Lincoln Avenue School Community Hopeful About Move to Pulaski

Aurora, 7, and Lilyanie, 9, are best friends who attended Lincoln Avenue School and say they’re excited to move to Pulaski High School in the Fall where their older brothers go. They’re pictured during a community meeting at Rogers Street Academy in Milwaukee, Wis. on July 13, 2026. Corrinne Hess/WPR

Two weeks ago, Jonathan Martinez woke up just before 3 a.m. to sirens blaring outside his south side Milwaukee home.

Outside, hundreds of firefighters battled a massive fire at Lincoln Avenue School before determining the five-alarm blaze would destroy the entire building.

Martinez watched, devastated.

His older children attended the school, and his younger two children were still students there.

“It’s more than a school, it’s a community hub,” Martinez said Monday. “It took a couple days to really sink in.”

Milwaukee Public Schools announced Friday the 450 students from Lincoln Avenue School would move to Casimir Pulaski High School on 25th Street at Oklahoma Avenue in the fall.

The high school is large enough to accommodate the K3-fifth graders from Lincoln and the 950 students at Pulaski High School, according to Superintendent Brenda Cassellius.

It’s also the closest option, located about 1.5 miles from Lincoln Avenue School.

At Pulaski, Lincoln Avenue students and staff will have separate entrances and exits, offices, cafeteria and green spaces.

“Knowing that the kids are going to be at Pulaski eases everything,” Martinez said. “It’s not too far from the house. I know a lot of students that go there. I had an older son that went there too, so it seems like a good plan.”

Like Martinez, Melody Lawrence also watched fire destroy Lincoln Avenue School.

Lawrence was in tears Monday talking about her beloved school being destroyed.

“I went there. My son went there. My grandson went there. She goes there,” she said pointing to her 7-year-old granddaughter. “My brother went there and my mother went there when it was a girls’ school.”

Lawrence said she hoped students would be relocated to Pulaski.

“With God’s will and prayers, it happened,” she said.

Staff members and families from Lincoln Avenue School at a community meeting at Rogers Street Academy in Milwaukee, Wis. on July 13, 2026. Corrinne Hess/WPR

Amber Wyland also had tears in her eyes during Monday’s meeting. Her 6-year-old son, Owen, would have been a first-grader at Lincoln Avenue School in the fall.

She said the new plan “works” for their family for now.

“My son has special needs, so there is a lot that goes into this,” Wyland said. “We just have to make sure he’s comfortable.”

The Milwaukee Fire Department has not yet released the cause of the fire or where it originated.

Lincoln Avenue School was built in 1917. The building had smoke alarms, but not a sprinkler system in portions of the building.

The average age of MPS school buildings is about 85 years old, and state law does not require buildings to be retrofitted with sprinklers.

Only about 28 percent of the district’s 144 buildings have sprinklers.

On Monday, Cassellius said Wisconsin is one of only a few states that doesn’t have a School Building Authority, which is a government agency that manages a district’s buildings, and fixes and takes care of public schools

“We really need to start having a statewide conversation,” Cassellius said. “Milwaukee is not the only district with school buildings that are old. And the age of our facilities are just getting to be too much.”

Cassellius estimated it would cost $1 million to $2 million per school to retrofit sprinklers.

Milwaukee’s Lincoln Avenue School community hopeful for upcoming move to Pulaski was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.