Bicycles and School Board Elections

With the (sort of) coming of spring last weekend, I took a bike ride from the East Side to Muskego. One striking change crossing into the suburbs was the explosion of signs for school board candidates. By contrast, in Milwaukee, even in districts with races, the number of signs was pitifully few.

Why do suburbanites care so much about their school systems? Part of the explanation is simply size; MPS seems too large and too remote. But suburbanites also recognize their stake in the schools. Even if they have no children in the schools, their property values and their neighborhood depend on the attractiveness of the schools.

In Milwaukee, unless they either work for the schools or have children enrolled, most people seemed profoundly uninterested in who runs the schools. The schools simply seem irrelevant to most.

Can this situation be changed? Part of the answer may be to really push the Neighborhood Schools Initiative to restore the local school as the glue that holds its community together.

Another is to get better leadership on the school board, so that once again there is a sense of progress. This morning's Journal Sentinel points out that Kevin Ronny, Danny Goldberg, and Bernardine Bradford offer much more effective leadership than their opponents.