Charter School Heads for Closure
Center falls short of expectations, MPS officials say
By Sarah Carr
Last Update: April 14, 2006
Continuing the flurry of school closures in the city, a Milwaukee School Board committee voted Thursday night to close the Community Trade and Business Center.
This would be the third charter school the board has decided to terminate since January. The momentum in Milwaukee for closing flagging charter schools highlights a nationwide push to close those charter schools that are not living up to their goals.
"The whole concept behind chartering schools is that they have increased autonomy, and at the same time are held to higher levels of accountability," said Arlene Sershon, an administrative analyst for Milwaukee Public Schools.
The Community Trade and Business Center, which leases space in the Malcolm X Academy building at 2760 N. 1st St., is in its second year with about 65 students. School officials agreed to end their contract when it became clear the district sought to close the school.
MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos said the high school had initially wanted to work with the Opportunities Industrialization Center of Greater Milwaukee, a local W-2 contractor that collapsed more than a year ago.
Without the partnership with the OIC, the school struggled to put in place the academic program it planned, Andrekopoulos added.
Only one representative from the school attended Thursday night's meeting of the Committee on Innovation and School Reform, which voted 3-0 to close the center at the end of the school year.
School inspected 2 times
Sershon said two visits she made to the school in January - one announced and the other unannounced - revealed that the school had not created the educational program it promised.
The school had planned to teach students through interactive, project-based learning. But instead it "relies heavily on worksheets and textbooks," Sershon said. The school also failed to start any science labs, and instead taught the subject simply through textbooks.
Sershon added that when she asked for an example of project-based learning, teachers at the school pointed to "simple drawings in a classroom."
While an interim principal joined the school staff in February to oversee its final months, neither the principal nor the executive director in place in January had the proper educational licenses, according to Sershon.
"We're not getting the program that was proposed to us," she said.
Community Trade had an attendance rate in the 2004-'05 school year of 69%, compared with 82% in MPS. The student mobility rate was 128%, compared with 21% in MPS, which speaks to how many students are moving in and out of the school.
Unlike the majority of the district's charter schools, at Community Trade the teachers were not employees of MPS. The closure of Community Trade still needs to be approved by the full board later this month.
It appears to be the first charter school to close in Milwaukee where no students or staff spoke out against the move. Several people came out to protest the closure of the New Hope Institute of Science and Technology in February, a school that closed in February amid numerous allegations of improprieties.
And when the board considered Phoenix High School in March, a handful of teachers and students from the school showed up. With dozens of schools chartered by the school district - and still more by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the city - the number to be closed is still relatively tiny.
At Thursday's meeting, board members also approved the concept of turning Kosciuszko Middle School into a Montessori program. The south side school has struggled to make adequate improvement under the mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind education law. The Montessori approach emphasizes more hands-on, exploratory learning in mixed-age group classrooms.
The above article appeared in the April 14, 2006 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel