After six meetings, the Milwaukee Public Schools Budget Advisory Committee will hold its first working session on Wednesday to start shaping recommendations for the district’s 2027-28 school year budget.
MPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius formed the committee in September to advise her and the Board of School Directors on how to spend the district’s budget.
So far, sessions have educated members on state funding, buildings, busing, employee pay and benefits. The committee has yet to make recommendations.
All meetings are open and include time for public comment. Wednesday’s meeting will be at the MPS Central Services building, 5225 W. Vliet St., from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Here’s what the committee has discussed so far.
Budget deficit
The district is working with a $1.6 billion budget this year. MPS has not yet proposed a budget amount for next school year.
Since January, Cassellius has worked to close a $45.6 million budget deficit, eliminating 53 administrative positions and 53 assistant principal positions and increasing classroom teacher positions by 159.
Chris Thiel, a legislative policy specialist for MPS, said the state’s cap on how much money the district can raise per student has failed to keep up with inflation.
“We just can’t keep asking local taxpayers to pay for what the state is constitutionally supposed to be paying for,” Thiel said.
Building repairs
MPS is tracking $430 million in critical repairs it has put off, including about $42 million for boilers and over $70 million for classroom heating and ventilation units, said Michelle Lenski, the district’s facilities and maintenance manager.
“Thankfully, a lot of our schools have backup boilers, but you know we do have a handful of schools where we’re watching both boilers pretty closely.”
Lensky said the district is currently dedicating about $3 million toward deferred maintenance – a roofing project and a fire alarm project.
The $430 million in deferred maintenance is “only going to grow every year as the buildings continue to age, as things continue to break,” Lensky said.
Lead paint cleanup drained the long-term repair fund from about $85 million to about $20 million, Cassellius said. She said the fund could run out within the next three years, and if it does, the district will have to pull from the operating budget.
Transportation
The district announced its process of overhauling the transportation system to save money in June, including an idea to send more MPS high schoolers on county buses.
The district has exceeded its transportation budget by more than $9 million in each of the last two school years, according to a presentation to the board in June.
Budget Advisory Committee member Jesse Bolling, a teacher at Rufus King High School, questioned whether the district holds bus companies accountable when they miss routes or drop students off late.
“Out of our 43 buses that are assigned to Rufus King High School on the day after our (Oct. 7) meeting, 20 showed up after 8 (a.m.),” Bolling said. Class starts at 8 a.m.
David Fifarek, senior director of transportation services at MPS, said the district recoups costs when bus companies don’t meet expectations, but there are challenges. He said cheaper service tends to be worse service, and the district can’t simply drop its cheapest vendors.
“You can’t afford … 650 buses from your number one provider,” he said. “That’s not an excuse. It’s just a reality,” Fifarek said.
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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