A disastrous school budget

Milwaukee school board members were just as shocked as the public about the extent of suggested school budget cuts. The superintendent has yet to submit an overall budget to the board. While the board is likely to find ways to place more resources into the schools, some school budget cuts will take place.

School districts across the state are experiencing similar budget problems. So are all MPS schools, and the superintendent promises that central administration will also have cuts. The recession means the state is collecting fewer tax dollars, so the governor and state Legislature cut school funding.

The state cut SAGE, a program to lower class sizes for students living in poverty, by $200 per child. The MPS superintendent says the district can’t make up the difference, so he cut 11 schools from SAGE. Other cuts impact teachers, educational assistants, and other support staff.

Dramatic increases are taking place in health insurance. For every dollar going toward wages next year, MPS will pay out $.77 in benefits.

Neither suburbs using open enrollment nor private schools in the choice system are taking the most expensive special education students from Milwaukee. Thus MPS must educate our most needy children. The Legislature only partly fixed the voucher funding flaw, so Milwaukee taxpayers still pay more.

Solutions to our budget problems are not simple. The state is unlikely to give more money to school districts this year. The MPS superintendent does not want to use one-time federal stimulus money to maintain teaching positions. The school board may think differently.

Milwaukee’s health insurance system is broken, and MPS and its unions must fix it. But lower wages and poorer working conditions mean MPS has trouble attracting and retaining teachers.

We can close more schools, but each closed elementary school saves only enough to cover about four teachers. We still have schools in rented facilities while we have empty school buildings. That has to stop.

Busing accounts for only 5 percent of the total MPS budget, and half of that is for required special education students.

No one solution will solve our budget crisis.

Terry Falk is the Milwaukee Public Schools director for the Eighth District, which includes Bay View. He can be reached at (414) 510-9173 or falktf@milwaukee.k12.wi.us.

New school superintendent, new beginning

The last two Milwaukee superintendents were plucked from the principal ranks without much experience in the central administration. Such selections made sense in a decentralized system. We wanted a principal’s perspective at the top.

But halfway through his tenure as superintendent, William Andrekopoulos concluded that decentralization wasn’t working all that well. While he tried to make some adjustments, he wasn’t trained to operate in a centralized manner. Never having worked outside of Milwaukee, he knew only one school system.

So it should not come as a surprise that the school board has looked outside the system for a superintendent specifically trained to run a big operation.

Milwaukee’s new superintendent, Gregory Thornton, has a reputation for turning around troubled school districts. He was offered Philadelphia’s superintendent position but turned it down because its board would offer him only a one-year contract. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell quickly appointed Thornton to head the troubled Chester Upland District, which had been placed under state control.

Here are my priorities for Superintendent Thornton:

Decide what functions should be centralized and what functions should be left to individual schools. The organizational structure in central administration needs an overhaul. Everything can’t come to the superintendent for approval. We need a deputy superintendent who can break barriers between departments.

Everything costs money. We must do more with less. Show courage but also listen with a heart.

Our human resources department is a mess. We must integrate hiring, firing, mentoring, and training into one department.

Transparency is a must; no decisions made in backrooms. Right now even the elected school board members sometimes can’t find out what is going on.

All schools must be great, not just a few. We can’t have some schools with experienced teachers and handpicked students while other schools limp along with inexperienced teachers and classrooms packed with the most difficult students. Can we bring up the bottom schools without pulling down top-performing schools?

My list might be a little different from yours. I get to see some things other people don’t. Yet I need to know what you think the priorities should be. With a new superintendent, we have a chance at a new beginning.

Terry Falk is the Milwaukee Public Schools Director for the Eighth District, which includes Bay View. He can be reached at (414) 510-9173 or falktf@milwaukee.k12.wi.us.

Special needs equity

If you are looking for the classrooms for handicapped students in many schools, start in the basement and look for the worst classrooms in the building. This is where these students are often housed.

