From the Business Journal
March 5, 2010

When incoming  Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent Gregory Thornton signed his contract Feb. 17, it did more than guarantee he would take over the struggling district later this year.
It also signified MPS is moving forward with the school board’s agenda, rather than making changes many in the business community would like to see.

Now, business leaders say they will refocus their efforts on MPS, thinking less about mayoral control and more about improving the district’s finances, test scores and graduation rates so students are prepared to enter the work force.

“The continuing involvement and continuing interest of the business community is driven by the need for more high-performing students and more graduates with the skills that are going to be needed whether the economy is in an upswing or a downswing,” said Tim Sheehy, president of the  Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce.

In 2008, 20 percent of manufacturing workers in Wisconsin were 55 years or older, which means by 2016 there will be 78,000 openings in manufacturing due to retirement alone, according to the MMAC.

“The reality is, if we can’t fill those openings with the skilled, talented people we need, those jobs will go somewhere else,” Sheehy said.

In spring 2009, the business community got behind an effort to change the governance of MPS and give the Milwaukee mayor the power to hire the district’s superintendent and set the tax levy.

The school board’s hiring of Thornton during a special meeting held on a Friday night, Jan. 22, and the state Legislature’s failure to act on two competing MPS governance bills during a special legislative session signified to many the issue has stalled, if not died.

The Legislature will be in regular session until April 22, although no one is confident either MPS bill will be voted on.

Patrick Curley, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett’s chief of staff, said in recent weeks the mayor’s office has gotten calls from parents who are upset the MPS schools their children are attending will be faced with budget cuts, which could mean teacher layoffs and program cuts.

That could generate enough anger to get people talking about changes to MPS governance again, Curley said.

“I think more people will start asking a lot of questions about the school board,” Curley said. “We’ll be watching that carefully. The mayor has said he’s not walking away from this issue.”

Taking a stance

Julia Taylor, president of the Greater Milwaukee Committee, said even without mayoral control, there are still many issues the business community can fight for.

Those issues include the dropout rate — 38 MPS students every day that school is in session, according to Taylor — as well as the district’s financial issues.

“MPS is going off a financial cliff with no foot on the brake,” Taylor said. “The outcomes are still so dire no one within MPS or outside MPS should be willing to accept the status quo. When I think about that and the issues with low-performing schools, it’s a human travesty and an economic travesty.”

Rich Meeusen, chief executive officer of  Badger Meter Inc., Brown Deer, said the business community is waiting to hear what the school board and Thornton are going to do to improve the district. Thornton will replace outgoing superintendent William Andrekopoulos July 1.

Thornton could not be reached for comment.

“If mayoral control is not the answer, our question is ‘what is the answer?’” Meeusen said, adding that he isn’t optimistic Thornton will be successful. “Unless something major changes, I think the new superintendent is going to run into the same obstacles Andrekopoulos and others before him have run into.”

Sheehy said the MMAC is going to try to improve some of the problems in MPS by focusing on three areas.

The first is pushing for structural and fiscal changes allowing district employees and students to better perform.

Secondly, Sheehy would like the state to change the way schools are funded so charter and choice schools receive the same amount of money as public schools.

Currently, schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program get $6,442 per student; charter schools operated through the city of Milwaukee or the  University of Wisconsin System get $7,775 per student; and MPS gets $13,318 per student, according to Patrick Gasper, spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

“We’ve got to cut through the rhetoric that it’s all about the kids,” Sheehy said. “If it’s all about the kids, then we need to value them the same and correct the funding flaw that will choke good-performing schools and the choice and charter program.”

Third, the MMAC wants to work with the  University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Common Council to aggressively pursue more high-performing charter schools.

“The people of MPS get that their job is to educate kids; I just think we’ve had decades of evidence that the tools to do that job right are not in place,” Sheehy said. “I don’t buy for a second that the people in MPS aren’t trying to do a good job. I just think they are in a structure that won’t allow them to deliver results.”