MILWAUKEE – What’s the highest priority for Milwaukee Public Schools?

Helping students learn and achieve, or protecting the political turf of the MPS school board?

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That’s difficult to tell, after the school board signaled last week that it would probably not approve a plan proposed by Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele to target three failing schools per year for outside management.

Wisconsin state lawmakers recently passed an “Opportunity Schools” statute, compelling Abele to evaluate the many struggling schools in MPS and select the worst for intervention.

State lawmakers obviously believe that after so many years of failure, MPS officials can’t be trusted to improve the schools and provide better instruction for students. They’re clearly counting on outside experts to make a difference, before even more children lose their opportunity for a quality education.

Abele responded with a specific proposal that would transfer day-to-day management of three schools per year to an “Opportunity Schools District.” The district would be managed by Demond Means, superintendent of the more successful Mequon-Thiensville school district.

“Students would remain part of MPS, which means the district would retain their per-pupil state funding, but at the reduced charter school rate, and teachers and staff would keep their jobs and benefits as district employees,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Abele and Means believe such a plan is the best possible compromise. They also believe failure to approve the proposal might prompt the state to come up with a remedy that the school board would consider even more invasive and unappealing.

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“We would continue to have to implement the law,” Means told school board members, according to the newspaper. “Jobs would be jeopardized. You would suffer a (larger) funding gap. And the board would have zero input.”

But the school board and teachers’ union continue to resist the plan, calling the Opportunity Schools District a “takeover district.”

MPS board Director Terry Falk called the plan “a shotgun marriage,” according to the Journal Sentinel, which quoted him as saying “It’s almost impossible for us to walk down the aisle with you and say ‘I do.’”

Amy Mizialko, vice president of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, said Abele’s plan would “disrupt the lives of children and their families in communities that are already stressed and marginalized,” the newspaper reported.

Some would probably say that at a little disruption might be a good thing for the affected families, at least in terms of education.

MPS has far too many schools that are failing children. A 2015 editorial published by WPRI.com tells the story:

“According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, there were 78,516 students enrolled in MPS last year in 134 schools that are graded under the standard rating system. Of those children, 31,595 students were in 55 schools that ‘failed to meet expectations,’ according to DPI.

“That’s 41% of the students. Another 23,954 children were in 49 schools that ‘meet few expectations.’ That’s another 30%. All told, that’s 55,549 students – a whopping 71% – enrolled in 104 MPS schools that either fail to meet or meet very few of the goals necessary to educate children.”

How much are kids learning in those schools?

On last year’s Badger Exam, 51 percent of students statewide demonstrated proficiency in reaching and 41 percent in math. At MPS, 27 percent were proficient in reading and 17 percent in math.

State lawmakers seem determined to try something – anything – to improve those dreadful statistics. What sort of plan will be acceptable to the Milwaukee school board?