MILWAUKEE — Questions are circulating around city hall about whether the city or the state needs to step in and take control of Milwaukee Public Schools.
This comes just days after the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction warned it may withhold state funding because the district has failed to provide financial reports. Some of those reports were due last September.
As frustrations grow over MPS’s budget crisis, few people have been as outspoken about the problem as Alderman Lamont Westmoreland.
"All options should be on the table,” he said.
He thinks part of the solution needs to come from city hall.
"I think it's something we can take care of in our own backyard with the leadership here in the city,” he said. “I trust that the mayor would put a good superintendent in place. I trust that if he had seats on the board he could appoint."
There was a similar push 15 years ago that was sparked by the district’s performance. It would have allowed former Mayor Tom Barrett to appoint the school district’s superintendent and possibly the school board. Board members are currently elected.
The effort in 2009 fell flat largely due to community opposition.
"I'm old enough to remember that effort and I'm old enough to remember this community vehemently rejected that effort,” said Mayor Cavalier Johnson.
TMJ4 asked Mayor Johnson whether he thinks the idea should be revisited.
"Before you go to the extreme of having the mayor have absolute control over schools, maybe there's some space in the middle where the mayor can have some influence in schools, to play more of a role in schools without necessarily having the mayor to have direct control of the school,” he said. “Let's explore what that option looks like, let's see what the community says here before I were to chime in and say, ‘Hey, it has to be this extreme going from the current extreme we're already in.’”
What Mayor Johnson calls extreme wouldn’t be unprecedented.
According to Education Week, at least one school district in these ten states is currently under state control.
Over the past few decades, Education Week says more than 100 school districts, including Chicago and Detroit, have been taken over by their state’s government.
A Brown University study found no evidence that it has academic benefits.
State Representative Bob Donovan says MPS’s biggest challenge right now is financial.
"How much worse do things have to get before the state just steps in and does the right thing."
Donovan is calling on the governor to take control of MPS, starting by appointing its next superintendent.
"I think they need to dissolve the board, I think we need an audit, an outside audit. It needs to be completed within 6 months,” he said. “MPS needs to pay for it so that we can ascertain precisely where this district is at."
It’s about time to watch on your time. Stream local news and weather 24/7 by searching for “TMJ4” on your device.
Available for download on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and more.
