“Just how old is your child?”

The answer was direct. “I’m pregnant.”

I often hear from parents who do not have their children in Milwaukee Public Schools that MPS schools are so terrible that they would never send them to MPS. But, in fact, some MPS schools are so highly prized that they attract suburban students - art schools like Tippecanoe, Montessori schools like Fernwood, to name a few. Other Bay View elementary schools beat the state averages in test scores and even suburban neighbors.

If we have such good elementary schools in the area, why are our schools struggling to maintain enrollment?

About 450 additional elementary students do transfer to suburban schools from MPS District Eight, but that works out to less than 25 students per District Eight school.

The reality is that the students simply don’t exist. Families that once had four or five children now have one or two. Neighboring suburban school systems like St. Francis, Cudahy and Greenfield have also seen enrollment declines. Local Catholic schools have done no better.

Bay View elementary schools have saved themselves chiefly by adding grades, moving from grades K-5 to K-8 schools. This has hurt our local 6-8 middle school, Fritsche. Now Fritsche wants to expand to grade twelve. This would place additional pressure on Bay View High School, a school which is already having trouble attracting neighborhood students.

There are only a thousand students of high school age in the entire Bay View attendance area. Even if the high school could attract most of its high school students back to its building, the school would still be half empty. To maintain Bay View High School, we must either dramatically shrink the size of its student population into a much smaller school program or continue to accept that the majority of its students will be bussed in from outside the neighborhood.

Over the next few months, representatives from schools will come together in community clusters to look at ways of saving money in this era of declining enrollment. We can’t engage in self pity or denial.  We must rebuild, perhaps merge programs, share resources, and if all else fails, close buildings. If we engage in creative thinking, we can improve the educational opportunities and achievement in this community.

A version of this article appeared in the Bay View Compass newspaper.