It used to be worse. Fifty years ago, children with severe disabilities were expected to stay home and be taken care of by their parents. Students with behavioral problems didn’t have special needs; they were just bad students.

While we now have these students in many of our schools, the distribution of special needs students among our schools has not been equal. Over a third of the students in some central city schools are students with special needs. Meanwhile, some schools with entrance requirements have the smallest percentage of students with special needs, often less that 10 percent of their student population.  »Read more

Bonus pay unmerited

Wall Street executives raked in millions in bonus pay while their companies went under. Coming up with objective standards for bonuses is extremely difficult in business. It is nearly impossible in education. That is why you should fear “merit pay” for teachers.

Education Week magazine recently did an analysis of the criteria being used by the federal government for states to receive the Race to the Top dollars and concluded that merit pay simply has no credible research to support it.

Denver is the latest school district to try a merit pay system. Perhaps they will succeed where others have failed, but I am skeptical.  »Read more

Education begins at birth

Child care in this community is a mess. Some daycare providers have been falsifying records. Child welfare agencies aren’t protecting children. We all can say that parents should do a better job. Some won’t; others can’t.

Many of those children will make their way into Milwaukee Public Schools emotionally damaged and years behind developmentally.

Critics might complain that MPS already has too much to do and why should we pay for childcare anyway. Frankly, we don’t have much choice. We either pay now or pay later.

Ann Terrell directs early childhood programs for MPS and sees what challenges these children face upon entering school. Some children don’t know their full names. They can’t get along with other children, sit still, or wait their turn. The first time a child has ever had a book read to them was when they entered school. Television was their only source of information. Some children will never catch up; they will fall only farther behind.  »Read more

Another education takeover

In 1995, Governor Tommy Thompson decided to take over Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI). Since the state school superintendent is constitutionally mandated, Thompson simply de-funded DPI and set up his own education office. The elected Superintendent John Benson could sit in his empty offices while Tommy ran Wisconsin’s educational system.

The reasons given for the state takeover weren’t much different than the reasons for the takeover of Milwaukee Public Schools. Thompson stated that very few people voted in the superintendent’s race, special interests ran the department, DPI opposed innovations like school vouchers, and it was time to shake up the system. He, Tommy Thompson, was elected by all the people, and he was going to use his mandate.  »Read more

Messing with local government

After double-digit tax levy increases, critics of Milwaukee Public Schools have argued that an appointed school board would work better than an elected board. Then they looked at their tax bills from the technical colleges to conclude that technical college boards would work better if they were elected rather than being appointed.

Meanwhile, Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway wants to get rid of the county executive position. County Executive Scott Walker raised the stakes, recommending to get rid of all county government.

Why should we leave the city and towns out of this discussion? Let’s get rid of them as well and form a metropolitan government. Does every hamlet really need its own police or public works departments? St. Francis could save a ton of money if it combined its school system with Cudahy’s.  »Read more

Making kids smarter

If you see a child’s report card with mostly As, how do you react?

Most Americans respond, “That kid is smart.” But most Asians say, “That kid works hard.”

East Asian countries are turning out record numbers of engineers and scientists because they believe that academic achievement is rooted in hard work, not native intelligence. Americans believe that IQ is determined through our genes, but Richard Nisbett says in his new book, Intelligence and How to Get It, that environment plays a bigger role. In fact, we can make people smarter; we can improve IQ.

Nisbett is not some feel-good author who will be making rounds of the TV talk shows. He is one of this nation’s premier cognitive psychologists at the University of Michigan.

Nisbett says that the greatest stumbling blocks to improved intelligence are poverty, poor schools, and a lack of belief that students can do better.

Poor prenatal care, nutrition, and environmental factors such as lead poisoning all hurt poor children. “There is every reason to believe that IQ and achievement gaps in the U.S. would be reduced if people of lower SEC [socioeconomic status] had higher incomes,” argues Nisbett.

