Overwhelming demand for choice schools in Milwaukee drives massive philanthropy and big builds
Aug Prep’s north campus will fill ‘opportunity gap’ for thousands of kids in years ahead
A family’s huge bet on bettering the lives of thousands of Milwaukee children is moving a step closer to launch as St. Augustine Preparatory School starts taking names for its $104 million north campus in Glendale.
The project takes place in a time of rising parental demand for better options in Milwaukee. Even as the number of school-age children in Wisconsin fell, attendance at independent schools via the state’s parental choice program rose 6.9 percent last year.
This week, St. Marcus Lutheran School, long a mainstayon Milwaukee’s north side, opened a $25 million expansion to accommodate 200 more students.
Further north, it was just two years ago that the philanthropists behind St. Augustine, Gus Ramirez and his family foundation, announced they would buy the campus of suddenly-closed Cardinal Stritch University and convert it into a second location for Aug Prep.
School leaders are now far enough along on construction to start showing it off to prospective students with “hard hat” tours on Saturday morning and a promise to open the doors for good by August of 2026.
Aug Prep, as it brands itself, already runs a decade-old school, kindergarten through 12th grade, on Milwaukee’s south side, that now fills facilities completed in only 2023.
On the north side, Milwaukee media this week got a glimpse at workers rebuilding and expanding two of the former college’s buildings into a high school and an elementary and middle school building.
