Milwaukee's Grim School Budget Outlook

Alan Borsuk:

It won't exactly be a jolly post-Christmas gift that each principal in Milwaukee Public Schools will receive Jan. 9.

What they will get are packets of information on the budget forecast for next year and the numbers they are to use in putting together a spending plan for their schools.

Good luck, principals - the information in most every case is going to be grim, so much so that some schools may ask to close or merge with others.

The planning assumptions put together by MPS administrators and approved by the Milwaukee School Board include:

• Another major decline in enrollment, 4.7% in the main roster of MPS schools, 4.1% when alternative schools and charter schools not staffed by MPS employees are included.

If the forecast proves true, there will be 77,546 students in September 2008 in that main roster, which is to say, the schools you normally think of when you think of MPS, compared with 96,942 in September 1998, a decline of more than 20% in a decade. The decline from a year ago to this year was 3.8%.

Including the alternative and charter schools, the forecast is for 83,787 for next fall, down from 87,360 this year.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 31, 2007 12:00 AM
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