The disaster within Milwaukee Public Schools continues to dominate the relevant news today. But we also have some feel-good stories from the world of sports, as well.
Let’s get right to today’s Key Reads.
When a local boy decides (almost certainly) to hang up the skates after a first-ballot-worthy Hall of Fame career, it is the lead story for the day’s news round up, without question.
Wisconsin native Joe Pavelski retiring after remarkable 18-year career in NHL | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Plover native Joe Pavelski left the door slightly ajar, but strongly intimated that he was retiring from the NHL when speaking to Dallas Stars reporters Tuesday.
Pavelski said he hasn’t officially retired but doesn’t intend to play next season. He’ll turn 40 in July.
Pavelski attended Stevens Point Area Senior High and the University of Wisconsin (during which the Badgers won the 2006 NCAA championship), and he just wrapped his 18th season with 27 goals and 40 assists for the Stars, stopped heartbreakingly short of the Stanley Cup Finals in a 4-2 series loss to the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference finals.
…Originally drafted in the seventh round of the 2003 NHL draft, he has scored the most playoff goals of any American-born player with 74, made four all-star teams, and appeared in 1,332 career NHL games, with 1,068 points.
Pavelski ranks fifth in points and goals among American-born players, seventh in games played, and 11th in assists.
We loved it when some reporters commented that Dr. Keith Posley was smiling as he announced his ‘resignation’ at around 2 am yesterday. Like the fired Superintendent in Green Bay, he made bank on the way out the door. It’s way too easy for school boards to toss around big bugs to try to make PR problems go away. As this report indicates, however, the payout to Posley is just the end of the beginning of this most recent mess.
Posley to receive $160,000 as part of MPS settlement | CBS58
The former superintendent who oversaw a financial crisis at Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) will receive a $160,000 lump sum payment as part of his agreement to resign from the district early Tuesday morning.
MPS released the terms off Keith Posley’s separation agreement Tuesday afternoon. The MPS Board of Directors voted unanimously in a special meeting to accept Posley’s resignation after spending more than five hours in closed session, negotiating the terms of the deal out of public view.
…State officials believe the most recent data MPS has given the state was wrong. As a result, MPS received significant overpayments, and now that money will likely be withheld from the district’s 2024-25 aid. The board could make up for that shortfall by either making cuts or raising property taxes on top of the $252 million referendum voters narrowly passed in April.
The school board is beyond help. However, the folks at WILL say significant help could be provided to the students of MPS, without any changes to current law. They explain:
Hope for MPS? How the law already provides a path forward | Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty
The Opportunity Schools and Partnership Program (OSPP) was adopted as part of the 2015-17 state budget. The program was created to encourage new leadership and change at low performing school districts around the state, with a particular focus on Milwaukee. Under the OSPP, a Commissioner must be appointed from a list created by the Milwaukee County Executive, Governor and Mayor. The Milwaukee County Executive selects a candidate from this list, who would then holds the power to oversee the OSPP. If MPS falls into the lowest category on the state report card (which it has not in recent years—more on that later), the OSPP Commissioner can gain control of up to five low-performing schools. The Commissioner would be empowered to determine if the selected schools would be transferred to an outside entity, a current charter operator, or the operator of a non-religious private school. Only charter authorizers and private schools that performed higher than the district school on the most recent state exam would be eligible to receive transfers.
Unfortunately, the program’s implementation was doomed from the start due to political pressure. The Superintendent of Mequon-Thiensville, Demond Means, was appointed Commissioner, but immediately showed an unwillingness to take action. WILL wrote at the time that Means was refusing to do what the law required of him, saying that he “has no intention of taking control of any of MPSs’ struggling schools.” Instead, Means sought to form a collaborative partnership with MPS, where the district and the OSPP would work together to determine which schools to place under OSPP. However, the district refused to help. In a statement upon his resignation, Means said, “It is now clear to me that as implementation of the law moves forward, the environment is not conducive to collaborative partnerships — something essential for positive things to happen in Milwaukee.”
After the resignation of Means, the OSPP effectively came to an end. No new Commissioner has been appointed by the Milwaukee County Executive, and no action was taken by the legislature to enforce the law. Today, shockingly, MPS is not eligible for the OSPP because it is “meeting expectations” on the state’s report card. WILL has written extensively on the absurdity of a report card where a district with under 20% proficiency in math and ELA in recent years can meet expectations. That said, reform to a report card that is currently uninformative for parents, policymakers, and the public in general seems an easier lift than many of the other proposals on the table.
…But the OSPP could be a key first step for creating reform at MPS. For example, the requirement to have outside enforcement of the program with the Commissioner and changing the administration of the failing schools could be transformational. But this will require a strong Commissioner who doesn’t desire to work with MPS, but rather sees them as an adversarial impediment to needed reform. This would require that legislature take the OSPP seriously and fund the position as they failed to do previously when Means served in an unpaid role.
MPS’s failures didn’t begin with Headstart or financial documents. In reality, the district and its administration have been failing kids for more than fifty years. This continued failure led to the creation of the first school choice program in the nation in 1990, but we cannot forget the 70% of students who are still being educated in the public system. A renewal of OSPP could be the clearest and fastest path to reform, and legislators and the Governor must make use of it.
This is a smart, not merely sentimental, move by the Green Bay Packers. Bill Jartz is a solid pick to help guide the future of the best franchise in professional sports.
WBAY’s Bill Jartz nominated to join Packers Board of Directors | WBAY
During the shareholders’ meeting, the Packers said on their website that they will present two candidates for a shareholder vote to join the Packers Board of Directors: UW-Green Bay chancellor Michael Alexander and longtime Action 2 News anchor Bill Jartz.
In addition to anchoring at WBAY, Bill Jartz has also served as public address announcer at Lambeau Field during Packers home games since 2005.
The mess at MPS impacts all of Wisconsin. The continued lack of stewardship of public funds is galling, but the continued failure to educate children is the real scandal. The fiscal and social fallout from MPS’ dysfunction reverberates into every community and impacts not only the state finances but municipal and school district budgets throughout Wisconsin.
Moreover, the human cost of their failure is heartbreaking.
We wish the media would get around to focusing on that, and not merely the latest problems with bookkeeping. For nearly half a century the state’s largest school system has been mired in so much failure that even mediocrity would be an immense improvement.
