So… a month from now the kinds at MPS might be able to take their masks off. Maybe. If the teachers don’t bully them into “opting” to wear it anyway. This is a perfect example of the screwed up priorities of MPS.

MILWAUKEE (March 24, 2022) – Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) has announced that masks will be optional for students and staff in school buildings. The new policy will take effect Monday, April 18, 2022. The decision was made after a vote by the Milwaukee Board of School Directors during their monthly board meeting on Thursday, March 24, 2022.

 

The new mask policy is a change from the original mandate that required masks be worn in all MPS school buildings to help reduce the spread of COVID-19. The district does have the option to revert back to a mandatory mask policy if it is determined that there is a significant transmission of the virus within the city of Milwaukee and/or the school district. Masks will continue to be available for students and staff in school buildings.

Did you really think that the vaccine would get Milwaukee teachers back into the classroom? Think again.

MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee teachers are next on the list to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

The school board will decide later this month if students will go back to class for the first time this school year.

Teacher vaccinations could be the deciding factor.

[…]

The state’s biggest school district has nearly 5,000 teachers.

They’ve been virtual since the start of the school year.

But just because teachers will soon be able to get the vaccine, doesn’t mean they all will.

“I’m suffering from a little anxiety about taking this vaccine because I don’t even take the flu shot,” Roosevelt Middle School teacher Rochell Wallace-Haley said.

She wants to go back to class but doesn’t want the vaccine.

“I would rather they give us the option to take the vaccine and still give us the option to go back in the building,” Wallace-Haley said. “We need to be back in the buildings ASAP. Parents are struggling, teachers are struggling, it’s hard and being a parent and a teacher, it’s even harder.”

The school board could consider a hybrid learning model.

It’s not about the kids. It never was.

It is well documented that MPS’ “effort” at distance learning was a catastrophic failure. MPS is not willing or capable of doing it effectively. So what they are really saying here is that they want to enjoy a very long summer until they feel like going back to work. Why are all of us paying for this district if they aren’t going to provide an adequate education? I expect choice schools will see a boom in enrollment, and rightfully so.

MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee Public Schools leaders on Monday, July 13 released the district’s reopening plan and a phased-in reopening recommendation for the start of the 2020-21 school year that will be presented to the Milwaukee Board of School Directors — with a special board meeting set for Thursday, July 16 at 5:30 p.m. to further discuss the plan and vote on it. The plan, which applies to both early start and traditional students, calls for a virtual start to the school year — with no students in school buildings. Movement between phases would be based on COVID-19 spread.

[…]

The three-phase recommendation will be voted on during Thursday’s special board meeting:

– Phase 1: Full Remote Learning
– Phase 2: Hybrid Learning
– Phase 3: Face-to-Face Learning

The movement from one phase to the next will be dependent on monitoring the spread of COVID-19 as well as health and safety guidance.

Lovely. Because THAT’s why MPS fails to educate so many kids.

The Milwaukee Board of School Directors voted unanimously to terminate its contract with the Milwaukee Police Department Thursday evening.

More than two dozen members of the public called in to express their support for the resolution, and board members received nearly 800 written messages about the planned vote.

“We have enough research to know that a majority of our students, our students of color, are not treated with respect by the system,” said board member Paula Phillips, who co-introduced the resolution. “While we can try to make this work, it hasn’t been working.”

Director Sequanna Taylor, the other board member who drafted the resolution, agreed.

“If we’re going to address and have our students ready for success, then we need to have them in an environment that is successful,” she said.

This assumes that MPS is a successful environment irrespective of the police presence.

Interesting point from Bruce Thompson at Urban Milwaukee.

For the past two decades, there has been an influential faction, including the Milwaukee teachers’ union (MTEA) and some school board members, that blames MPS’s problems on the availability of charter schools and vouchers for private schools. According to the MTEA and its close ally the Working Families Party, the solution to declining MPS enrollment is to prevent parents from choosing to send their children to charter schools or private schools.

Thus, instead of asking how MPS can better serve its customers, the children and their parents living in Milwaukee, the emphasis is on recreating a monopoly by getting rid of the competition. Ironically, charter schools chartered by MPS are among the most successful, if the state’s school report cards are used as a measure. This is particularly true if one looks at schools with a high percentage of students in poverty.

Partly this reflects the MPS competitive advantage, its ability to offer its empty space to a charter school. However, growing hostility towards charters on the board has made charter school administrators begin to wonder if they should consider switching to another charter authorizer.

Consider what happened to Wendell Harris, the only incumbent running for reelection in April election for school board. Four years ago, Harris ran and won with the support of the MTEA. This year the union is opposing his re-election. His crime? After visiting Carmen and deciding it was a very good school, he voted in favor of its sharing space in Pulaski High School. Essentially, his crime was putting the interest of the students ahead of that of MPS.

The next table lists the candidates for school board in the upcoming election. I think it is safe to say that those in the left-hand column have convinced the MTEA and the Working Families Party that they won’t make Harris’ heresy of approving a charter school application just because it does a good job of educating students.

2019 MTEA Endorsements

To put this in perspective, conventional MPS schools currently serve around 56 percent of the Milwaukee children whose education is publicly supported, while 39 percent are in independent charter schools or private schools through the choice program. In order to get the Working Families/MTEA endorsement, the candidates in the left-hand column are committed to trying to disrupt the education of 39 percent of Milwaukee’s students.

smh.

March 10, 2017 – Milwaukee, WI – A new WILL report explains how the City of Milwaukee is failing to follow state law, preserving the never-ending vacant school building crisis.  In total, Milwaukee has at least 15 empty school buildings and taxpayers have spent over $10.2 million on maintenance for empty buildings in the last decade.

