncan have proposed a new standard, that all students must be “college or career ready”-by 2020, years after Obama will have left office. However, that’s just something that tickles the cynic in me, and not something that represents a real problem.

The biggest issue, from where I sit, is that while the proposal expands overall federal dollars available for public schools, the entire increase comes in more Race to the Top-style competitive grants. Race to the Top was a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, what most people call the stimulus bill, passed a year ago, and it set aside $4 billion to be distributed to states that could jump through the right hoops.

As we saw here in Wisconsin over the winter, that led to a scramble of activity at the state level, with the Legislature hastily throwing school-reform spaghetti at the wall, hoping enough stuck to earn our state a shot at the money. (Wisconsin’s application failed.) Worse, the Obama-Duncan plan calls on states to start distributing funds to schools and districts through such competitive processes.

It is bad educational policy to chase grant funds predicated on the reform-of-the-moment, as the Milwaukee Public Schools’ history with Gates Foundation experiments like small high schools shows. I’m greatly concerned that an increasing focus on such “competitive” grants and faddish reform efforts will foster mean-spirited competition among districts and even among individual schools. Education is a community enterprise, and it works best when professionals share what they know and do rather than horde their success strategies and compete for scarce resources.

Equally upsetting is the push toward national standards, which unfortunately encourage a lowest-common-denominator approach to what students are required to learn. Though Duncan told the press in a conference call that “these won’t be national standards” and that the work is done “at the local level,” the plan clearly wants states to adopt uniform standards across the board. “Beginning in 2015,” the plan reads, “funds will be available only to states that are implementing assessments based on [. . .] standards that are common to a significant number of states.” This gives a boost to the Common Core State Standards group, which released a first draft of its lackluster standards last month.

Additional problems abound. One is that the proposal perpetuates the myth of charter school success. Even though charters educate only about 5 percent of the nation’s students, nearly half of the innovation funds are set aside for them. Despite charter schools’ uninspiring performance-charters have failed to outperform similar public schools on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gold-standardized test-Obama and Duncan want to direct nearly half a billion dollars into competitive “innovation” grants for charters.

While NCLB was mostly stick, the Obama-Duncan plan does add some carrots. It creates a new class of schools and districts labeled “Reward,” which will honor schools that achieve success through independent efforts. It counts more than just test scores when considering school achievement. It continues a plan for School Improvement Grants that was also a part of the stimulus package, and which currently benefits Bay View High School, among other MPS schools. It also puts almost $4 billion-an increase of about 10 percent-into teacher training, strengthening teacher licensing at universities, and alternative placement and certification programs.

Of course, the final shape of the new law depends on what Congress does with the proposal Obama and Duncan have put forward. Their blueprint is not a bad start, but it does not live up to what a real reform of the law should be. In an ideal world, education reform would move away from races, both to a mythical “top” and to the bottom through mediocre national standards. Real reform would significantly decrease or eliminate reliance on standardized tests as a means of judging schools and students. And real reform would focus on the factors outside of school that make school difficult for many students.

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

MPS/DPI spat is not just about money—it’s about major classroom changes

It’s been hard to miss the news: Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction is on the verge of taking $175 million from the Milwaukee Public Schools, which has led to some acrimony in the press of late.

See, when a district fails to make “Adequate Yearly Progress” on state test scores and other benchmarks, as MPS has failed to do for the last three years, DPI is required by federal law to give MPS a corrective action plan, a list of fixes. Kind of like how the city may come by your house and present you with a list of repairs that will bring you up to code.

MPS has also failed to keep up with many of the critical fixes.

So comes the threat that DPI might withhold Title I federal funds—the only real remedy DPI is permitted to exercise under state law.

Which is huge: A $175 million cut is about one-sixth of MPS’s budget for the 2009-10 school year. It is the cost of educating 12,000 MPS students. It is greater than the base allocated budgets of all the Bay View-area schools combined. It would pay the annual salary of half the district’s teachers.

So what is MPS holding out on? What is worth $175 million for MPS to fight?

In short, nothing more than a near-complete remaking of the way MPS does business.

It may not look like it from the outside, but following the corrective action plan means a much different engine under MPS’s hood, a serious set of changes in the way schools and classroom teachers do their thing.

Take reading, for example. One thing that makes MPS unique is the diverse tapestry that is its elementary schools—including dozens of different approaches to literacy instruction. This gives savvy parents the opportunity to select a program that’s a good fit for their children.

However, MPS has a 15 percent student mobility rate according to this year’s district report card, meaning thousands of students the city over are bouncing around between these different methods of literacy instruction one or more times during the school year. DPI feels—and I can’t say I completely disagree—that if the district whittled down to just two or three different literacy programs, the consistency would benefit those mobile students.

