What follows is not a list of schools that will be closed by Milwaukee Public Schools in the next several years. But it’s an important list that is worthy of attention — and some of the schools may well end up being closed.
The 15 Milwaukee schools, as well as one Racine school, are among almost 500 schools across the United States that were named in a new report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute , a Washington-based education advocacy and research organization with a generally conservative approach. The new report has the provocative title, “Underachieving and Underenrolled: Chronically Low-Performing Schools in the Post-Pandemic Era.”
The report comes (coincidentally) at a time when work is heating up on a long-term facilities plan for Milwaukee Public Schools. MPS has declining enrollment and, by almost any definition, more buildings and space than it needs. But figuring out what to do to “right size” the district will be difficult and controversial, as a recent set of community meetings showed…