On the sidewalks, on the lawn and on the front steps, parents, staff and students at Milwaukee French Immersion School protested plans to cut staff and consolidate classes Monday at MPS Central Office.
One of the teachers who could lose their job at the school is Alexandre Sablonniere, who was born and raised in France and moved to Milwaukee eight years ago. He said he found his place at the school.
After working as a paraprofessional at Milwaukee French Immersion School for several years, he’s been a third grade teacher there for the last four years.
“Every day I’m teaching about the difference between my country,” Sablonniere said. “My class is actually writing through [a] class in France back and forth.”
Milwaukee French Immersion School, a K4 to fifth grade school, is one of several Milwaukee Public Schools that must make staff adjustments to ensure class sizes are large enough to be sustainable, but small enough where students have a healthy learning environment.
MPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius told Milwaukee French Immersion School parents in an email that the school will reduce one K4 teaching position and merge that class with the other two for an average of 20 students per class, according to parents.
The K4 classrooms also have a paraprofessional for even more individual attention, with a ratio of about one adult for every 10 students, said Kevin O’Connor, MPS media relations manager.
The third K4 teacher will move up to third grade to take Sablonniere’s place.
O’Connor said about 55 teachers are being moved from lower enrollment schools and classrooms, which the district hopes will help eliminate current teacher vacancies.
More adjustments, parents say
Emily Jalabert has been with Milwaukee French Immersion School since her now-fourth grader started kindergarten. Her three children, all of whom currently attend the school, are French citizens.
“This is the first year that budget cuts have so directly impacted students,” said Jalabert, who organized the protest with other parents.
She said she understands that the budget needs to be balanced based on numbers, but said the district told the school to hire two teachers in the spring and is now backtracking.
“My kids have pretty much now come around the corner and settled,” Jalabert said. “It’s going to be … big feelings, adjustments and like starting the school year over again.”
District enrollment runs short, positions to be consolidated
In recent history, O’Connor said the district used a school’s enrollment from the prior year as the projection for the next year’s enrollment. He said this caused challenges, especially when a school had growing or declining enrollment.
This year, MPS budgeted for 60,277 students enrolled districtwide by the third Friday of the school year, down from 63,943 last school year.
Schools are not paid for their projected enrollment, but rather how many students are enrolled and attend a school by that third Friday of the school year, often referred to as the “third Friday count.”
Preliminary numbers from the third Friday of the 2026-27 school year show enrollment fell nearly 1,800 shorter than anticipated – to 58,333 students, said Cassellius during a Board of School Directors meeting in September.
As a result, Cassellius said at a Committee on Finance and Operations meeting in September, the district would likely have to look at staffing in schools where enrollment was significantly lower than anticipated.
Excessing, or transferring teachers from one school or grade to another, takes place every year after the district reviews enrollment numbers, O’Connor said.
At Milwaukee French Immersion School, O’Connor said the issue wasn’t the school’s third Friday count, which fell 12 students short of the school’s projected enrollment of 396 students. Rather, the cut is occurring due to low class sizes in K4 classrooms, he said.
K4 class sizes to increase
MPS K4 class size guidelines call for 20 students for one teacher and a paraprofessional.
Milwaukee French Immersion School currently has three K4 classes with an average enrollment of 14 per class, which is “unfortunately, not financially sustainable,” a district statement from O’Connor said.
Last year, Jalabert said her son’s class had 26 students, which created a chaotic environment for the young children. She said multiple families left as a result. At Milwaukee French Immersion School, families can’t enroll students after first grade, Jalabert said.
“If we lose families in the early years, we lose families forever,” she said.
Jalabert decided to stick it out because all three of her children are French citizens, and she knew that first grade classrooms functioned far better and kids get the resources they need.
“The bigger class sizes work better in first grade, but they just don’t in these young ages,” Jalabert said. “Especially when they’re being instructed in a different language for eight hours a day that they’ve never heard before.”
Alex Klaus is the education solutions reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
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