Lilliana Habana remembers the parking lot at Lincoln Avenue School, 1817 W. Lincoln Ave., as a huge playground. She loved going to the school as a kid so much that she now sends her children there.
“My kids love that school mainly because of the staff. They all work together to keep things flowing,” Habana said.
On Tuesday morning, Habana woke up devastated to find that a fire had blazed her childhood school.
“I kept remembering all the good times I had growing up there, watching it become an amazing beautiful school,” she said. “Now it’s on fire. I broke down. My kids broke down.”
Milwaukee Fire Department responded to smoke in the neighborhood at 3 a.m. By 3:30 a.m., the department found the fire too extensive for firefighters to tackle from the inside, Deputy Assistant Fire Chief Darin Peterburs said.
Carlos Velázquez-Sánchez, fire education director for the department, said by the time he left the scene at around 6 a.m. Tuesday, a big section of the roof had already collapsed.
The building, like many others in Milwaukee Public Schools, was built before sprinklers were required. Parents are concerned about how the district will manage fires in the future.
According to the Milwaukee Public Schools website, Lincoln Avenue served K-3 through fifth grade students and had an enrollment of 427 during the 2024-25 school year.
‘Smell of the chalk’
Like Habana, Melanie Rosario-Klimeck also has fond memories of Lincoln Avenue School, a brick, late Gothic Revival building constructed in 1917, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Rosario-Klimeck said the glossed wood railings in the auditorium were original to the building. She said she went to the school as a kid and her mom worked there for 28 years.
“I still remember the smell of the chalk,” she said. “We had to go into the basement to clean the erasers for the chalk boards.”
Alma Batalla Gonzalez said her two sons who attend the school and a third that was going to start in the fall are heartbroken.
“First thing on their minds were their teachers and peers,” she said. “But me as a parent, how could they not have sprinklers?”
‘We have to make choices’
Three of Dulce Sanchez’ children attend Lincoln Avenue School, and they were enrolled in the summer community learning center program there. She’s also concerned about the lack of sprinklers in Lincoln Avenue School and many other MPS buildings.
“I find it difficult to understand why the district has not equipped every building with these essential safety systems,” Sanchez said.
Michael Turza, interim chief operating officer for Milwaukee Public Schools, said adding fire infrastructure is part of a larger list of deferred maintenance items, but the district has other urgent needs to tend to. He said placing sprinkler systems in schools would cost multi-millions per building.
“Sometimes things are more important, might be a roof that a building needs to have rather than a sprinkler system,” Turza said. “We have to make choices.”
Ismael Luna, a South Side resident running to represent District 8 in the Wisconsin State Assembly, said the state needs to step in and provide funding to support building fire infrastructure in schools.
“The state should be doing more for public schools,” Luna said. “Any updates they get to their infrastructure come from property taxes.”
Summer Community Learning Center moved to Hayes Bilingual
The Community Learning Center at Lincoln Avenue School was relocated to Hayes Bilingual School Tuesday morning, Milwaukee Recreation Marketing Supervisor Claire McHugh said. Program hours will remain the same.
The fire department has not yet determined whether the building is a total loss, and the district does not yet know what will happen to Lincoln Avenue students in September.
Habana said she hopes that the Lincoln Avenue School community comes together to support each other, and that students continue learning in a welcoming environment.
“A school is so much more than just a building — it’s a place where children learn, grow, make friends and create memories,” Habana said. “Change can be scary, especially for us who are so used to sending our kids to this school year after year and their relatives right behind them.”
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.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
