Wanted: Top Teachers

Alan Borsuk:

We can hardly get anyone to apply to teach at our school.

The crowd of about 400 Milwaukee Public Schools principals and administrators had gathered in late August for the annual school year kick-off program. Superintendent William Andrekopoulos was taking questions.

The voice - we're paraphrasing his longer statement - belonged to James Sonnenberg, veteran principal of Westside Academy, a 650-student kindergarten through eighth-grade school in two buildings near N. 35th St. and W. Lisbon Ave. Westside is one of the more successful schools in MPS, with a dedicated staff and eighth-grade test results well above the district average.

But Sonnenberg told Andrekopoulos how few applicants he gets for openings at his school, how he had to push the central office to give him names of candidates to fill a teaching position last summer, how he offered a job to one woman who said she would have to check with her father about working there, and how he never heard back from her.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 3, 2007 7:00 PM
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