Revisiting last major MPS audit: Former superintendent wants Evers to appoint special commissioner

 

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- The superintendent when Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) last underwent a major outside audit wants Gov. Tony Evers to appoint a new leader of the state's biggest school district amid a financial crisis.

Evers announced Monday his administration was moving forward with a pair of outside audits of MPS; one will examine the district's operations, and the other will dig into MPS' academic processes.

The last such audit of MPS came in 2009 when the international firm, McKinsey & Company, dropped into Milwaukee that spring. The superintendent at that time was Bill Andrekopoulos, who led MPS from 2002 to 2010. In an interview Tuesday evening, Andrekopoulos called for Evers to go beyond audits.

"I'm proposing that he select a special commissioner that comes in and leads the district for three years," Andrekopoulos said.

Andrekopoulos said the commissioner could work with an advisory panel of community members to choose a new governance structure for the district.

One key difference between the 2009 audit and what Evers' proposed audits is McKinsey focused strictly on the district's finances. 

"The McKinsey report, very specifically, did not deal with academics and what to do about actually educating kids," said Alan Borsuk, a senior fellow at Marquette University who covered education for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at the time. 

Following the audit, much of the focus was on McKinsey's recommendations MPS could save up to $100 million by making cuts, including the elimination of more than 300 food service jobs and cutting down on the district's busing network.

Andrekopoulos took issue with several of the suggested savings, saying they weren't connected to the district's reality of labor agreements and a need to stay in the good graces of parents and employees.

"You have to understand the union contracts and rules and regulations that we're dealing with, and you also have to understand the dynamics of the city," Andrekopoulos said. "I mean, you're talking about eliminating busing that has overall ramifications on families and kids."

Throughout the rest of 2009 and into 2010, much of the conversation centered on a possible takeover of MPS with Democratic former Gov. Jim Doyle pushing for greater city control under former Mayor Tom Barrett.

Ultimately, those efforts went nowhere, and Republican Scott Walker was elected in the fall of 2010, signing into law the controversial Act 10 law that stripped public employee unions of their ability to collectively bargain, save for police and fire unions.

Andrekopoulos said he believed the time has come to revisit major changes to how MPS is governed, taking away control from a board of directors that is currently elected in low-turnout spring contests.

Mayor Cavalier Johnson has suggested moving board elections to the fall, but he hasn't embraced the idea of the city taking more control over the district. Johnson has lent the city's comptroller office to help MPS get long overdue financial data submitted to the state.

"I think our current governance structure that we have is based more on what's best for the adult needs of the district, as opposed to the children's needs," he said.

Borsuk said an audit into MPS' financial operation is more necessary now than it was in 2009. Former Superintendent Keith Posley resigned last week amid public pressure after state education officials issued a scathing letter notifying MPS it was more than eight months late on providing mandatory financial data.

The state Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is withholding MPS' June special education allocation, which is more than $16 million, and it estimates MPS will lose "tens of millions" of dollars in state aid next year to make up for overpayments the district previously received as a result of inaccurate data reporting.

"Frankly, we're exploring new turf in bad operations," Borsuk said.

Andrekopoulos said he was encouraged by Evers' push to also audit how MPS teaches the more than 60,000 students enrolled in the district.

He wasn't sure why Evers didn't get involved sooner, given the district's years-long trend of performing worse than other big-city school districts, but Andrekopoulos said Evers was very hands-on with MPS during his time as state superintendent. National data also find Milwaukee is among the poorest urban school districts, which Borsuk and Andrekopoulos said adds to the challenge of turning around MPS.

"Governor Evers, when he was the Department of Public Instruction head, he was actively involved in our school district. I met with him at his Milwaukee office, the Madison office," he said. "I met with him quite a bit. He was really engaged in what was going on at MPS."

Borsuk said he hoped the academic audit would include notes about what programs and curricula have led to improved results in other big-city districts that struggle with poverty. To then follow through with meaningful change, he said the top elected state and city officials would need to remain closely involved with MPS.

"I think it's gonna be crucial to keep an eye on how much are those two people, Governor Evers and Mayor Johnson, gonna really keep the foot on the gas to drive improvement?" he said.