MILWAUKEE— Milwaukee Public Schools releases its Long Range Facilities Master Plan (LRFMP) including recommendations for school closures and mergers. The plan is directly related to MPS five year plan, which aims to determine which facilities will fit within MPS’ needs by 2028.
The goal for the LRFMP is to “support student success by making sure that the district’s learning spaces meet student needs”. Specifically, the plan was designed to review how the current MPS facilities “support the learning environment and identifies opportunities to further the work toward advancing the district’s goals of academic achievement; student, family, and community engagement; and effective and efficient operations”.
MPS contracted architectural firm Perkins Eastman to review and rate the current MPS schools according to different “strategic candidate groups”, including those that needed building and programmatic investments; building additions; ongoing monitoring and evaluation; or closure/merger considerations.
In the closure/merger category, 13 Milwaukee-area schools consideration including:
- Brown Street Academy
- Clarke Street Academy
- Siefert School ES
- Starms Discovery Learning Center K-8
- Auer Avenue School ES
- Hopkins Lloyd Community School ES
- Jackson Elementary School ES
- Dr. George Washington Carver Academy K-8
- Oliver Wendell Holmes School K-8
- Andrew S. Douglas Middle School MS
- Keefe Avenue School ES
- Robert M. LaFollette School K-8
- William T. Sherman School
These schools had shown declining enrollment over the last five years, and were all geographically within one mile of another underutilized school. The initial findings from the LRFMP also showed that the schools listed above, most of which were in School Board Districts 4 and 5, had both “student enrollment and the number of students residing…well below the available student capacity”. Factors including “poor building conditions” including facilities that needed repairs or upgrades or were not energy efficient along with lower enrollment and utilization helped place these schools in this category for consideration.
The LRFMP report provides preliminary findings only, with the plan to be reviewed at a special MPS board meeting on October 29. The final note in this agenda item for the meeting specifically notes that “[t]his [agenda] item does not authorize expenditures”.
