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Elm Creative Arts School is an MPS school I pass by frequently. It happens to be in School Board District 4, where there’s been a lot of concern about the ongoing MPS consolidation conversation.
It’s also the elementary school I attended growing up, one where I got a strong educational foundation. I still recall teachers like Mr. Tenorio, who saw enough in the first month of kindergarten to recommend I advance early to first grade. I remember Mr. Hershey, who, true to his name, had plenty of chocolate in our second grade classroom.
And I remember Mrs. Dove. She was my third grade teacher, my first Black educator, and she realized I missed answers on the math test not because I didn’t know the math, but because I couldn’t read the chalkboard.
There isn’t an official list yet of schools MPS might close or consolidate. But if you start looking at the things that we at City Forward Collective believe should matter in making those decisions — enrollment, building use, and most importantly, how well students are doing academically — Elm is the kind of school that could end up in that conversation.
So I understand how personal these decisions are. Every school that eventually ends up on a list will be somebody’s Elm. People will remember the teachers, friends, and experiences that shaped them there. I believe those memories matter – but fond memories alone can’t decide what the MPS of the future looks like, nor can they be a replacement for a real plan.
Because the Elm I remember, isn’t the Elm students experience today. My elementary school is both underenrolled — it served just 317 students last year in a half-empty building, and underperforming — ranked in the bottom 50 schools in Wisconsin on the state’s report card, along with 16 other MPS North Side schools, an issue we raised earlier this year in our report on the North Side Educational Crisis.
And I remember Mrs. Dove. She was my third grade
The math is clear
A few weeks ago, I made the case that five closures isn’t a sufficient response to the problems MPS faces. MPS’ criteria for this round yielded 26 schools that met the conditions for closure or consolidation; in CFC’s own analysis, we land on 30. You can look at the data any number of ways – enrollment, finances, building utilization – and they all point to the same range.
- Enrollment: MPS enrollment is down roughly 30% from its peak, yet the district currently operates 138 schools — about the same number as at that peak. If the number of schools had fallen at the same rate as enrollment, that would mean about 41 fewer schools. I’m not arguing for a one-for-one reduction, but 30 closures is in line with the enrollment drop.
- Building Utilization: MPS has 36 schools that are less than half full, by its own counts. Another 48 are between 50% and 90% full. It’s not as simple as “close here, move there”: MPS will have to work through location, grade levels, and programs on a school-by-school basis. But there is more than sufficient capacity to absorb this number of closures – and to be clear, that’s just looking within MPS’ own footprint, before considering other publicly-funded school options.
- Comparable Districts: MPS faces the same basic reality as other school districts across the country. Public school enrollment is falling, forcing districts to rethink how many schools they can keep open. Over 1,000 public schools closed last school year. Cleveland reduced its footprint by 29 schools. St. Louis has proposed closing 14. Minneapolis, with fewer than 30,000 students and more than 12,000 empty seats, is considering as many as 16 closures.
- Finances: MPS actually faces two separate fiscal cliffs – closure & consolidation only addresses one of them. MPS has a projected five year deficit of roughly $420 million, and more than $400 million in critical deferred maintenance. Closing schools, even at this scale, won’t close both gaps – it’s necessary, but not sufficient, to solve the district’s broader financial woes. It does mean fewer buildings to heat, clean, repair, and eventually renovate.
- Reinvestments: Our analysis suggests 30 school consolidations could free up enough resources to finance $355-360M in investments over the next decade – enough to address MPS’ priority items on its deferred maintenance backlog, without requiring another referendum and property tax hike.
What Matters Most: Protecting the Past, or Building The Future?
The community engagement process that’s underway is important – every voice deserves to be fully heard before decisions are made. And, as I’ve said before, these decisions need to be made in ways that are fair and equitable: impacted communities have to share in the gains from reinvestment, and not just feel the pains of closure.
The numbers all point in the same direction, however: MPS must close or consolidate about 30 schools. The question ahead remains equally clear: will the School Board actually do the bold, hard, and necessary thing – or will they once again let nostalgia and politics get in the way of building a better future for our city’s children?
Because in every decision the School Board makes, that’s what matters most: what changes for students? More MPS students should be in safe, strong schools: ones that teach them to read, write, and think critically. And yes, more MPS students should have access to art, music, advanced courses, librarians, and all the other opportunities that are harder to provide when resources are spread across too many buildings.
As Superintendent Cassellius herself put it: “When you have 65 kids in a school and you have a building that holds 500, that makes it really difficult to give them the social worker, the counselor, the co-curriculars, the nurse, the librarian.”
That’s one reason we believe student outcomes need to be part of this conversation. Enrollment, building condition, and finances all matter. So does what children are actually getting inside these schools, and whether something better is available if we ask them to leave. And if MPS is going to disrupt a child’s education by closing their school, a better educational opportunity needs to be waiting for that child. Academic performance should be part of deciding which schools close.
The decisions ahead won’t be easy, no matter how you cut it. We believe this work must begin and end with a simple premise: For every child, what comes next has to be better.
Born and raised in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood and an alum of Milwaukee’s public and private schools, Colleston Morgan Jr was appointed as executive director of City Forward Collective in 2023. Previously, he served as the organization’s vice president, strategy & policy. In his career, Colleston has served as a high school social studies teacher and district administrator in New Orleans as well as an executive with Teach for America. Colleston earned an A.B. in Government from Harvard University and a master’s in Public Policy from the University of Chicago. He is the proud father of two school-aged daughters.
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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