The Face of Milwaukee Schools is Changing

While this story is about Milwaukee schools it is an issue that all Wisconsin schools are facing.
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The face of Milwaukee Public Schools is changing

Fewer students. More minorities, especially Hispanics. Less interest
in middle schools.

By ALAN J. BORSUK
aborsuk@journalsentinel.com

Posted: Oct. 15, 2007

Before your very eyes, ladies and gentleman, see the Incredible
Shrinking School System.

Well, maybe it's not incredible. But it is certainly shrinking.

It also continues, bit by bit, to become a district where the faces of
the students are those of minority children.

Official attendance figures for this fall, released by Milwaukee
Public Schools officials, show that the enrollment in the traditional
MPS schools is down for at least the ninth year in a row.

Since 1998, the number of students in elementary, middle and high
schools has declined from 96,942 to 81,381, a 16% drop.

Between a year ago and now, the drop was 3,522, or more than 4%.

Even the alternative and "partnership" schools that contract to
educate MPS children - generally run by nonprofit organizations - have
had declining enrollment over the past nine years.

Notably, one area showing increases is charter schools not staffed by
MPS employees but authorized to operate by the Milwaukee School Board.
They had 68 children in 1998 and 3,090 this fall.

Put it all together, and the schools under the MPS umbrella were
teaching 87,360 kids as of the official attendance day in September,
down from 90,925 a year ago and 100,806 in 1998.

Meanwhile, the number of students who live in the city but are going
to public schools in the suburbs has leveled off in recent years,
although it is up nearly 30% from 1998.

The voluntary racial integration program known as Chapter 220 is
allowing 2,719 minority children from Milwaukee to attend suburban
schools this fall, but that number is down for the ninth year in a
row. It was 5,120 in 1998.

But the state's "open enrollment law," which allows students to apply
to go to any public school in the state, wasn't on the books in 1998,
and the number of students using that law has risen every year since
then. This year, 3,893 city children - of all races - are enrolled in
suburban schools using the open enrollment law.

Overall, 6,612 city kids are attending suburban public schools,
compared with 6,584 a year ago, and 6,746 two years ago.

Among the 87,360 children in MPS, 10,851 are white - 12.4% of the
total. That is down from 12.8% a year ago. The white percentage has
fallen steadily for many years. Thirty years ago, the district was
more than 60% white.

The percentage of Hispanic students in MPS increased from 21% in
September 2006 to 21.8% this September, and the percentage of
African-American students dropped slightly, from 57.8% to 57.4%.

The new figures spotlight several trends, including the remarkable
decline in middle school enrollment, as more and more elementary
schools expand to offer sixth, seventh and eighth grades. The number
of students enrolled in middle schools this year is less than half of
what it was in 1998, and the MPS administration is recommending
closing another middle school, Sarah Scott, at the end of this year.

"Clearly, the middle school option is not the option of choice for
parents," said Superintendent William Andrekopoulos.

At the same time, high school enrollment has changed relatively little
over the years - it's 22,893 this fall, down from 23,863 a year ago
but up from 22,016 in 1998.

"I'm just speculating here, but I think that maybe providing more
options at the high school level has helped us maintain our
enrollment," Andrekopoulos said. There are now more than 50 choices of
high schools within MPS, many of them small programs launched in the
past several years.

Enrollment numbers for the private-school voucher program in Milwaukee
are not expected to be released for several weeks, according to the
state Department of Public Instruction. But the total is expected to
be up from last year's figure of more than 17,000. Enrollment in those
schools, as well as in publicly funded charter schools outside the MPS
system, is a factor in the overall decline in MPS totals.

Andrekopoulos pointed out that the total number of school-age children
in the city is declining.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 170,984 children 17
and younger in Milwaukee in 2000. In 2006, the bureau estimated, there
were 158,695, a 7% decline.

Andrekopoulos said he viewed the declining enrollment mostly as the
reflection of changing population trends in Milwaukee. He said MPS
continues to draw a higher percentage of students than public school
systems in many other large cities.