A statement on Milwaukee Excellence and the MPS Douglas building
Dr. Patricia Hoben, City Forward Collective president and executive director, sent the following letter on August 2, 2021 to the Milwaukee Board of School Directors, President Bob Peterson, and Superintendent Keith Posley:
City Forward Collective’s mission is to help ensure Milwaukee’s future by ending educational inequity and ensuring every child can attend a high-quality school. It is with that in mind that I am writing today to advocate for the 650 MPS students and their families who are a part of the Milwaukee Excellence Charter School community.
I am asking you to approve the lease agreement already negotiated between MPS administration and the leaders of Milwaukee Excellence, and to allow Milwaukee Excellence to move into the vacant third floor of the Andrew Douglas Middle School building as soon as possible. This plan makes sense for Milwaukee Excellence, for the Andrew Douglas school community, for the surrounding neighborhood, and for MPS as a whole.
High school students attending Milwaukee Excellence deserve access to age-appropriate facilities. This means essentials like STEM labs, an auditorium, and a gym, as well as bathrooms, drinking fountains, lockers, etc. that are appropriately designed and sized for students’ developmental stages. The Douglas building is a step in the right direction for Milwaukee Excellence, which is currently housed in an elementary school building.
The Douglas building was designed with capacity to educate many more students than currently enrolled there, leaving an entire floor empty. That vacant space is a potential safety concern for students, and costs money for MPS to heat and maintain. Let’s fill that space up with your MPS students from Milwaukee Excellence.
In its relatively short history, Milwaukee Excellence has already proven its value to our city’s students and to the MPS family of schools. This school has earned consistently high marks — at times the highest possible — from both MPS and the state. As you know, Douglas is located in the historically underserved 53206 ZIP code. When you permit Milwaukee Excellence to open at Douglas, you will establish the only high school in the ZIP code earning a Significantly Exceeds Expectations rating on the Wisconsin School Report Card, and the only public school to rate higher than ‘Meets Few Expectations.’
Please act with haste to remedy this situation. When the lease agreement was removed from last week’s School Board agenda, it created confusion for hundreds of Milwaukee Excellence high school families just weeks before the start of the school year. Every Milwaukee child and parent deserves certainty and predictability in their school community. This has never been more important following 18 months of incredibly damaging instability due to the pandemic. Students cannot afford a delay to the start of this important school year.
Thank you for your continued service to our city, its students, and their families.
Patricia Hoben
President/Executive Director
City Forward Collective
