I'm here to listen to your concerns about our schools.

Click "Read more... " for my remarks at the initial Bay View Area School Improvement Process meeting.

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2978 S. Wentworth Ave.
Milwaukee, WI  53207

I’m Terry Falk, District 8 School Board director for Bay View. Before I begin my remarks, I must let you know that a School Board meeting is just beginning, and I must head over to that meeting as soon as I can because my vote is important.  I will not be able to take any questions after my remarks, but you can call me, email me, and I will be at future Bay View meetings. I’m not ducking your questions.

Sitting here are representatives from 7 Bay View schools. The first thing I want you to know that we are not here to close schools. We are here to answer a single question –

“Given the resources and the students available, how can we create the best educational system possible in the Bay View community?”

As we answer that question, we may elect to close a building or two, but we are here to see what we can create, not what we can tear down.

We are not here to play a game of Russian roulette, spinning the chamber, and seeing which school will take the bullet.  Nor is this a high stakes poker game where each school guards its chips hoping to outlast its fellow schools.

Instead, think of your schools as elaborate Lego creations with pieces that are made up of teachers, parents, students, buildings, books, and curriculum. Let’s dump all those pieces on the floor, right in front of us, and see what we can create.

The schools here assembled are schools surrounding Fritsche and Bay View High School. And we got here tonight because of proposals directly dealing with Fritsche and Bay View, two schools where major restructuring is needed. What happens at these schools directly impacts on all the schools in the Bay View community. No school should act independently without considering the impact on its surrounding schools.

Elementary principals already know that students from their own elementary schools transfer to suburban schools because parents are told by suburban districts, if parents want to get their children into a suburban high school, they have a better chance if they transfer their children to that suburban school system in the elementary grades.

If we could keep more students here for high school, we would keep more children here for elementary school. Bay View High School needs to know what kind of reforms elementary parents want in order to send their children to our local high school.

If Fritsche would become a 6-12 school on its own, it would certainly be the final blow to Bay View High School. And Fritsche got to where it is today because many local elementary schools extended their grades to 8th grade without considering the impact on Fritsche. Let’s face it, elementary schools became k8 schools primarily to save themselves in this time of decreasing enrollment.

Where did the students all go?

Some fled to the suburbs. Today St. Francis High School has more students from the Bay View community than does Bay View High School. But if Bay View High School could recapture all the students that live in this community from suburban and specialty MPS high schools, our high school would still have less than a thousand students.

The reality is that households that once had 4 or 5 kids now have only one or two. Not only is Bay View losing student population, so are St. Francis, Cudahy, and Greenfield. The children simply don’t exist because they were never born.

On this side of town, school choice has had little impact. Ten years ago, there were seven Catholic schools. Today there is only one.

We also have demographic trends. After World War II, the soldiers came back, got married, the Baby Boomers were born, and we built schools like crazy in the 1950s and 60s. When this generation passed beyond the child bearing age, school enrollment dropped. While people are looking at today’s dropping enrollment, we actually had less children in MPS in 1981 than we do today.

Beginning in 1982, MPS saw an increase in student enrollment because the Baby Boomers were now having their own children, an echo of the Baby Boom. When Baby Boomers passed the child bearing years, we saw another decline. Today we have more 10th and 11th graders than we have 4th and 5th graders.

We should begin seeing an increase in student populations in lower grades as the children of the Baby Boomers begin to have their children – an echo of the echo of the Baby Boom. But like any echo, each echo is softer than the last. Even though Bay View is likely to see an increase in student population at the lower grades, we will never have the numbers we had in the 50s and 60s.

We will see dropping high school numbers for the next six years. High school numbers will not be back to where we are today for another 10 years. Middle school numbers are likely to see a drop in student enrollment for another year or two before stabilizing.

Right now a common phone call I am getting is from a parent who can’t get their child into a local elementary school because the kindergarten classes are full.

That means we must be careful in closing elementary schools. A school like Tippecanoe has no trouble getting its students. The real problem here is that the building is simply too small for its program.

These numbers present challenges, but they also present opportunities.

As I wrote in the Bay View Compass last month, Cincinnati has converted one third of its high schools into junior-senior high schools because it has concluded that the k8 model does not prepare students well for high school course work. A combined junior-senior high school at Bay View might be the way to go. And as local elementary schools begin to see increasing student populations in the lower grades, they might wish to rethink if they want to continue to house grade 7 and 8. But that is only an idea. The Bay View community may not want to accept this proposal.

Presently the arts community is looking at the creation of a k12 campus model, moving High School of the Arts to the old warehouse next to Roosevelt and Elm. We could create a similar campus model utilizing Fritsche for lower grades and Bay View High School for upper grades creating a Bay View School of Creativity and Art. You may not like this idea either.

We could take an existing elementary school and create a year round early childhood center from birth to kindergarten. This center could be funded through a combination of MPS funding, state and federal childcare funding as well as individuals personally paying for childcare the way they do for any private childcare center. The staffing would be made up of day care workers and certified kindergarten teachers. This model works elsewhere and is very doable.

Trowbridge is creating a Great Lakes freshwater studies program. It is the closest MPS school to Lake Michigan. This is an asset. Perhaps it should continue to stand alone as a k8 school. But it could also become a resource center for at least Bay View, if not for all of MPS on freshwater studies.

Perhaps you like some of these ideas. Perhaps you have better ideas of your own.  The reason why I wanted this gathering was to get everything out on the table where we can debate the ideas floating around.

I don’t think you want to leave it up to the superintendent or the School Board. I don’t want to have more MPS listening sessions where the people at the front table hear the words but they aren’t listening because they have already decided what to do. Bring forth your own plan for this community.

As you look to the heavens for inspiration, make sure you keep your feet on the ground. Just having a massive student recruiting campaign isn’t going to fill up the seats. As I have already outlined, we simply do not have the student population to justify such a campaign. Nor can the school system just give you more money. We don’t have it. Writing grants can bring in additional resources, but you can’t run schools relying on donated dollars.

Whatever you create, it must be for ALL students in Bay View. I don’t want a system which excludes large segments of our population. Right in Bay View, we have students living in poverty, and with special needs, who need special attention.

As this school system begins to cut back on transportation, we still will have some bussed in students but probably at lower numbers.  And we must recognize that Bay View itself has students of many colors. We have a large Latino population who work in Bay View, live in Bay View, and send their children to Bay View schools.

Our schools belong to the entire Bay View community.

So it is time to get to work.  We need to answer that single question -

“Given the resources and the students available, how can we create the best educational system possible in the Bay View community?”

Thank you for your time.