This problem was supposed to be solved.  In 2015, the state legislature, led by State Sen. Alberta Darling and Rep. Dale Kooyenga, passed a law to force the City to sell its empty school buildings to private and charter schools.  But, two years later, the City is ignoring state law and the vacant schools problem remains – even though seven different private and charter schools have attempted to purchase these buildings.

It must be noted that she has a lot of work to do to get her plan passed through the school board and that several items will require approval of the state Department of Public Instruction or changes to state law, but let’s look at her ideas.

New report cards will soon identify the latest lowest-performing schools in MPS. There are 53 that meet that definition now. Driver has proposed creating a network to support between 10 to 12 of the lowest-performing schools each year for the next three years, with up to 35 by 2018-’19. The “signature schools” would have a new hiring window in the spring, and then develop individual culture and instructional plans. Teachers would attend at least four days of extra training. Principals would get side-by-side coaching and meet with the superintendent monthly to talk about data.

Meh. I presume that every school has a plan now, but this would make them create new plans, change some hiring practices, and throw some more money at teacher training. I find it hard to believe that the same people who are running a bad school will magically be able to create and execute a plan to fix it.

A unified calendar: All district schools would follow the calendar for International Baccalaureate schools, which start in mid-August and finish before the end of May. A June session would extend the year for five weeks for students who need to recover credits or earn additional credits.

Driver said one calendar could also save hundreds of thousands of dollars on busing and duplicative staff training.

Again, meh. It’s a good idea that will save some money, but it is difficult to see this as something that will improve education for kids.

School uniforms:  Driver said more parents are asking for uniforms, especially after some district schools implemented them this year. Uniforms are frequently a draw for parents who send their children to independent charter and voucher schools, though research is mixed on whether they have any effect on achievement. Driver said uniforms could also help identify MPS students in the community. Or more specifically, identify children who are not MPS students.

Uniforms can be a wonderful policy that helps with culture and discipline within the schools. But even with her plan, individual schools can opt out. I suspect that the schools in which uniforms would have the most positive impact are the sames one in which the policy will be fiercely resisted.

MPS is tiptoeing toward thinking more collectively about student achievement at all schools, including independent charter and voucher programs. Driver is looking to districts like Cleveland and Denver that have established mechanisms for holding all schools accountable, which includeexpanding high-performing schools and limiting low-performing ones.

That’s where the call for turnaround plans in the lowest-performing charter and voucher programs comes from. Driver said all schools should be judged by the same measuring stick.

This is a massive power grab to let MPS have more control over private schools in Milwaukee. This appears to be the heart of Superintendent Driver’s reform plan. It has nothing to do with improving MPS and everything with letting the same people who run a failing school district to take everyone else down with them.

Sain, the School Board president, said MPS becoming the sole chartering authority in the city would reduce the frequency with which some people “shop” their proposals among the city’s three active chartering entities: MPS, the Common Council and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Currently, MPS authorizes about 20 charter schools, the city oversees nine and UWM oversees 12.

See above. This continues the power grab.

Milwaukee has about 50,000 children under age 5, and half live in poverty. Exposing all to quality early-literacy programs, potentially at stand-alone sites, would help make sure they’re all prepared for school, no matter what school their parents eventually send them to.

I suspect that the same parents who are unable or unwilling to teach their children to read before age 5 are also unlikely to take advantage of a program like this. Of course it’s a good idea to teach kids to read, but this just expands the cost and reach of MPS for a dubious benefit. It looks like Driver just wants to expand MPS a bit more.

Superintendent Driver’s initiative is yet another in the long line of failed MPS plans that does a lot to expand the reach, cost, and control of MPS under the guise of helping kids. The question on the lips of every taxpayer should be, why would we give more power and money to the same people who are failing the kids now? Perhaps Driver should demonstrate that she can improve MPS before presuming to know how to improve other schools.

Ola Lisowski drops some knowledge.

While we wait for the Department of Public Instruction’s (DPI) official report cards to come out in November, the letter provides a little teaser. While MPS is not mentioned by name, Evers writes that “based on the preliminary data…there are no districts eligible for the OSPP in 2016-17.”

[…]

The 42 percent of MPS students not graduating high school in four years will be glad to know their district is succeeding. The 83.5 percent of students not proficient in math will be ecstatic, along with the 74 percent of students not proficient in English.

Everything is just rosy in the halls of MPS schools, says our state DPI. There’s no need for OSPP, as it can only target school districts with two consecutive “failing” scores, and as we know – MPS isn’t failing.

This is a dangerous line of thinking. It’s shortsighted and ignores stubborn things called facts. It is a moral outrage that we would let the kids of Milwaukee graduate with a substandard education.

The latest facts come from the UW Remedial Course Report, which provides a look into remedial education at the UW System. For the first time ever, the UW System publicly released a list of all Wisconsin schools that sent more than six kids into the system who needed remedial education. The facts? Well, they’re ugly.

One hundred seventy-five schools sent more than six kids who needed math remedial education to the UW system. Of those, 160 schools graduated senior classes where more than 10 percent of students required extra help in math. In 76 schools, more than 25 percent of students needed that help. And in 12 schools, 50 percent or more of the graduating class needed remedial education.

A school district should not be considered to be meeting expectations when so many graduates need extra help in college. Remedial education isn’t something to brush off – students pay full tuition for exactly zero credits. Perhaps worse yet, they arrive at UW woefully behind their peers after being told for years that MPS is doing just fine.

It is dangerous thinking. There’s no way that MPS went from dozens of failing schools to zero in one year. There is especially no way that they can claim to NOT be failing when 42% of the kids aren’t even graduating. This looks every bit like the DPI thwarting the legislature’s efforts to fix MPS through procedural gamesmanship. And the kids are worse off for it.