MPS considers booting 2 charter schools out of district buildings

 

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Families and staff from a pair of south side charter schools filled the auditorium at Tuesday's Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) board meeting.

Donning matching maroon shirts and holding signs, they showed support for Carmen Schools of Science and Technology, which operates five schools in Milwaukee.

At issue was a resolution from board Director Missy Zombor; it called for MPS to end the leases for Carmen's south and southeast campuses, which currently share space at MPS' ALBA Elementary and Pulaski High School, respectively.

Under the resolution, MPS would not renew the leases after the end of the 2025-26 school year. Carmen families said Tuesday they worried finding new locations would hurt the schools' quality of education.

"It is something that is great to have, like in our community and in our culture, a place where we can rely [on] and somewhere parents can take their kids," America Perez, a junior at Carmen South, said. "And they know they will be getting a good education."

Carmen schools are chartered by MPS, so unlike voucher schools, which include private and religious schools, they are public and secular. However, they operate independent from MPS with their own board of directors, and their employees are not affiliated with MPS.

Carmen supporters also took issue with what they considered to be a lack of advanced notice about the resolution. Ivan Gamboa, the chair of Carmen's board of directors, said before the meeting he was blindsided by news of the resolution.

"I feel like it came suddenly. Parents weren't informed," Ramona Ramos, a parent of two Carmen Southeast students, said. "I don't think the school was really informed until last-minute."

Zombor said she wanted to begin a conversation now about the future of the two buildings while there are still two years left on the lease.

She said her concerns stemmed from overcrowding at the two schools, and since there are more MPS students at each building, she said those students are the ones suffering. 

"We actually have students who are practicing [fine arts] in the auditorium, in the cafeteria, because there's not enough space, so we're bursting at the seams at ALBA," Zombor said. "We're also bursting at the seams at Pulaski because we're overenrolled."

According to numbers Zombor provided, the ALBA location has 615 MPS students while Carmen South's enrollment is 389. At Pulaski High School, there are 1,055 students compared to 644 Carmen Southeast students.

In both buildings, the total number of students is more than 200 over the stated capacity in documents MPS provides to the state Legislature.

Zombor said the overcrowding also meant families that prioritized ALBA or Pulaski in open enrollment were getting turned away.

"This is not a resolution about eliminating a contract," she said. "This is a resolution about finding adequate learning space for all students."

While the resolution calls for MPS administrators to seek a solution that allows Carmen to utilize different MPS buildings, a review of districtwide enrollment data finds south side schools tend to be at or over capacity while numerous north side schools are severely underused. 

Many Carmen families are Spanish-speaking from the largely Latino south side, and families at Tuesday's meeting cited the importance of having buildings in their neighborhoods. While Carmen is chartered by MPS, it is not required to use district buildings.

The next step in the conversation will come next month when the board's Accountability, Finance and Personnel Committee takes up the resolution. It could vote on the matter then and put it before the full board for a final vote.

How do the Carmen and MPS schools compare?

According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's (DPI) 2022-23 school report cards, ALBA fared best of the four schools. With a 74.2 overall score, it was the only one graded as exceeding expectations - 67% of students were at or above basic level in reading. For math, 56% performed at or above basic levels.

Carmen South, ALBA's tenant, had the next-highest scored at 68.1 overall - 62% of students were at or above basic level in reading with 40% at or above basic in math.

Pulaski and Carmen Southeast had very similar overall scores at 55.1 and 54.3, respectively - 36% of Pulaski students performed at or below basic levels in reading while 23% were at or above basic in math. Pulaski had the biggest share of students classified as having disabilities with 23.8%. 

At Carmen Southeast, 50% were at or above basic levels in reading while 32% performed at or above basic in math - 11.5% of students there were categorized as having disabilities.

MPS meeting news and notes

Also at Tuesday's board meeting, members voted to re-elect Marva Herndon as the board's president while Jilly Gokalgandhi was re-elected as vice president.

The board also voted unanimously to keep their salaries the same. Currently, board members make $20,490 per year while the president receives $21,207. In July 2023, the board voted to accept raises from their previous salaries of $18,972 for members and $19,544 for the president.