Days after Brenda Cassellius was offered the job as superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published findings that hundreds of vacant staff positions in the district were concentrated where students come from the highest rates of poverty and have the most to catch up on academically.
The problem mirrored a broader trend, the Journal Sentinel and subsequent consultants have found: a lack of needs-based investment and attractive programs in those schools, like extracurriculars, art and music classes, recreational sports teams and advanced academic programs.
Cassellius, who said she was impacted by the Journal Sentinel’s reporting, made the vacancy issue a central focus, setting a goal of every student having a licensed, permanent teacher in their classroom.
Cassellius said the reporting helped her see into the vacancy issue right away: “I started to question where we were at.”
Also influenced by a review of district operations ordered by the governor, Cassellius enlisted an outside consultant for recommendations on overhauling the human resources department and hired a new department director to implement them.
Ten months since the Journal Sentinel’s original report, district officials say vacancies appear to have significantly declined. Still, data show their distribution has remained uneven, in a similar pattern across the city.
The highest vacancy rate, according to a Journal Sentinel analysis of October data, was in the central city’s 53206 ZIP code, where MPS reported 26 vacancies in eight schools, including teachers, paraprofessionals and children’s health assistants. The area’s vacancy rate by student population was six times higher than in Bay View’s 53207 ZIP code.
Addressing the equity problem will take deeper investments in targeted areas, such as higher pay for staff in schools with the greatest needs, Cassellius said, which she is starting to craft to propose to the school board.
Her work progresses under a ticking clock. Some of the schools that need the most help, those in and near 53206 where scores of families have departed and staff vacancies are chronic, are up for potential closure because of low enrollment.