Promises, Promises: MPS Has a $43 Million Hole in Their Budget…and No Plan for How to Plug It

The Milwaukee Public School Board is lacking in several things:

• An ability to exercise proper oversight over the financial records of their school system (see the current financial mess there),
• A spine with which to stand up to interests that favor the adults rather than the kids in the system (how else to explain why MPS opened its doors during COVID so much later than everyone else even though its students needed their services more than any other school system’s?!),
• An interest in good governance and transparency with the parents and taxpayers (witness their unwillingness—until their hand was forced—to hold a public hearing on their budget after the current financial woes were brought to light),
• A commitment to helping the newest teachers succeed in the classroom and to diversifying their pool of instructors citywide (notice the cuts in the current budget to the coaching positions by which more seasoned teachers mentored newer ones; also notice the disinterest in putting their money where their mouth is in terms of attempting to hire more teachers of color),
• An interest in efficiency and a mindfulness that the taxpayer is not a limitless well of money that can be drawn upon without limit (notice how the Board passed a “Tax to the Max” budget after the April referendum passed, and did not diminish it one penny once the financial disarray came to light, which was conveniently after those taxpayers cast their votes),
• An ability to cut the fat at Central Administration and re-allocate those much-needed resources to the classroom,
• A sense of shame which would preclude them from hiring a new, much more expensive public-relations firm once the financial troubles were exposed rather than devoting those funds toward either tax cuts, classroom staffing, or both.

However, the Milwaukee Public School Board is not lacking in this:

• An ability to make promises that it cannot keep.

Promises to whom, you might ask? Three groups loom large:

• The taxpayers. Too much is never enough, it would appear. After asking the local taxpayer for $87 million more in revenue authority in 2020, bringing in 3/4 of a billion dollars in federal ESSER funds during the pandemic, and—most recently—asking for another $252 million this April… After asking for all of that money, there is the still the concern that the MPS Board will try to balance the current budget on the backs of the local taxpayers, by asking them for the missing $43 million. The Board (or, rather, their new public relations firm) has the good sense not to say that out loud, but not the good sense, it appears, to at least sketch how else they might fill this hole.
• The teachers. One thing the Board made sure to do two weeks ago is this: take care of the special interests that put them there. I am not referring to the hardworking and undervalued teachers that work tirelessly every day under impossible circumstances to educate the children of Milwaukee. But I am referring to the out-of-touch Amy-Mizialko-coaching-tree leadership of the union which (leadership) claims to represent them.

This leadership claims (though not too loudly to the taxpayer, it must be noted) that it has won across-the-board salary increases—in the form of a 4.12% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), together with step increases, on top of last year’s 8% COLA (the legal maximum)—for staff at MPS.

What it doesn’t claim—or seem to notice, for that matter—is that the $43 million hole in MPS’s budget caused by the Board’s lack of competent oversight can’t be plugged without either walking back those raises or damaging the classrooms in which their membership works.

Imagine this. You are a teacher who just was provided with the salary (and benefit) increase noted above, starting July 1. You, understandably, plan your life around this new-found income. You buy a car, plan a trip, remodel your house, or/and pay a share of your child’s college tuition.

But, come the fall, the State understandably comes asking for its money back. Where are your assurances that the Board will not be forced to discontinue or diminish those raises? And what in the world are you supposed to do then with the plans you have made in good-faith based on the Board’s promises?

Perhaps, though, the Board knows on which side its bread is buttered. Instead of touching the improved staff salaries, it takes that money from elsewhere. But where? Again, the Board has not given us a clue; it is quite literally, clueless. The fear is that they will take it from the very classrooms where you teach. In that case, your work conditions may deteriorate to the point where you can no longer tolerate them. And so, you are forced to move on. And that’s where the budget savings will be found.

By design or by accident? Does it matter?

• The kids and their caregivers. This is who will truly suffer from the budget hole created by the Board’s incompetence. If the taxpayer is protected, and the staff is protected, then it would seem that the only ones who are left unprotected are, unfortunately, the most vulnerable: the children and their caregivers. Cuts to the classroom and the support staff thereof are damaging to any student. But to the many black and brown students of MPS and to the many impoverished families that love and support them, these cuts are nothing short of devastating.

In brief, these three groups have all been promised something in the current Budget. But to plug the hole within it, some of these promises will need to be broken by the Board.

I promise you that.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.