MILWAUKEE – While a 252 million dollar Milwaukee Public Schools referendum passed Tuesday, supporters acknowledge that similar funding pushes could come in the future.
At a press event Wednesday, MPS district leaders thanked residents for giving the referendum a roughly 51 percent approval out of 81,452 votes cast, which according to the district will help alleviate an estimated 200 million dollar budget deficit MPS was facing heading into next school year. Per the wording of the referendum, MPS will gain 140 million dollars to help with that deficit next school year, followed by an additional 51 million in 2025-26, 47 million in 2026-27, and 14 million in 2027-28. The district has repeatedly promised the funds will go towards adding art, music, and physical education programs, while also helping to maintain existing services and staff.
LISTEN: AUDIO: Reaction to the MPS referendum passage
At the same time, leadership also reiterated that unless the method for which public schools across Wisconsin receive funding from the state government, more referenda like this spring’s will be necessary.
“For 16 years, the state of Wisconsin has failed to adequately fund public schools. So, schools will need to continue this whole referendum cycle again and again if there’s not change,” said MPS Superintendent Dr. Keith Posley. Posley also admitted that part of the long-term plan for the district is to close under-enrolled schools within MPS. In the 2004-05 school year, MPS reported they had 93,122 enrolled students. That number is down to 66,864 this school year per numbers from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
“I found it difficult to imagine reducing or removing the curriculum and services that we have worked so hard to put into our classrooms and provide for our students with the referendum that was received in 2020” stated MPS Board of Directors President Marva Hendron. “Are we done? Absolutely not, because then came COVID. So we are not done, we’ve got a tough road ahead of us and we know that.”
“You look at the breakdown of the vote, it was not an easy decision for people to make, but they made the decision to fund our schools,” former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes told me after the press conference. “It is up to leaders to leaders in the legislature to do the same thing, to step up and allocate the resources that are already available. We are running a surplus, there is money to fund our schools across the entire state. Why the legislature refuses to do it is beyond me.” According to the state’s annual fiscal report from October of 2023, the General Fund had an undesignated balance of 7.073 billion dollars of the end of the fiscal year that June, while the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau projected in January that the state will finish 2025 with a 3.152 billion dollar surplus.
READ MORE: EXPLAINER: Disagreements on size of Wisconsin budget surplus
Barnes also empathized with Milwaukee voters who don’t have kids in an MPS school and are worried they won’t see any benefit from the referendum, but said the measure will ensure that the community is served by a stable workforce of graduating students. “As a childless adult myself, I do see the importance of making sure that we have people that are trained and ready to enter the workforce, people who are productive members of society, that’s what it really comes down to.”
Business leaders from organizations across the area including the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) and the Greater Milwaukee Committee opposed the referendum. “With a $252 million referendum now passed, it’s vital that Milwaukee Public Schools uses these additional resources to improve student outcomes. The MPS plan must be transparent and bold. The status quo is unacceptable and a strategic plan to better equip MPS students for the workforce of tomorrow is essential,” read in part a statement from the MMAC released Wednesday morning.
MMAC President Dale Kooyenga shared with Wisconsin’s Afternoon News Wednesday while the organization took an anti-referendum stance, that doesn’t mean they don’t want to see students in MPS Schools succeed.
“I work for the board of the MMAC, we are over 2,400 in members…and our board is 85 of those members. Those members told [me] ‘We want you to go out there and oppose this referendum for the reasons that we discussed’, and that’s exactly what I did,” said Kooyenga. “We can have conversations, we can debate, and then we can all roll up our sleeves and get things done together.”
When I asked how the district is planning to communicate to residents what specific programs and services the 252 million dollars will be spent on, MPS Communications and Marketing Director Nicole Armendariz told me those plans will be shared later this year.
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