Neighborhood Schools Revisted

Earlier this week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a three-part series on the Neighborhood Schools Initiative, concluding that it was a "failure." That conclusion seems rash and unfortunate to me. It can only help to make Milwaukee even more skittish about trying anything new.

Neighborhood Schools attempted to operate at two levels. The easier, but still very complex, level was a program to take money destined for busing and convert it into new classrooms. The far more difficult level was an attempt to reconnect schools with their neighborhoods, while expanding genuine specialty schools for those who wanted them and developing partnerships with social service agencies. I will discuss each in turn.

The school construction part of the initiative must be judged a success, in my view. One need only look around the country to find problems that have plagued school systems' major construction programs--corruption, environmental or structural problems, or politicized decision making. Aside from one project that was added after planning at the behest of a board member, it appears from the series that MPS largely avoided these problems. The series mentions the damage done by the corruption of one of MPS' partners by a state senator, but neglects to mention that far more potential damage was avoided because MPS convinced the governor to veto a section of the bill that would have given the same state senator control over contracts. In addition to all the challenges of a major construction project, the initiative had to thread a needle in making sure the reduction in busing met the legal requirements of paying for the construction bonds.

The second level was far more difficult, and for me far more interesting. From early polls and interviews it became evident that "forced busing" was a myth. Parents put their children on buses for a variety of reasons and it was clear that the neighborhood school would have a challenge convincing many parents to send their children there. The article, although noting that a number of schools have been successful in attracting neighborhood students, concentrates on those schools who suffered enrollment declines due to the growth of choice and charter schools. It would have been interesting to have had an exploration of the reasons for the difference in success of the various schools.

Some of the tools developed as part of the initiative have lived on. For example, it quickly became evident that for many parents, a long bus ride was a form of day care. Thus there was an intense effort to develop partnerships with social service agencies that would provide after school programs in the building. That effort has continued and expanded since.

In the late 1990's MPS was straining at capacity. It had a number of specialty programs with long waiting lists, but efforts to expand them were stymied for lack of space. As buildings were added in the center of the city, buildings on the periphery became available for expanded Montessori and other programs. But the article makes no mention of the appearance of schools like Fernwood and Maryland Montessori, a direct outgrowth of the initiative.

That said, my frustration throughout was the resistance in much of the administration to working through what it would take to attract students to nearby schools. For much of the administration and the board it was business as usual.