Milwaukee Needs New Kind of School Board

With Milwaukee Public Schools’ financial scandal, our elected school board has been exposed as ill equipped to effectively oversee the state’s largest district. Several school governance reforms have been proposed, from breaking up the district to a mayoral takeover.

In hindsight, it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. The governance model of MPS is not conducive to overseeing a $1.5 billion enterprise, especially with all of the issues that our district has. To be straightforward, our board members are a bunch of amateurs. Mostly former educators or activists (noble callings, all), they do not have the skills, knowledge, or abilities required to steer this massive ship, which is why they were caught so flat-footed when the news of MPS’s malfeasance broke.

The current model depends on an ultra competent superintendent. If that position is weak, then the whole thing breaks apart. The board mostly rubber stamps the budget, they are not prepared to interact with it beyond getting their small priorities funded. These part-time laypeople are not the best that the city has to offer, but when offering only $20,000 a year, what sort of candidates or effort do we expect? At this point we could pick nine random people off of the street who said they support MPS, put them on the board and they would be at least equally effective. And this isn’t just a slight against our particular slate of directors; the part-time amateurs in Waukesha or Tomah or anywhere else wouldn’t be able to oversee a district this size either.

I propose a new governance model. One that has the benefits of a democratically elected board, but also the benefits of expert oversight. One that would increase accountability to include other levels of government, without a city, county or state takeover. This model would encourage the city’s best, most high caliber candidates to rise up and lead our district out of this mire.

The model would consist of seven full-time, well paid school board members. Four of them would be elected in city-wide elections that would coincide with presidential and gubernatorial elections to maximize voter participation. Gone would be the school board “districts” which limit the candidate pool and leads to “bringing home the bacon” at the expense of the larger system. If the northwest side schools are doing poorly, all of the elected board members are accountable to the voters.

The other three board members would be appointed by our other elected leaders: the mayor of Milwaukee, the governor, and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. The intention is that these board members would be experts in their field. They could be business leaders, policy experts, financial gurus, education administration professionals, whatever would complement the skill set of the elected board members. These appointees would serve at the pleasure of those elected leaders, accountable to them, and them to us, the people.

The strength of this model is that we get a larger, city-wide candidate pool for these elected positions. The balance of power would be biased towards those directly elected by the people, hence four of the seven seats. But there would also be a hedge against amateurish incompetence with the three appointed members. Accountability would be increased as every elected board member must now answer for the quality of all the schools city-wide, rather than just their little district. The mayor, governor, and state superintendent would now share in that accountability, as they would now have direct impact on MPS through their appointees. They would now be encouraged to use their bully pulpit to call attention to issues on the board, as they would now be partly responsible.

This new full-time board would be paid enough to encourage mid-career professionals to consider serving. There would also be aides to assist with research and making policy, again, injecting more knowledge and professionalism into the board, allowing them to effectively govern.

The money we would spend on this new model would be a drop in the bucket compared to the money we are flushing down the toilet due to this financial scandal, as well as other, more typical inefficiencies and bloat that the current board doesn’t have the competence or time to detect. This, I believe, is the best way forward for MPS. The children of Milwaukee deserve the cream of the crop, the best of the best. This isn’t an easy district to govern, and we need to stop pretending that it can be a side-gig for dilettantes.

Jordan Morales is a resident of Milwaukee in the Sherman Park neighborhood.