Milwaukee Voucher School Dropped from Program for Safety Issues

The Department of Public Instruction dropped a Milwaukee school from the voucher program Thursday (January 27, 2005) amid safety concerns. The Academic Solutions Center for Learning, one of the city's largest voucher schools, is the third school in seven months to be ordered out of the program, which allows taxpayer money to be spent in private schools with little accountability.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that police were called to the school Monday because of student fighting. When they arrived, police discovered no teachers in the school building. The teachers were protesting the fact that they had not been paid, and without their supervision, a group of students started a fight.

During the police investigation, another fight broke out that involved more than 100 students, the newspaper reported. That fight took more than an hour to quell, and police ticketed about a dozen people for disorderly conduct.

According to the Journal Sentinel story, Monday's incident was the sixth time since late November that police were called to the school because of violence.

A new state law in place since 2004 allows DPI to drop schools from the voucher program because of safety concerns. Academic Solutions is the first school to be ordered out of the program for that reason. Two other schools, Alex's Academy of Excellence and Mandella School of Math and Science, were dropped because of financial mismanagement and violations of program regulations.

Academic Solutions has been in hot water with DPI before. In November, DPI withheld a $1.3 million voucher payment to the school because of discrepancies between the school's reported enrollment and attendance reports. School officials originally reported that they had enrolled more than 700 voucher-eligible students, but an audit later confirmed that only about 500 students were actually attending the school.

The DPI action to drop the school came on the same day the state Assembly voted to expand the voucher program by raising its enrollment cap. Enrollment in the voucher program is limited to 15% of students in the Milwaukee Public Schools system, or about 15,000. The bill passed by the Assembly raises the cap by 1,500 to 16,500. Voucher enrollment for 2004-05 is about 14,700 students.

The bill must be passed by the state Senate and signed by Governor Doyle before becoming law. The Senate is expected to vote on the proposal February 8, but the governor warned that even if the Senate passes the bill, he would veto it. He called the measure "an extreme, uncompromising stance to create a crisis that will cost Milwaukee property taxpayers $4 million and taxpayers all across the state another $4.9 million."

"For too long, Assembly Republicans have worried too much about the interests of those who want to expand the voucher program instead of working to solve the significant challenges facing all of Milwaukee's schools," Doyle said.

WEAC President Stan Johnson called on lawmakers to develop legislation to benefit all of Milwaukee's children, not just those who attend voucher schools.

"Milwaukee children deserve a great education, not experiments," Johnson said. "The cap on enrollment in the voucher program is needed because it is an experiment."

"The voucher program is unaccountable to the public, even though it receives $87 million a year in tax dollars. Voucher schools should be held to the same standards as public schools. Voucher school students should be required to take the same tests so we can see if the public is getting its money's worth."

Johnson urged WEAC members to visit the OnWEAC Cyberlobby to contact their state senators about the issue.

Resource page on private school vouchers

Posted January 28, 2005