Shaping MPS

Nevertheless, the free market idea is getting mileage here like nowhere else. And the growth in the total number of schools in town, combined with a declining number of preschool-age children in the city, means there are going to be winners and losers not far down the road. MPS leaders are openly concerned that the budget crunch on the system will get rapidly worse if enrollment declines. In drawing up this year’s budget, they forecast a decline of about 1,000 students, roughly 1% of the system's total, because of choice and charter schools.

And MPS officials say the neighborhood plan was developed with a strong eye to making the schools ones people will choose. "MPS has never so aggressively sought out parents to find out what they want from us," said Sue Lundin, an MPS official who was a key figure in developing the plan.

Mike Turza, head of business services for the district, said, "We think we have a good chance of recapturing some of our parents who have gone to other educational choices."

But some of the new choices outside MPS are going to be very attractive, if they are able to follow through on their promises. That can be seen in how quickly the new science academy filled more than 900 seats for this fall.

The school, in parts of the former Sinai Samaritan Medical Center campus at W. Kilbourn Ave. and N. 20th St, almost surely will be the most interesting new player on the scene.

It will be the first school operating under a charter issued by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. A state law, unique in the country, allows Milwaukee city government, UWM and Milwaukee Area Technical College to issue charters to innovative schools, bypassing the MPS chartering process. City Hall has chartered four schools, MATC none.

The science academy will be the first school in Wisconsin operated under a contract with Edison Schools, a private, for-profit company, based in New York. Edison has wanted to operate schools in Milwaukee for years and has been strongly opposed by unions.

But the most interesting aspect will probably be the school itself. It is aimed at providing a rigorous program emphasizing science and math. It has promised, among other things, that a computer will be provided for home use to every family.

Although there have been rumblings of difficulty getting the program launched, Michael Bolger, president of the Medical College of Wisconsin and chairman of the academy's board, is excited and optimistic.

The school will run, from 4-year-old kindergarten through seventh grade this year, with a commitment to expand to K-12. It expects "to create an entirely new paradigm for the teaching of math and science," Bolger said.

Eighty-four percent of the students are African-American and 10% to 20% are coming to the school from private schools, he said.

The cyberschool had 38 students in a pilot program last year. It will have 400 in kindergarten through eighth grade this year in its new building, in the Parklawn public housing development near N. Sherman Blvd. and W. Congress St.

Christine Faltz, the founder and executive director, says the building will be wired for advanced use of technology in teacher presentations and student work. That's in addition to the laptops that will be an almost-constant part of the daily routine, even in the youngest grades.

Another of the schools chartered by City Hall, Global Career Academy, 4610 W. State St., will enter its second year up from about 90 students last year to near its 135-student capacity this year, school officials say. It has added a fifth grade, Spanish instruction and, for some students, a biofeedback program aimed at increasing attention span and focus.

A New Partner for Schools

MPS will debut a school it hopes will be a model of how to link schools and community organizations. The Ralph Metcalfe School will have about 250 students in kindergarten, first grade and sixth grade. When the school moves into its new home at W. North Ave. and N. 33rd St. later in the fall, it will be in the same building as a Boys & Girls Club and will coordinate some programming and facility use with the club.

The concept of combined school-community agency efforts is so appealing to MPS leaders that they chose the school site for the official unveiling of the sweeping neighborhood schools plan last week. The plan calls for such alliances elsewhere in the city. Until the building is finished, Metcalfe students will use available space in the Andrew S. Douglas Community Academy. Metcalfe will grow into a K-8 program over several years.

Like it or hate it—there's plenty of both on view in the presidential campaign, already - the Milwaukee school choice program is the pre-eminent voucher program in the United States. In size and expense, it far surpasses the only similar effort, in Cleveland. And it remains the only program that has survived a challenge in a state Supreme Court and in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ultimately, the program will remain on less than firm ground until the day when the U.S. Supreme Court directly decides the constitutionality of vouchers for religious schools. It ducked that opportunity in 1998 in the Milwaukee case. But it is expected to tackle the issue in the next several years. What happens then could be shaped by the outcome of the presidential election.

Changes in control of the Wisconsin Legislature or in who sits in the governor's chair also could shape the choice program. But for now, what is almost a free-for-all prevails in Milwaukee education.

The unprecedented dimension of that means that the eyes of educators, researchers, politicians and journalists will continue to turn often to Milwaukee. Whatever its destination, the nation's route to education, reform clearly runs through here.

CHOICES

Big selection: Milwaukee parents especially low-income parents - now have more publicly paid choices for educating their children than parents in any other place in the United States.

Easy to enter: State law requires choice schools to accept almost all applicants and, in rare cases where applicants exceed openings, to choose who gets in by random selection.