Despite a $200,000 grant from DPI to work with the Council of the Great City Schools to develop a new literacy plan, MPS has missed those benchmarks in the corrective action plan.

Perhaps the biggest DPI—demanded changes spring from a special education complaint and class-action lawsuit begun almost a decade ago. MPS and DPI were both named in the complaint, and they were both on the losing end of a 2007 judgment. DPI opted to settle with the plaintiffs in 2008. MPS appealed, and while everyone waits for the next decision, the remedy imposed by the 2007 judgment is on hold.

Yet DPI has written into its corrective action plan many of the terms of the court’s order—at least in part because it has to following its settlement. The district sees this as a subversion of the legal process, and it is refusing to meet DPI’s benchmarks.

DPI wants MPS to start screening, up to three times a year, every student in math and reading starting in kindergarten, as well as in all subjects required for graduation at the high school level. After the screening, MPS would implement interventions on an individual level for any student who needs it. This is a radical—and likely very expensive—change in the way MPS does business.

But DPI sees the change as necessary for all students in a failing district like MPS, regardless of its origin in a special education lawsuit. “These are things that will help the children of Milwaukee, whether they receive or do not receive special education funds,” said John W. Johnson, DPI’s director of Education Information Services. “These are really about building capacity and systems to educate students without referring to special education.”

In a district with an exploding special education population, such measures make sense. But as long as MPS is fighting this lawsuit, it would be suicidal to make the admission, through following DPI’s order, that it is in the wrong.

And so MPS risks $175 million.

Except, maybe not.

DPI’s Johnson is pretty clear that the state doesn’t really want to keep that money away from MPS. “Any way you cut it,” he told me, “we want to make sure that Milwaukee still gets their funds.” He explained that some of the money may be spent in Milwaukee, but directed by DPI into steps that would fulfill the corrective action plan.

“We are not leaving the ground in Milwaukee,” Johnson said, noting that Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s state superintendent, is in Milwaukee several times a month working with MPS.

MPS needs to make a decision, and soon. Will it remake itself to satisfy DPI—and, frankly, make much-needed changes in the process—or will it continue to hold onto a system that has led to years of embarrassing failure?

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

A letter to my student teacher

The other day at school, another teacher and I were talking about how little it takes to make us happy nowadays, about how we settle for very, very tiny victories to maintain some level of sanity.

I said, “If I ran into College Me-you know, the Me who wanted to change the world and thought teaching was the way to do it?-College Me would be so disappointed.”

And here you are, College You, ready to start your student teaching in the Milwaukee Public Schools. I don’t want to give you the wrong idea about the job, don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of rewarding and fulfilling things to keep you going as an MPS teacher. But there are some things you should know.

So in the spirit of commencement addresses and half-time pep talks and best-man toasts, here’s some basic stuff I think you need to know if you want MPS to be your home.

First, remember that, ultimately, you’re here to serve the needs of your students. It often feels as though you’re the skeleton from the “anatomy” entry in the encyclopedia-you know, the part that allows you to turn the clear acetate pages of more and more layers onto the opaque skeleton until you can’t see the bones anymore.

Everyone has a demand to layer onto you: principals, superintendents, curriculum specialists, parents, state tests, fellow teachers, a looming special education lawsuit, the taxpaying public. It’s like some kind of Wonderland onion that grows as you peel it, and your day can be pretty quickly filled dealing with all of that other stuff. Don’t let it-that’s the thing that has done the most to wear away what’s left of College Me.

Second, MPS students are often pretty angry-at their parents, at the rules, at you, at themselves, at the world. It seldom manifests itself obviously, though you will see fights and passive-aggression and some pretty clever attempts to wriggle out of doing the work you ask them to do. Instead, it mostly means that one of the most important things you can do for students is to be kind, to be patient. College Me didn’t care much for patience; he wanted everything right now, but students need their own schedule.

Students will want to be your friend, but that’s not your role. I have often said MPS teachers need to be activists for social justice, with a passion for things like closing the achievement gap and opening up opportunities traditionally denied to the urban poor. That means you can be-must be-your students’ ally and advocate and therapist and mentor. Students will have scores of good friends during their lifetimes, but they will only have one freshman English teacher. Make the most of that.

Finally, remember that whatever happens around you in this city and this district doesn’t change the fact that your students need a good teacher. Indeed, school, for all the upheaval and tension and debate we adults can’t help but stress over, is often the most stable part of a Milwaukee child’s life.

