One of the biggest stories of the past week has been the Wisconsin Education Association Council’s recommendation to fragment Milwaukee Public Schools into smaller districts. According to WEAC, this would create “more manageable components” as well as “drive greater accountability within the system.” However, a look at how Milwaukee’s public schools operate as separate entities suggests that these schools will run into problems regardless of the size of their district.
In 2009, Milwaukee’s schools carried over operating debts of over $8 million into the new school year. Of the 148 schools surveyed in October of 2010, 93 (62.8%) finished the preceding school year in the red. 42 of these schools racked up debts of more than $100,000. 20 more overspent their budgets by $40,000 or more.
As the MacIver Institute has previously noted, schools like Bradley Tech (running a deficit of over $750,000), Vel Phillips (-$475k), Audubon Middle (-$436k), and Wedgewood (-$382k) are some of the city’s biggest offenders. While some schools have been able to create careful surpluses with their funds, the system as a whole has shown to be flawed. In all, the city’s school-by-school deficits added up to over $10.7 million dollars in 2009-2010 alone.
MPS audits have helped delve into some of the problems that are helping fuel this mismanagement. High-risk non-compliances make many of the city’s schools prime targets for inefficient spending and budget overages. In 2010, the average Milwaukee public school had 11.5 high risk non-compliance issues, and 24 of the 27 schools audited rated poorly for their maintenance of fixed asset and payroll management. These schools contributed to over $2.2 million of the local school deficit in the past year –an average of $85,890 per institution.
This suggests that MPS’s problems don’t exist solely on a macro level. Breaking down the district will create smaller organizations and a wider leadership structure, but it won’t get to the root of the problem itself -- the schools. Drastic reform is needed to turn around schools that are awash in a culture of sub-par administration. Change is going to have to come from the bottom up in a wave of sweeping reform to fix these problems.
Breaking down MPS won’t fix the problems that haunt its schools; it will only move them to a new district. Wisconsin will need to do more to produce gains in Milwaukee, and it won’t be easy.
