More for our school

An article in the Journal-Sentinel last Tuesday described the effort of some parents at the Milwaukee High School of the Arts to convince the school board and the administration to give their school more money. The trouble is that this group's idea of where the money would come from did not go beyond taking it from other schools.

In the past, MPS gave different schools different amount of funds per student. There seemed to be no logical explanation for the difference other than history and politics. It appeared that certain schools had particular clout at one time or another.

There are several reasons why the school board may be reluctant to return to this earlier practice, including equity and opening the door to being lobbied by every school in the district. In addition, varying the payments makes opening new schools much harder, since the payment itself becomes an issue for negotiations.

I would hope that the parents and staff members lobbying for taking money from other schools for Arts would instead turn their energy and talent towards exploring other options. These might include looking at other buildings, finding out what happened with a recent fund-raising effort, and helping the principal learn to live within a budget.