New MPS Superintendent Wants To Reconfigure School-Grade Configuration

Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius answers questions from listening session attendees Monday, July 28, 2025, at Congress School in Milwaukee, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

As Milwaukee Public Schools continues to look at the best ways to manage the district’s facilities, Superintendent Brenda Cassellius wants to consider new grade configurations.

Over the next year, the district will decide how to manage its 149 school buildings as student enrollment continues to decline.

Some schools are bursting at the seams. Others are virtually empty.

Thirteen schools, located mostly on the city’s north side, are candidates for possible closure or merger.

This week, during an interview with WVTV’s Connect Milwaukee, Cassellius said as a long-range facilities plan is solidified, she would like the conversation to revolve around student achievement.

Currently, MPS has 10 different grade configurations. The majority are pre-K-8 and pre-K-5.

Cassellius says having that many configurations in the school district makes it hard to focus on academics.

She wants to move to a pre-k-6 and 7-12 “junior high” model.

The junior high students would be located in MPS high schools, Cassellius said.

“With some modernization, those facilities could really be wonderful school environments for our students to be able to do career programming,” Cassellius said. “I think it would give a more well-rounded education to our students.”

Any changes to grade configurations would need approval from the Milwaukee Board of School Directors.

Gov. Tony Evers’ instructional audit released in June confirmed that having too many different grade spans makes improvement and accountability efforts difficult, said MPS School Board President Missy Zombor.

“Having more consistent grade configurations would give us the opportunity to better align schools so students experience more continuity from one grade to the next and help strengthen collaboration among schools, streamline transitions for students, and allow us to focus resources where students need them the most,” Zombor said in a statement to WPR.

She said while grade configurations are being considered, no decisions have been finalized.

If plans to reconfigure grades gain steam, they could face an uphill battle in the community. Other school districts have proposed similar changes — and have been met with opposition.

In 2022, the Cudahy School District considered a proposal that would have kept incoming sixth graders at the elementary schools and moved seventh and eighth graders to the high school.

After a year of debate, the school board ultimately paused the proposal, and superintendent Tina Owen-Moore resigned.

Owen-Moore is now the board clerk with MPS. The Cudahy School District is again working on plans to close schools and reconfigure grades.

The Jefferson School District is also considering grade reconfiguration. A survey sent out to parents in the district showed parents are mixed on the idea.

Education Northwest, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, looked at available research and concluded there is little evidence to determine a cause-and-effect relationship between grade configuration and academic achievement.

There are very few studies. They are not very current. And the studies don’t factor don’t control for all possible variables, Education Northwest found.

Cassellius said when school districts go to the community to talk about closing schools, the reason is usually money. To her, that’s not compelling.

“If I know my child is able to get a better education and more opportunities and better facilities and more music and art and PE and co-curricular activities and better athletic spaces and better libraries, etc., then I think that families would say, ‘OK, I’ll raise my hand to that,’” she said.

Head of Milwaukee Public Schools wants grade reconfiguration was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.