Outcome of April referendum will either sustain or jeopardize strides MPS has made since 2020
Milwaukee Public Schools is one of more than 90 Wisconsin school districts putting referenda on the ballot this year because of the state’s continued underfunding of public schools. Milwaukee residents will vote on Tuesday, April 2, 2024, on the MPS referendum question that asks voters to raise the revenue limit to support students by $252 million, to be phased in over four years.
The MPS tax rate has been declining since 2011, even after voters approved a referendum in 2020. The 2020 referendum was used to make substantial improvements for students at MPS, primarily by hiring additional teachers and other staff and modernizing equipment.
The revenue-limit increase that MPS is seeking in April would be used to continue the strides made by the district since 2020 — in achieving smaller class sizes, attracting and keeping high-quality teachers, and expanding student access to music, visual arts, physical education, libraries, career and technical education, and more.
Class sizes are smaller
At Gwen T. Jackson Early Childhood and Elementary School, 2121 W. Hadley St., students have become more proficient as the student- to-teacher ratio has become more favorable.
Principal Sylvia Traylor, who arrived at the school in February 2022, said: “Smaller class sizes have affected our achievement. We went from not meeting expectations on our report card to meeting expectations.”
Jackson School is an achievement gap reduction school, with a ratio mostly of 18 students for every teacher in K3 and K4 Head Start classrooms; and in first through third grades, sometimes 19 or 20 students.
Starms Early Childhood Center’s student enrollment has grown in recent years, Principal Regina Navejar noted, and it could grow further if the school could add educators to its staff.
“Since the 2020 referendum, we’ve seen an increase in our enrollment and student retention. Our current enrollment shows that we significantly exceeded our budgeted enrollment expectations,” Navejar said. “Starms’ history in early childhood is a rich one, and people in our surrounding community and beyond recognize this. We’ve had interest in our program from areas as far as Oak Creek. We’re hoping to add more staff in the 2024- 25 school year to meet the needs of our increasing enrollment.”
More students are learning music
Music instruction has been shown to help students in areas such as improving memory, reasoning, and problem solving, and advancing math, reading, and language skills. By the 2023-24 school year, 92 percent of MPS students were in music classes, up from 19 percent in 2018- 19. Ninety schools received new musical instruments and equipment.
Eighty-First Street School received a .20 increase for a music teacher — what amounts to an extra day of instruction per week — in the 2023 fiscal year.
“Our kids are preparing for the Biennial Music Festival, which they have not been able to participate in for a while. Our music teacher is phenomenal. She brought in a pianist for our holiday concert so the kids could sing to live music. She is really collaborating with partners — and the kids benefit from this — and we are getting great compliments from parents,” said Principal Qiana Durojaiye.
New this year is the Eighty- First Street School Choir, which students in grades three through five can choose as their recess club since the school has a music teacher in the building an extra day each week. Dedicated funding for teacher salaries allowed the school to use other funds to purchase African drums, ukuleles, and sheet music so students can learn and practice notes throughout the school week.
At Milwaukee French Immersion School, Principal Jenna Harer said the school now has full-time, French-speaking art and music teachers.
“As an immersion school, we have been incredibly fortunate to have both our art and music teachers speak French and instruct in French. The 2020 referendum allowed us to have those two individuals full time in our building,” Harer said. “Including the arts in our immersion programming is incredibly valuable for our students, as it ensures increased vocabulary in the target language and increases our immersion programming. Unfortunately, with the upcoming budget cuts, we will no longer be able to sustain both full time.”
More students have art classes
Studying and making art helps students improve critical thinking, creativity, and engagement with school. All MPS students now have art class at least once a week, and 56 schools have increased art education since 2020.
“We now have full-time art and physical education teachers through the 2020 funding. Having full-time art and phy ed — really, they are extremely important for our students’ growth and development,” said Clemens School Principal Garry Lawson. “For me, arts were always critical to my development. I played standup fiddle bass for seven years. Music helps so much with mathematics — learning how to read notes, I could correlate to quarter note, half note, eighth note. The arts help students in so many ways, we can’t even see the full impact.”
Principal Veronica Leshok at Curtin Leadership Academy observed, “The arts can connect with different learners. We’ve also partnered with Danceworks. Everybody can express themselves and learn in different ways. Arts @ Large is doing a schoolwide mural that reflects the diversity of our school. Our students speak 14 different languages, and having space where students can share who they are — that representation — is so important.”
Attention to health and wellness
Students have more access to sports, physical education, and wellness activities in 57 schools through 32 new physical education teacher positions. Students now have physical education weekly. At Curtin School, “Our physical education teacher is really good,” said the principal, who added that the school combined positions to make the phy ed post full time. “She also teaches health and collaborates with community agencies to come and work with the kids and uses curriculum from Children’s Wisconsin. It’s nice to have teachers who develop their own realm of focus. You can be more creative with instruction when you are not stretched too thin with a part-time position,” Leshok noted.
Getting ready for careers
Students preparing for careers have more teachers and more modern equipment. Trade, technical, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) facilities have been updated and expanded to better position the future workforce. For example, the Bradley Technology and Trade School weld shop has been outfitted with modern equipment, and Washington High School of Information Technology’s main computer lab now includes new technology and a virtual reality area.
“With the trades, we want students to get an experience that’s as close as possible to what they will experience in the working world. This means periodically upgrading and modifying equipment to make it comparable to what’s available in the private sector,” said Bradley Tech Principal Aaron Shapiro.
Since the 2020 vote, “referendum dollars provided additional personnel support for our trades programming,” Shapiro added. “We were able to contract with MATC for a part-time instructor, and we split a manufacturing instructor between us and Barack Obama School of Career and Technical Education. In the past, we had a hard time filling that position.”
At Milwaukee High School of the Arts, the Project Lead The Way lab, a STEM space focused on engineering and design, underwent a significant renovation thanks to the 2020 referendum. The area was refreshed and received six electrical pull-down cords for group projects, 3D printers, new windows and water fixtures, and space for flying drones indoors during inclement weather, and for properly storing projects and materials.
“These projects show students we are investing in them,” said Principal Larry Farris. “They see old, outdated facilities renovated into spaces that meet the demands of their generation and provide what they require to learn and prepare for college and career. When you’re competing with schools in other districts that are updating their facilities to support student achievement, it’s nice to give students spaces that meet their learning needs here in Milwaukee.”
For city taxpayers, the MPS revenue-limit increase would mean an additional $216 for every $100,000 of assessed property value in the first year. In future years, however, referendum taxes would remain flat.
Without additional revenue, the school district would face a budget shortfall of at least $200-million in fiscal year 2025. The shortfall would mean larger class sizes, cuts to teaching positions, reductions in educational programming, and less support for student mental health.
State funding of public schools has not kept pace with inflation since 2009. Additionally, the state for the first time froze per-pupil funding for two consecutive years, in 2021 and 2022. At the same time, the rate of inflation rose significantly. The state also underfunds MPS students with disabilities by at least $50-million a year.
The Milwaukee Board of School Directors voted in January, 2024 to place the referendum on the ballot. The referendum question reads:
“Shall the Milwaukee Public Schools, Milwaukee and Washington Counties, Wisconsin be authorized to exceed the revenue limit specified in Section 121.91, Wisconsin Statutes, by $140- million for the 2024-2025 school year; by an additional $51-million for the 2025- 2026 school year; by an additional $47-million for the 2026-2027 school year; and by an additional $14-million (for a total of $252-million) for the 2027-2028 school year and thereafter, for the recurring purposes of sustaining educational programming, including offering career and technical education programs, attracting and retaining certified educators, and further improving art, music, physical education and language programs?”
