Thirty years ago, the definition of a public school student in Milwaukee was a child who was enrolled in a conventional school that was part of the Milwaukee Public Schools system.

Simple, right?

Defining public school education in Milwaukee has become vastly more complex and interesting, as the wave of new attendance figures for this school year underscores.

The new figures fuel the idea that the most important school reform of all in Milwaukee in the last generation may be the extraordinary broadening of what is available in the way of schools, both within the MPS system and outside it.

Nearly a quarter of all Milwaukee children whose education is being paid for by public dollars are not attending a conventional MPS school this year, according to figures from the state Department of Public Instruction and MPS.

Thanks to public funding, more than 29,300 children are attending schools outside the conventional MPS system this year. That comes to 24% of the roughly 120,500 city students who are getting one form or another of publicly funded education.

The subject of what can be described as a "public school" can still trigger a heated debate among partisans in education circles. And what is being accomplished educationally by all the change in what is offered in Milwaukee is highly subject to debate and opinion.

But there is no disputing the fact that, under the definition of "education paid for by tax dollars," public education here is continuing to expand and take new shapes.

The changes are showing up in the creation of dozens of schools that didn't exist a few years ago, some of them very good, some of them highly questionable at best, many of them offering unconventional or distinctive approaches to education and all of them getting public money.

One result is an array of school options available to Milwaukee parents -- especially low-income parents -- that may very well be without parallel in the United States.

MPS and beyond

The list of options starts with MPS, where students can enroll not only in their neighborhood school but in dozens of other schools, some offering specialty programs. About 200 programs are now part of the MPS system -- several dozen of them created as options to the conventional schools.

The list extends quickly into the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which includes 106 schools. Those schools reported enrolling 13,419 students in the official count in September (equivalent to 12,950 full-time students). By either count, the totals were up about 1,700 from a year ago, as the program heads toward the cap of about 15,000 now set by state law.

The choice schools include many Catholic schools that are long-established and familiar to Milwaukeeans.

But they also include new and growing schools such as the Mandella School of Science and Math, 4610 W. State St., which reported having 238 students this year, up from 98 a year ago, and the Academic Solutions Center of Living, 4840 W. Fond du Lac Ave., which reported 591 students, compared with 257 a year ago.

Many are schools that few people have heard of and, as critics of the program often point out, are much less subject to public scrutiny than conventional public schools, even as some receive $1 million or more a year in tax money. The choice schools are in line to receive up to $5,882 per qualifying, low-income student from the state this year, and the program as a whole is expected to require $76.2 million this year from the state.

The list of options includes 10 schools chartered by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee or by Milwaukee's city government (separately from MPS), many of them aiming to provide innovative or specialized curricula. The schools reported more than 3,350 students this year, up slightly from a year ago.

The charter schools are in line to receive $7,050 per student, regardless of family income, and more than $23 million in state funding. The largest of the schools in this category is the Milwaukee Academy of Science, operated under a contract with Edison Schools, a private company that operates schools across the U.S. It reported 881 students this fall.

Within the MPS system, there are now 11 charter schools that are labeled "non-instrumentality" schools, meaning they contract with MPS to receive money and permission to operate, but their staff is not employed by MPS. The longest-standing of them is the Highland Community School; the best known is the Bruce Guadalupe School.

These schools generally offer programs that are distinctive in some fashion. They receive generally about the same amount per student as the UWM and city government charter schools.

There are also 6,410 students who live in the city of Milwaukee who are attending suburban schools without charge this year, something that wasn't allowed 30 years ago.

The number doing so under the program known as Chapter 220 -- a voluntary program aimed at racial integration of schools -- continues to decline, with 3,648 Chapter 220 students this year, down from 4,033 a year ago and more than 5,000 as recently as fall 1999.

But the number using the state's open enrollment law, which allows students of any race to attend schools in another district, continues to rise quickly. This year, there are 2,762 Milwaukee children attending suburban schools, up from 1,950 a year ago.

As of the September count date, there are also 3,658 students attending alternative schools, also known as partnership or contract schools, that contract with MPS to provide education generally to students who are not doing well in conventional schools.

Put them all together and you have at least 29,300 students attending on public money through programs and, in many cases, at schools, that didn't exist a generation ago.

Fewer children in city

The main MPS school system had 91,258 kindergarten-through-high-school students in the official count this fall, down 845 from a year ago and down about 5,000 from four years ago. The total for this year is 404 higher than MPS projected when it drew up its budget in spring.

The overall count for MPS includes students in the non-instrumentality charter schools and alternative schools and the students attending suburban schools, which brings the total for the system to 103,769, up 493 from a year ago and one student less than the overall projection used in spring in developing the MPS budget for this year.

In the late 1960s, the public school enrollment total in the city was about 130,000, but the biggest reason for the decrease since then is a decline in the number of children in the city, not the rise of programs outside MPS.

In fact, the Public Policy Forum, a local research organization, has compiled data that shows that, even with the rise of the school choice program, the total number of children attending private schools in the city actually has declined sharply over the years. It was more than 40,000 in 1969 and had fallen to 25,000 in 2002, according to MPS.

One implication would appear to be that fewer children are paying tuition to go to private schools in the city, as the number using vouchers increases.

School that serves public

Advocates of the choice and charter school programs, such as former MPS Superintendent Howard Fuller, argue that the best definition of a public school is a school that serves the public.

On the other side of the debate, many MPS leaders, leaders of the Milwaukee teachers union and other educational activists argue that using such a definition distracts from focusing on the needs of MPS students. They argue that MPS is still the main arena of public education in Milwaukee and that it is being hurt financially by the other schools, especially the choice program.

But the debate does not change the fact that public funding of education in Milwaukee used to mean the money that flowed to about 150 schools in the MPS system.

It now means money that flows to well over 300 places -- to about 200 schools affiliated with MPS, to more than 100 private schools in the choice program, to 10 charter schools outside MPS, and to the public districts outside Milwaukee that educate Milwaukee kids.

As a result, the map of where tax money goes for education has been redrawn in a dramatic fashion as the new generations of Milwaukee adults are shaped in an increasingly complex geography of schooling whose effectiveness is at this point unclear.

THE NUMBERS

Where do Milwaukee children get publicly funded education?

-- 91,258 attend the main body of Milwaukee Public Schools' elementary, K-8, middle and high schools.

-- 13,419 are enrolled in 106 private schools, including religious schools, that are part of the state's Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.

-- 2,595 are attending five schools that received charters to operate through the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

-- 852-plus -- the number is based on full-time equivalent students and is actually probably a few more -- are attending five schools chartered through the City of Milwaukee government.

-- 2,443 are attending "non-instrumentality" charter schools connected to MPS.

-- 3,658 are attending alternative, partnership and contract schools that are paid by MPS to educate students who generally were not doing well in conventional schools.

-- 3,648 are attending suburban public schools under the Chapter 220 voluntary racial integration program.

-- 2,762 are attending public schools outside Milwaukee under the state's open enrollment program.