In the 1970’s with the decline of Baby Boomers in the Madison Public Schools (MMSD), the school board proposed closing a number of schools including Marquette and Lapham. The city responded with the following message:
3 thoughts on “Madison and it’s Public Schools – 1970’s”
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Yes, it is a good idea for the City and MMSD to work together. (I never understood why it was not an issue in the mayoral race – it deserved to be.)
Projections of enrollment and demographics at the local level could be a very helpful place for them to start. I understand the City has a substantial planning department, presumably with plenty of resources to help with this. Meanwhile, the MMSD’s planning & analysis department has one individual who works on enrollment projections, amongst many other duties.
Accurate (relatively) long-term (5-10+ years) projections are central to the planning process of where and when to have schools situated. Generating such projections, at the school level, requires a model much more sophisticated than the district currently utilises, and time to develop it that the district clearly doesn’t have. Coordination of a forecasting effort could be a very useful and valuable place for cooperation and assistance to begin.
I agree wholeheartedly with Peter on this. I’d add that alders should also be smart with respect to school-development needs. This will stimulate mayoral discussion (he _has_ to work with the alders). I’d also add that the city could gain a lot from better knowledge/scrutiny of what school communities WANT to do. Passion for schools is a strong community indicator – and this matters for a whole range of other city initiatives. It’s not just the eggheads that need to be involved (no offense, I’m one too). But great data management and analysis, that’s a real opportunity here.
I agree with the previous posts, our City Government needs to be involved with our District. If the quality of our schools decrease, then the quality of life is diminished in our City. This actually was an issue in the Mayoral race. However, I really only heard Ray Allen talking about it. One of Ray Allen’s proposals was to have the City pay for the cost of the Schools’ Resource Officers. He spoke about the Mayor’s Office needing to be more involved with our schools. All of us that read this site, know that there is too much apathy from students, parents, District personnel and our City Government. Add to that, only a small percentage of the Madison taxpayers have kids in school. I think our situation is going to continually deteriorate, unless WE ALL come “to the table” to make things better!