by Glen Gilzean, Jr.
A struggle over an empty school building in Milwaukee speaks to the growing conflict between urban districts that are losing enrollment and school choice operators who are eager to take advantage. As a School Board member in St. Petersburg/Pinellas, Florida, I saw the same tensions.
Selling vacant property can generate much-needed capital for school districts and eliminate an unnecessary maintenance expense from the books. For example, Milwaukee was spending more than $1 million a year trying to maintain the vacant schools. But selling the building to charter entrepreneurs also can mean potentially losing students, and funding, to schools of choice.
St. Marcus Lutheran School, a high-achieving voucher school, and Milwaukee College Prep, a charter school, both sought to purchase the long vacant Malcolm X Academy building. But the Milwaukee Public School district refused the offers, prompting a Wisconsin legal institute to accuse officials of “playing shell games” and “skirting the law.” District officials have kept many buildings off the market claiming they still want to make use of them.
The plan for the Malcolm X property calls for the district to sell the vacant building to a local developer for $2.1 million. The developer will then remodel half the building into a community center and rent the other half back to the Milwaukee Public School District for a fee of $4.2 million. Without question, the proposed deal is controversial.
Milwaukee isn’t the only school district that seems to be using its control of real estate to halt the expansion of school choice. According to a recent Education Next report, blocking access to vacant buildings is a common tactic of urban school districts. It also happened here in my own back yard in the Tampa Bay region. (more…)
Cheri Shannon
The head of one of Florida’s two statewide charter school support groups is stepping down to lead a more targeted effort. Cheri Shannon, president and CEO of the Florida Charter School Alliance, is leaving at the end of the month to lead University Prep, a new charter network she says will focus exclusively on low-income students. To some extent, she’ll be coming full circle, having once run a charter school in Kansas City, Mo., that served students who were predominantly black and high poverty.
“This is my passion, my mission. ... I felt called, for lack of a better word, to come back in and do that work,” Shannon told redefinED. “This is where I want to end my career, making a difference in the lives of kids who deserve a difference.”
Shannon joined the alliance in April 2011 as its founding CEO. A former associate superintendent in the Kansas City school district, she has years of experience in both traditional school districts and the charter sector.
Her new venture already has four charter school proposals in the pipeline, including one scheduled to go before the Pinellas County School Board on Tuesday. The school boards in Broward and Palm Beach counties have already signed off on the University Prep applications in their districts. The application in Hillsborough is scheduled to go before that district’s board next month, Shannon said.
The Pinellas proposal is for a K-8 school in St. Petersburg with a projected, first-year enrollment of 694 students. The plan is to open next fall. (To read more about the application, go to page 318 of the school board agenda packet.)
The proposal stands before an interesting legal backdrop - a 2010 settlement from a class-action lawsuit that accused the Pinellas district of failing to educate black students in violation of the state constitution. Under its terms, the Pinellas school board set an aspirational goal of having at least 500 spaces in charter schools available for black students. (more…)
