Does MPS Need To Be Reorganized?

Bay View High School. Photo taken May 20th, 2020 by Carl Baehr.

Last week a story by WPR reporter Cori Hess raised the question whether a structural change in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) passed by state legislation in 1991 helped lead to the financial problems the district now faces.

Hess quoted Democratic state Sen. Chris Larson who claimed that intent of this legislation was to shift “the financial management oversight from the school board” and was “by design, meant to keep it in the dark.”

As someone who wrote about this when the legislation was passed, I think Larson’s description of it, 33 years after the fact, is misleading. That said, the disastrous financial meltdown at MPS does raise questions as to whether its structure needs to be revisited.

It was Howard Fuller who pushed for the change in state legislation. He had taken over as MPS superintendent in 1991 with the expectation he would shake up the system. This was just four years after MPS Superintendent Lee McMurrin (who served from 1975 to 1987) had stepped down after overseeing the desegregation of MPS. But by then declines in achievement levels, the disproportionate burden of busing on Black students, and other concerns had led to widespread calls for reform of MPS.

But though McMurrin was gone, the MPS Secretary-Business Manager John Peterburs who had served in the position since 1981, was still there, and some saw him as as an impediment to reform.

“The secretary business manager reported directly to the board and under him was personnel and finances,” Fuller recalled in an interview with Urban Milwaukee. “I said to board members ‘what am I responsible for’ and they said ‘education.’ And I said, ‘how can I be responsible for education and have no power over personnel and finances?’”

The two-headed structure of MPS went back to early in the 20th century and was not without its occasional problems. In the 1930s longtime Secretary-Business Manager Frank Harbach resigned after accusations of misuse of funds. And by the 1990s big city school systems in America were seen as troubled, often failing institutions and all the expectations were placed on the superintendent as the person who was expected to improve the system. Yet in Milwaukee the little-known secretary-business manager held significant power over the budget.

So Fuller pushed successfully to change the state law to eliminate the position. As for Larson’s idea that this change weakened the financial oversight of MPS, Fuller served for four years, followed by a long list of Milwaukee superintendents over the past three decades none of whom had the kind of financial problems that occurred under Keith Posley, who recently resigned.

Moreover the structure was changed by the Milwaukee School Board beginning in 2010, as Urban Milwaukee reported in 2018. The board grabbed back some of the power it once had under the old system, passing a proposal by President Michael Bonds to create the Office of Accountability and Efficiency. Some 10 or 11 staff positions were switched from various offices reporting to the superintendent, and would now be part of the independent OAE.

Then-superintendent William Andrekopoulos strongly opposed the creation of this office, saying it would create a difficult-to-lead “bifurcated system,” but board members felt they needed the office to help see through the inevitable spin from a superintendent on a given issue. “Until last night the administration has had the power and control of all data needed to make informed decisions,” but now the board had its own data analysts, Bonds noted.

Bonds compared the OAE to the city comptroller, but the comptroller is independently elected and reports to neither the mayor nor Common Council; the OEA reports to the school board.

The OAE has brought some stability to MPS, with Matt Chason, serving in a key position with the office since 2011 and its manager since 2019. And Chason warned the school board as early as January 2023 that MPS was missing deadlines on providing data to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, as Urban Milwaukee recently reported.

And the board knew as early as February 2023 that the Head Start program has problems and in May 2023 received an audit from Baker Tilly that identified serious problems, Urban Milwaukee reported. “Management has not prepared financial statements that are in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles,” the audit noted.

Yet it wasn’t until a year later, in May 2024, after the federal government suspended funding for the Head Start program, and DPI threatened to withhold state funding for MPS, that the board suddenly took action, which soon led to Posley’s resignation.

If the OAE was supposed to help the school board foresee the massive problems that occurred under Posley, either the system didn’t work, or board members were asleep.

In response to the crisis, former Gov. Tommy Thompson has called for either breaking up the Milwaukee system into smaller districts or some kind of state takeover. The idea of mayoral takeover has been floated as well. None of these are new ideas. None are likely to gain enough support to be enacted. Mayor Cavalier Johnson rejected all three, but did say he intends to work with MPS and DPI to “monitor their progress in bringing this matter to a close.”

One potential bright spot is the involvement of City Comptroller Bill Christianson. “I have met with MPS officials who are leading the Corrective Action Plan regarding assistance that the comptroller’s office can offer,” Christianson told Urban Milwaukee. “We have had preliminary discussions on how we can assist, and are in the process of evaluating how we might best be able to help MPS address their needs.”

Would it make sense for the comptroller to have a permanent role in providing financial oversight of MPS? Does the tug-of-war between the board and superintendent over financial data analysts lead to the best management or simply result in duplicative staff? And would some oversight by an independently elected office provide more structure for MPS, more protection for the taxpayers, and a better linkage between the city and its school system? That seems like a discussion worth having.