Milwaukee School Board Recall Fails

Angela Harris speaks during MPS board recall press conference. Photo taken June 12, 2024 by Graham Kilmer.

An attempt to recall four Milwaukee School Board directors has failed.

The City of Milwaukee Election Commission announced Monday that the recall organizers did not collect enough signatures to trigger a recall election for District Director and school board President Marva Herndon, Citywide Director Missy Zombor, District 2 Director Erika Siemsen and District 5 Director Jilly Gokalgandhi.

In June, the group,  called the MPS School Board Recall Collaborative, announced the recall campaign in the fallout of the financial scandal that rocked Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and led to the resignation of Superintendent Keith Posley and several high-ranking MPS administrators.

A handful of Milwaukee residents and MPS parents organized the recall campaign, which they described as a grassroots effort when it first launched. Campaign organizers said in July the drive was being funded by anonymous donors, but declined to name them.

The campaign fell well short of the signatures needed for all four seats. The deadline to collect and submit the signatures was Aug. 12.

The election commission did not have to count how many signatures were collected for the citywide board seat, as the campaign did not even file enough nomination pages to contain the 44,177 signatures needed. For the other three district seats, the organizers fell short by thousands of signatures in each district. To trigger the recall, they needed to collect signatures equivalent to at least 25% of the votes cast in those districts as part of a gubernatorial election.

The recall campaign pushed the issues of financial mismanagement and a lack of transparency by the MPS administration, and a failure of the MPS board to provide adequate oversight. The district had failed to submit important financial reports to the state, jeopardizing funding for the school district. The revelation came after voters approved a $252 million funding referendum during the spring elections in 2024.

When the recall campaign launched, it was also clear the organizers were incensed by the board’s treatment of former School Board Director Aisha Carr, who resigned in the wake of a series of controversies and was recently charged with fraud for allegedly lying about living in the district she represented. Carr recently entered a plea of not guilty to the charges.