How the MPS referendum passed: White, childless areas more likely to have voted yes

 

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Voters narrowly passed a $252 million referendum this week for Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), and an analysis of how the city voted shows majority-White wards and those with fewer children were more likely to have voted 'yes'.

Marquette University researcher John Johnson sorted through the election results by ward, and he found the results were slightly divided by race with an even more noticeable difference when looking at how many of a ward's households have children.

At the Highland Lanes bowling alley in Washington Heights, Brian Dunleavy acknowledged the referendum was an issue that left much of the city split.

"I voted yes on the referendum," he said. "I had some discussions with neighbors that voted no."

Dunleavy said, as a retired teacher, supporting the referendum was an easy choice. More than anything else, he didn't want schools to experience cuts.

"I think, a lot of times, the kids get lost in the details of the workings behind the funding for the schools," Dunleavy said.

For Domanick Holmes, it was a much tougher decision. Holmes said she went back and forth because her kids attend MPS schools, but she also worried about the burden higher property taxes will put on homeowners and, if landlords pass along costs, renters.

"I was torn about it because I don't think it's fair that the property tax rate would go up," she said. "But it's also unfair that children will get, like, the deduction or losing art and music from school."

Holmes said she ultimately decided against supporting the referendum, but it didn't matter because she forgot to vote on Tuesday. Her concerns reflected the close outcome; the referendum passed by fewer than 1,800 votes.

Supporters of the referendum accounted for 51% of the vote Tuesday, which was a significant drop from 2020, when 77% of Milwaukee voters approved an $87 million referendum for the district.

Johnson's analysis included a heat map showing just how strongly a ward supported or opposed the referendum.

The wards where the referendum passed most decisively were downtown, along the lake and on the near west side. The most 'no' votes were concentrated in wards on the city's northwest and southwest sides.

Voters downtown, along the lake and on the near west side accounted for most of the 'yes' votes in Tuesday's MPS referendum. John Johnson

Those results aligned with the city's racial dividing lines, but only slightly. In majority-White districts, 53.2% of the votes were in favor of the referendum.

The referendum was opposed by a slight majority in majority-Black and majority-Latino wards. In majority-Black wards, 48.4% of voters supported the referendum while 49.4% of the vote in majority-Latino wards was 'yes.' 

Whether a ward has a lot of children correlates much more clearly with the election results. At 65.8%, voters in wards where less than 20% of households have children overwhelmingly approved the referendum.

In wards where between 20% and 40% of the households have kids, 45.9% voted yes, and in wards where between 40% and 60% of households have kids, 46.9% backed the referendum.

"I wonder if it has to do with the increase of the taxes for people that own homes, as opposed to people that are renting," Dunleavy said when presented with the demographic data.

Johnson declined to do an interview about the study. Currently, a little more than half of Milwaukee's children attend MPS schools.

The data do not explain whether most of those voting 'no' in ward with more kids are MPS parents or if they sent their kids to charter or voucher schools. However, it is clear that in wards with fewer children, voters were far more likely to have backed the referendum.

Holmes said she just couldn't get behind such a sizable property tax increase. For a home valued at $200,000, taxes will increase by $432 per year.

"My mom was originally a homeowner," she said. "And to know homeowners and to know their property taxes are gonna go up, that's a lot."

Dunleavy said he sympathized with those who voted 'no' because of pocketbook concerns. He agreed having more mouths to feed may have been the ultimate decider for some voters. 

"I'm retired, and we're doing reasonably well," he said. "So, I'm not feeling what some of those families, like I did 30 years ago, I might've understood that more."