A financial disaster is unfolding this week in the state’s largest school district, Milwaukee Public Schools. In case you haven’t been keeping up, the state Department of Public Instruction is threatening to withhold $16.6-million in funding from the district as it has continuously missed deadlines to turn in required financial reports from 2023. This comes after the state also announced it was withholding funding for Milwaukee Head Start sites after the district failed to address student safety concerns highlighted by the DPI in previous years.
This has led to plenty of questions as to “how could this happen?” and “why does this keep happening in Milwaukee schools?” And the automatic answer from those within the district offices is that they don’t get enough money from the state to operate their schools properly–especially when you consider the number of kids that enrolled in the school voucher program, taking state aid with them to private schools. But one cause of MPS’ failures has been escaping public scrutiny–until now.
What is always conveniently ignored is that public schools are overseen by elected officials who should be acting on behalf of the voters. Milwaukee’s school board members call themselves “Trustees”–but as details of the financial crisis leak out, “trust” obviously should not have been included in the name.
As someone who has covered A LOT of school board meetings over 26-years in journalism, I can tell you that the true oversight mission of boards of education is inconsistent at best and generally lax. However, that has not always been the case during my career. I have covered some barn burners of school board meetings in the past where superintendents and other administrators were grilled and made to account for decisions made within administration, or to defend proposed expenditures and major changes in policies and curriculum.
But somewhere around the mid 2000’s the role of school boards began to change. No more were members seeing themselves as the “trustees” of the public resources. Instead, they became “cheerleaders for our schools” or “champions of education”. This shift in role came after multiple districts lost funding referenda put on the ballot despite concern or outright opposition from a minority of school board members. I remember an Oshkosh School Board meeting around that time where the superintendent and the board president both begged everyone to “speak with one voice to the community”.
In just the past year, I have heard members of the current Oshkosh and Appleton school boards recite the same phrase during a discussion: “The role of the school board is to develop and approve policies–not to micro-manage the day-to-day operation of the district. That is the job of the administration.” Those comments were made during debates over new reading curriculum and whether certain books should be removed from school libraries. And while micro-management of district operations is certainly not good for a school board (as was shown by a now former member of the Omro School Board that held so many meetings hostage by demanding a line by line explanation of all bills paid by the district–including $19 for a debate team pizza party–that the rest of the board adopted a new policy that it would not require administration to explain expenditures unless a majority of the board demanded it), just “setting a policy” and promoting passage of the next referendum is not everything being on a school board entails. “I’m going to defer to administration on this one” is not an argument a school board member should make for voting to approve a measure before them.
One of the accusations facing Milwaukee Schools is that it has failed to provide its annual audit results–which are required by state law and must be approved by the school board before submission. We’ve come to find out, that MPS hasn’t even had the 2022-23 school year audit completed yet–and it is June of 2024. You have to wonder, why did no MPS trustees ask in the ensuing year “Are we ever going to get an annual audit?” Were there any calls for an agenda item to get updates on safety improvements to Head Start sites–considering that the state was going to take away funding if they were not done? This is where I’m going to note that MPS trustees make more than $19,000 a year in salary. According to the district website, Appleton School Board members serve without pay.
And did I mention that all of this was taking place while the Milwaukee School District had a $252-million referendum on the ballot? The timing–not only of the reporting on this story and the state’s public statements on the delay in proper financial reporting–certainly looks more suspicious in the wake of its passage.
Milwaukee media outlets are not buying into the “we need more money” or “that’s a question for administration” responses from the Milwaukee School Board this month–accosting school board members outside their homes and committee meeting sites. But members are doing their damnedest to deflect criticism. They called in the cops to disperse protesters at their meeting to discuss the fate of Superintendent Keith Posely–before he quit at 2:00 in the morning during a closed session discussion. Members called a press conference Wednesday, showed up 15-minutes late, read a prepared statement that included information that had already been widely reported, claimed the room needed to be used for something else and told the reporters they would have time to answer just two questions, then called on reporters that had not reported on the district’s issues, and highlighted a “plan” that was submitted to the DPI to address their financial reporting issues that was written up as a Word document with no district official’s names and no deadlines to accomplish anything.
This would be a good time to talk about who is being elected to local school boards in many of the larger districts around the state. A check of incumbent campaign finance reports will find a large number are getting most of their donations from the local teachers’ unions and their members. Both political parties are targeting these races too–but Democrats are spending more. Political action committees and “community organizing” groups are also throwing money and volunteer resources behind certain school board members. And while those candidates claim that they “only care about the kids”, kids don’t give you campaign contributions and expect something in return.
And let’s not let voters get away with any blame here either. In the 2023 Milwaukee School Board elections four of the five candidates endorsed by the Milwaukee Teacher’s Education Association union won seats. A member of the board resigned in the wake of accusations that she had bugged the superintendent’s office this spring. One person submitted an application to fill that seat. Apparently no one cares until big money is on the line.
Until school board debates start including in-depth discussions about things like effective reading curriculum (another issue ignored by school boards for decades until the state law requiring Science of Reading applications) and holding administrators accountable for the most basic of district operations, voters are going to get nothing more than “cheerleaders” and “champions”, while their schools are sad and defeated.