A few months ago I was asked to appear on a panel about MPS for Channel 10’s Fourth Street Forum program. During Q&A with the audience, a young man stood up and said, “For a long time I’ve been planning to become a teacher, most likely in MPS, but I’m afraid, to be honest. It’s a big mess and I don’t know if I want to even touch it.” That’s understandable.

Yet despite the continued avalanche of bad news for or about MPS-from threatened takeovers and looming bankruptcy to Detroit-level test scores-here you are. That already tells me something. You want to change the world, and I look forward to helping you start on this small corner of it.

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

MPS and the Case of the Missing Neighborhood Student

If I told you that the Neighborhood Student was in Area 51 with Elvis and Bigfoot, would you believe me?

It’s about as plausible a location as any other. In fact, it is much, much easier to say where the Neighborhood Student is not: Milwaukee’s high schools. Its middle schools-the few remaining, anyway-don’t house the Neighborhood Student either.

The Neighborhood Student must be the most important student in the Milwaukee Public Schools, as it has driven district policy for more than a decade. It’s easy to see why; the Neighborhood Student is cheaper to educate, supposedly comes with greater parent involvement, and can more easily engage in the kinds of things that make school a good life experience-sports, clubs, walking in snow uphill both ways.  »Read more

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.  »Read more

Lower price, higher stakes, better testing

In August, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction announced it will abandon the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam (WKCE) in favor of new tests yet to be developed.

This is great news. I have never believed that a single test tells all that much about a student, that student’s teacher, or even that student’s school. This is particularly true when the stakes riding on the test are low for those taking it. The 10th graders I teach see no connection between the WKCE and their own lives, and for good reason. The only people judged by students’ scores are their teachers; the only thing students get from the test is a day without regular classes.

DPI expects that the new tests will be expensive to develop, noting in its announcement that a new system will cost “significantly more” than the $10 million it spent in 2008-09. I suggest we can save some money, get the information we’re looking for, and give students a stake by being smart with high school assessments.  »Read more

New school, new name: Bay View Middle and High School

A September 15 joint session of Bay View High School’s and Fritsche Middle School’s Governance Councils recommended that when the two schools merge into one 6-12 program housed in the current high school building, that program be called Bay View Middle and High School.

At the meeting, nearly 20 speakers, including 10 BVHS alumni, teachers, neighbors, and Fritsche Middle School’s student council vice president, all favored keeping the name of the community, either Bay View or South Shore, in the name.

Speakers associated with both schools said it was important to include all students, those in the middle grades as well as the high school grades, in the name of the new program.

An informal show of hands among all present, prompted by a Bay View alumna’s question, suggested broad support for the name Bay View Middle and High School, and the schools’ governance councils later voted to submit that name to the Milwaukee Board of School Directors, which has the final say on the new school’s name.

Three questions for the new superintendent

I have often said the only constant in MPS is change; that’s a bit of a simplification. One of the things you might expect to change a lot, based on past experience and what goes on in urban districts around the country, has actually remained constant: current Superintendent William Andrekopoulos is in his eighth and final year in that position.

Now, who gets to choose his successor, that’s the up-in-the-air part. The current elected school board, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, the governor, State Superintendent Tony Evers, the Sorting Hat from Hogwarts-all seem like reasonable guesses at this point.

It probably won’t be me. However, that isn’t stopping me from wanting to ask questions of potential candidates.

1. Why Milwaukee? Our last two superintendents have been promoted from within, both principals of successful district schools. Indications are that the search for a new one will be national, with the hopes of landing a game-changer or a rainmaker or some other optimistic cliché for the job. This is no small thing. MPS faces some significant challenges over the next few years: state sanctions, embarrassing test scores, the nation’s largest achievement gap between white and minority students, a looming financial crisis of unprecedented size, disengaged parents, rampant poverty.  »Read more

Inside merging schools, uncertainty, division, and worry

This time last year, the big news was the Bay View Neighborhood Schools Task Force, and its plans for changing the school I was about to start teaching in: They proposed a three-year plan to merge Bay View High School, my new home, with Fritsche Middle School.

Not to get too cliché here, but as with anything, the devil is in the details. When the Milwaukee Board of School Directors approved the merger last fall, it didn’t provide any details, and that has bedeviled many of us in the affected schools over the past year.

Which is not to say we didn’t start out optimistic. As soon as the merger was approved, the schools’ staff sprang into action. Teachers from both schools established committees to plan for the merger, focusing on everything from recruiting to curriculum. The schools’ Governance Councils started meeting jointly. The two schools even shared a single holiday party in December.  »Read more

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