MPS Reaching Out to Community

Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius speaks at an April 3 press conference. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

School superintendent Brenda Cassellius has a challenging task ahead of her if she is to rebuild trust for Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) in this community. She started months earlier than the school board asked, in March, rather than waiting for the new school year in July. She conducted townhall style meetings around the districts. She took on the teacher union on the issue of teacher assignment while working in collaboration on other issues. She brought in a new management team getting the human relations department and reporting system back in order.

School board director James Ferguson, a one-time skeptic, has been won over by Cassellius. “She is doing phenomenal job. Initially I supported another candidate,” he told Urban Milwaukee. “Sometimes the second choice turns out to be the best choice. That is exactly what happened with her. I love her tenacity. I love her passion for kids. And I love her courage.”

Ferguson is now chair of a newly reorganized board committee, Family and Community Engagement (FACE) looking to engage the community in a different manner. The idea is to have a formal meeting every other month in the central auditorium alternating other months in a sit-down, round-table discussion with community members. The idea was floated at the September meeting to get some FACE meetings out of central office into the community. But one member of the MPS administration, cautioned the board that, if meetings are moved too far to one end of the district, sometimes, with poor public transportation, many people from other parts of the city would have difficulty attending.

That warning was offered by Brian Litzsey, who now heads the new administration office of Family, Community and Partnership (FCP). “The office of family, community and partnerships was the brainchild of Dr. Cassellius,” he explained to Urban Milwaukee. He then outlined the district’s challenges and objectives. For the first three weeks of the school year, some 1,000 phone calls came to the MPS switchboard daily, some routine, but more with problems in transportation and student assignments. That has settled down to about 300 a day in a system of over 150 schools.

Litzsey says the switchboard staff does an excellent job of getting the calls sent to the proper individuals. But some people with problems might call the office of board governance or an office directly. School board directors might also take calls. Litzsey says MPS needs a system to collect all the information across the district so “we can get a better picture of what people are asking.” Right now, the information is “fragmented… We need a modern call center,” says Litzsey. But he isn’t sure what the exact model will be.

He wants to work with the individual parent coordinators who are on the front line in the schools, pushing for more smaller community meetings throughout the district. At the September FACE meeting, board clerk Dr. Tina Owen-Moore outlined what was said at the first roundtable meeting. The parent coordinators want “systemic change, not public relations,” she noted. “They are asking ‘What is the science of reading’… It wasn’t how they were taught to read. One key theme was inclusion and accessibility.”

However, Ferguson warned that we can create too many committees, too many meetings, with overlapping directions. Cassellius has stated that they may need to streamline committees while creating others such as those with families with disabilities, in other languages.

School Board Director Christopher Fons said MPS still needs to keep an element of public relations in its messaging to the public. “People don’t know what Milwaukee Public Schools have to offer. They don’t even know that Milwaukee Recreation is part of the school system. We should rebrand it as MPS Rec.”

Cassellius told the board committee there are three pillars needed to build trust and improve student outcomes:

First, Engagement: Parents want to be authentically listened and valued as co-creators of the children’s education. The term “co-creators” was repeated numerous times throughout the meeting.

Second, Shared decision making: How do we engage parents in actual decision making? How are parent advisory councils being structured?

Third, Shared responsibility: Repairing community trust. What will win them back?

Despite the enthusiasm of the board and the administration, many reforms are still just ideas and notes on pieces of paper. The website redesign originally was to be completed by the end of October. MPS Communications director Anthony Tagliavia says the goal is to complete it by the end of the calendar year, December 31. Right now, the FCP isn’t even listed on the MPS website. The switchboard directs some calls to his office, but other calls may still be directed to other departments. Data collection from all phone calls still has not taken place. For the time being, Litzsey is wearing two hats: in charge of both FCP and Milwaukee Rec until a new recreation chief is appointed.

Yet Litzsey is positive. “A young mother wanted to know about K4 programs,” he noted. “I talked to her about 30 minutes… I led her over to student services. I followed up. She did get the help she needed and got her daughter into a K4 program.”

It remains to seen if any of the reforms will result in better educational outcomes for Milwaukee’s children. But they may improve the relationship between MPS and the community it serves.

Says Ferguson: “I’m absolutely optimistic that we are heading in the right direction.”