Photo by City of Milwaukee, Flickr CC
More voices have come out in strong opposition to the Opportunity Schools and Partnership Program (OSPP), the new turnaround school district under the authority of Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele and his appointed commissioner, Mequon-Thiensville School District Superintendent Demond Means.
Last week, 15 Democratic legislators asked Abele to “seriously reconsider” his plan to take over one low-performing public school in the fall of 2016 in a partnership of sorts with the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS).
“This ill-conceived plan is yet another state-imposed program that takes resources away from Milwaukee’s public schools,” the letter states.
In addition, Kim Schroeder, president of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association (MTEA), resigned from his position on the OSPP’s advisory council, stating that he “cannot continue to sit on the advisory council that is designed to rubber stamp policies that serve an unjust law and will hurt the children and families of Milwaukee Public Schools.”
And on Monday night, the pro-public education group Schools and Communities United delivered an open letter at the Mequon-Thiensville School Board meeting. The letter read in part, “Public schools need to have transparency and publicly elected leaders that can be held accountable by parents and educators. Dr. Means is participating in a coordinated attack on public education in Wisconsin and undermining our communities’ democratic rights.”
What’s the Plan?
So what’s the fuss about?
Last summer, state Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) and state Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield) developed the OSPP as a turnaround district for low-performing MPS schools and slipped the plan into an amendment to the state budget with no testimony from the public in the Capitol or engagement in Milwaukee. After Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett declined to get involved in the OSPP, Abele agreed to helm the new district.
According to the budget amendment that created the OSPP, Abele could appoint a commissioner to take over up to three struggling MPS schools in the 2016-2017 school year, and up to three schools in the following years. The schools would be solely accountable to the appointed commissioner, who would have sole discretion to turn them over to charter school operators and take them out of MPS’ control. The OSPP is supposed to include “wraparound” services for students, such as increased mental health, housing and transit services that are critical to increasing low-income students’ performance. These services are increasingly being offered in MPS schools—most notably in the four MPS community schools that are partnering with the United Way of Greater Milwaukee.
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The budget-writing Joint Finance Committee (JFC), co-chaired by Darling, had just a few hours to review the OSPP amendment. It passed on a 12-4 party-line vote at 1:30 a.m. on May 20, 2015, according to reporting from wispolitics.com.
Means sent an intergovernmental agreement to the MPS Board of Directors in April and he’s given the board until June 23 to decide to sign on to it. If MPS balks, Means said he’d go forward with a contract with an outside, private charter school operator to take over a school this fall.
Abele and Means’ current plan to operate one MPS school starting in the 2016-2017 academic year is significantly different from Abele’s statements over the winter that he wanted to launch an early education program in an empty MPS building—and not take over a fully operating MPS school.
Under the current plan, the OSPP school or schools would be treated as instrumentality charters of sorts, meaning that they’d be part of MPS for purposes of determining student enrollment and state aid. MPS/OSPP would receive $8,075 for each student in OSPP schools.
That sounds innocuous on the surface, but it actually represents a $2,000 loss in funding for MPS for each OSPP student. Under the state’s education funding formula, the district receives roughly $10,000 for each student in state aid; under Means’ scenario it would receive $8,075. Means’ plan seems to require MPS to maintain the OSPP’s school building and assume other administrative costs.
Means’ plan also states that it would retain the teachers in the school and they could continue to be MPS employees and members of their union.
In an interview on Monday, Means told the Shepherd that he planned a “soft launch” in the fall of 2016 with one school, which would keep its principal, administration and teachers, who’d get professional support from the Academy of Urban School Leadership, which runs 32 schools in Chicago; the University of Virginia’s school turnaround program; and the San Diego-based AVID. But Means said he hadn’t signed a contract with any of those entities, nor did he have any additional money with which to pay them.
Means said he envisioned creating a partnership with MPS, which could choose to take up his offer or refuse it and lose the OSPP students and teachers to an outside charter operator.
“This is not a takeover,” Means said. “This is truly trying to collaborate with MPS. You know that this could be a takeover. That’s not the approach I want to take. That’s not the approach I’m going to take. I want to collaborate and be a partner with MPS. But that only happens if we can come to an intergovernmental agreement.”
And what about his critics?
“I find it ironic that there is so much protest and civil disobedience around the work that I’m trying to do,” Means said. “The work that I’m trying to do is to collaborate. I didn’t see any of this civil disobedience, any of this protest, a year ago when the law was being constructed.”
Big Questions Remain
The MPS board is mulling Means’ plan and is waiting for clarifications from the city attorney before making its decision by June 23.
“This is not of our choosing,” MPS Board Member Terry Falk said. “And, quite frankly, we are very skeptical that this will improve schools and children’s learning in any way, shape or form. In fact, we believe that it may be detrimental.”
MPS Superintendent Darienne Driver said she’d had conversations with Abele and Means this spring but was concerned that their plan didn’t spell out how it would improve student achievement.
“Any plan that we enter into, any charter proposal that comes to the district outside of this scenario, the expectation is that they are able to meet or beat district performance,” Driver told the Shepherd. “We’re looking for a program that would improve performance and add value to the standard of care that we’re currently offering our young people. We have a significant amount of work that’s happening in terms of transforming historically low-performing schools. Anything that we would sign up for we would expect that to be a better mechanism to improve student achievement.”
Some very big questions about Means’ plan remain, including which MPS school would become an OSPP school and how he’d pay for the additional wraparound programming and outside experts.
Although Means’ timeline states that he was supposed to select eight potential OSPP schools last week for on-site visits, he said the list hasn’t been winnowed down yet but that he’d like to start with a K-8 school in the fall of 2016. He said he was waiting for MPS’ response before moving forward with school selection.
“Candidly I don’t know if we’ll announce eight schools,” Means said. “I think the more schools you have and you’re doing site visits, the more angst you’ll create in the community.”
Means also said he had no solid commitments from the philanthropic community to support wraparound programming in the OSPP school.
“We are in the midst of creating a foundation right now,” Means said. “We haven’t formally engaged the philanthropic community strongly.”
Nor can the OSPP use Milwaukee County resources for the OSPP, since the Board of Supervisors formally opposed the creation of the OSPP and the county’s involvement in it.
MTEA Vice President Amy Mizialko told the Shepherd Abele and Means need to return to Abele’s promise last fall that he’d develop an early education feeder program in an empty MPS school so the OSPP wouldn’t harm MPS.
“There isn’t a lot of trust now,” Mizialko said.
Means said launching a totally new school was an expensive option and that he was focused on the 2016 academic year. He said if MPS doesn’t agree to partner with the OSPP, there’s still time to let out a request for proposals and select a private charter operator by the fall. Interestingly, according to the county’s attorney, the law allows Means to draft, respond to and decide the winner of the proposal with no outside input—meaning that Means himself could operate the OSPP school. That said, it seems that partnering with MPS is Means’ first choice.
“What I’m trying to do is work with the law to minimize the impact on the school district as much as possible,” Means said. “That’s all that I’m trying to do.”
MPS Board Member Falk wasn’t terribly impressed by Means’ proposal and doubted that Means could sign a school operator by the fall.
“In some respects the position of much of the board is to a great degree Dr. Means needs MPS much more than MPS needs Dr. Means,” Falk said. “Without this agreement I don’t know how he makes this thing work.”