We place poor children in schools with the largest class sizes, teachers with the fewest years of experience, and fewer support services. Frankly we really don’t believe they can learn.

Nor do these students believe in themselves. They lack hope. Just having teachers tell children that they can get smarter can have big impacts on achievement and IQ; they will work longer and harder, says Nisbett.

The average IQ of Americans is much higher than that of our ancestors, and that increase cannot be explained through evolutionary development. Only improvements in the environment and education make any sense. And the gap between whites and blacks is shrinking in this country-in fact, the IQ gaps among all ethnic groups are shrinking. On IQ tests, the greatest gains for blacks began in the 1950s, corresponding with the civil rights movement.

So children born in poverty are not doomed, says Nisbett. We can make them better educated; we can make them smarter.

Terry Falk is the Milwaukee Public Schools Director for the Eighth District, which includes Bay View. To contact him, call (414) 510-9173 or email falktf@milwaukee.k12.wi.us.

All Wisconsin schools need improvement

Many years ago I attended a rally at the state capitol in Madison. Teachers, parents, and school officials all clamored for changes in school funding. Everything went well until a Madison School Board member proclaimed, “Welcome to Madison, the home of Wisconsin’s best public school system.” He was soundly booed. Don’t tell people that your school system is better than theirs.

Nevertheless, Madison was portrayed as a premier Wisconsin school district. No more. This past month three of its four high schools made the Wisconsin’s list of “schools in need of improvement” due to poor test scores. For the first time, two Madison elementary schools face sanctions because they made the list two years in a row.

Our largest school district makes the newspaper front page more often, sometimes giving the impression the rest of the state is doing just fine. It isn’t. As the recession continues, the list of DPI’s failing school districts is likely to grow.  »Read more

Milwaukee failed swine flu test, needs to face existing epidemics

In April, when students at a New York Catholic school came down with flu-like symptoms, school nurse Mary Pappas contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), confirming a major outbreak of swine flu. Pappas became the first true hero in fighting this epidemic.

New York City government provides school nurses for all its public and private schools. Milwaukee city government provides none. The city turned the responsibility of school nurses over to the school system several years ago, and Milwaukee now has far fewer school nurses than it once had.

Wisconsin is 47th in the nation in public health spending. The swine flu epidemic didn’t produce the massive deaths once feared, but it did expose our community’s lack of preparedness.  »Read more

Let’s see what sticks

The McKinsey Company report on Milwaukee Public Schools, “Toward a Stronger Milwaukee Public Schools,” was released April 9. It outlines how MPS uses its money. Everyone should read it. The report outlines many of the financial problems facing MPS and makes some excellent recommendations.

We must confront the health care costs affecting MPS and, for that manner, the entire community. Everyone is ducking the issue.

We have too many half-empty school buildings or buildings too small to adequately run programs. McKinsey says we need to consolidate programs and close buildings.

We have too many 60-passenger buses carrying only 15 students. Bus companies must use smaller buses.

McKinsey should have stuck to just a half-dozen really great ideas that had broad community support. Unfortunately, they went with the “let’s throw as much against the wall and see what sticks” mentality and some of their ideas are simply loony. Here is just a sample.  »Read more

True business leaders value students

Our son, Carl, was lucky. Toward the end of his junior year at Juneau High School, he received an internship at Miller Engineering. Art Miller and his staff trained students in computer-generated drafting and made sure that interns learned something about engineering. If a student needed time off to finish a major school paper or prepare for an exam, that was what they were supposed to do. Their education came first.

When Juneau High School closed, Miller Engineering lost its link to student internships and went without high school interns for a few years. When I got elected to the school board, I gave Art Miller a call wondering if he wanted to reestablish internships with another high school.

Art told me that he actually had thought of giving me a call himself. He wanted to do more. Art told me that he could easily hire a kid like our son or a suburban student, no problem. What Art wanted to do was to hire a city kid who just “needed a break.”  »Read more

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