Milwaukee stiff-arms Legislature but takes sales tax money
Once again, there will be no police officers in Milwaukee Public Schools when classes begin this Tuesday, violating a requirement that is part of the current state budget.
It was way back in June of 2023 that Milwaukee leaders reached a deal with legislators allowing both the city and the county to raise sales taxes in exchange for putting officers back in crime-ridden Milwaukee Public Schools by Jan. 1, 2024.
State Sen. John Jagler, chair of the Senate Committee on Education, said he was at first surprised to learn MPS was still flouting the deadline to put cops back in schools for the first time in eight years. Then he was angry.
“They are breaking the law and they don’t care because there are no ramifications for not complying with this,” Jagler, R-Watertown, told the Badger Institute. “The flippant attitude is just crazy.”
MPS administrators were expected to update the Milwaukee Board of School Directors about the status of a school resource officer plan with the Milwaukee Police Department at the board meeting Thursday night, MPS chief of staff, Paulette Chambers, told Jagler in an email response to his inquiry.
Chambers gave no indication of how soon a plan can be executed nor were there any estimates of the number of resource officers or where and how they might be deployed. The discussion was to occur after our deadline.
“I am disappointed, but I’m not surprised,” state Rep. Bob Donovan, R-Greenfield, who advocated for the addition of the resource officer requirement. “They (MPS officials) have given every indication that they don’t want these officers back in the schools for whatever reason. And they have not been forthcoming with the public about this.”
“It tells me that at the state level we need to scrutinize many more things going on with the Milwaukee Public Schools,” he said.
The Badger Institute left messages asking for comment from several MPS officials, including board member Jilly Gokalgandhi, but received no replies before this story posted.
Audio of a recent interview with Gokalgandhi in which she said her focus would be on “restorative justice” rather than the officer placement prompted a peeved Jagler to ask MPS for some explanation.
“Children deserve to feel safe at school,” Jagler said in an Aug. 22 letter to Board President Marva Herndon. Herndon is on record as having opposed the resource officer requirement, but that she would cooperate with its implementation. “It is vitally important to ensure that our schools are as safe as possible to help facilitate a learning environment.”
“Right now, when the lights have never shone brighter on them, they continue to act this way,” Jagler said. “How could we (the Legislature), in good conscience, think that we are dealing with them and they are acting in good faith.”
When asked about the inaction by the Badger Institute Wednesday, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said in an email, “I acknowledge there are operational considerations that MPS must work through. Nevertheless, I would hope for prompt compliance with the requirements.
“I have supported the presence of police officers at Milwaukee schools, and I have had multiple conversations with our Police Chief to make certain the city is taking every reasonable step to fulfill its obligations under state law.”
Johnson for the first time disclosed to the Badger Institute that a deal had been brokered to bring officers back into schools after a sharp spike in the number of police calls for service to Milwaukee high schools in the 2021-22 school year. The Badger Institute began tracking rising police activity in August 2022.
In her email to Jagler, Chambers said MPS officials made trips to observe resource officer programs in the cities of Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, and Bibb and Fulton counties in Georgia.
The Badger Institute has made a formal public information request to determine the total cost of the visits, the names of officials who took the trips and a detailed account of their itineraries.
In every one of those places, resource officers are either coming back strong or they are getting additional resources. In May, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a state budget that kept his promise to add nearly $108 million for a grant program to strengthen public safety programs in schools.
A D.C. Council that had once voted to phase out resource officers voted instead in May 2023 to continue with officers in 34 public and 27 public charter schools, according to its current deployment records.
And in April, the Bibb County Sheriff’s Department in Central Georgia, deputized more than a dozen of the school district’s resource officers to give them more authority to work outside of the schools to build relationships with families and in the community.
Milwaukee and Madison are the only two of the 10 largest school districts in Wisconsin with no police presence.
Mark Lisheron is the Managing Editor of the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.
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