Wisconsin is marching inexorably down a path toward two separate publicly funded education systems for our K-12 students. One is our traditional public schools; the other, private voucher schools largely funded by taxpayer dollars.

The school voucher program began in 1990 under Gov. Tommy Thompson with a modest investment in Milwaukee: 337 students, all low-income, used vouchers valued at $734,000 ($2,178 per voucher) to attend seven private, nonsectarian schools. Since then, the voucher program has grown exponentially. Funding last year equaled $158 million and provided vouchers worth $6,442 to 24,000 students who attended private and parochial schools in Racine and Milwaukee.

In the next two years, the program expansion, if approved by the State Legislature, will spread to at least nine more school districts, including Madison. 29,000 students will participate. Funding will increase to $209 million – an almost 300-fold increase since inception. Public school funding, over that time span, has increased only three-fold.

Vouchers will be available to a family of four with an income of almost $78,000 per year. In addition, these students may always have been private school students. Once students secure a voucher, they have that voucher in subsequent years no matter how high the family income. This policy generates a separate system, subsidizing private education at taxpayer expense with no accountability to, nor approval from, that taxpayer.

Are vouchers worth the price? No! Studies show that academic performance among voucher students is no better than that of students in public schools. In a 2011 study, the independent Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau determined that 75 percent of students who entered Milwaukee voucher schools as ninth graders left that school before graduation. We call that a 75 percent DROP-OUT rate!

What will vouchers cost local property tax payers? Beginning in 2014-15, a voucher for an elementary student will cost $7,050; for a high school student $7,856. The local school district pays 38.4 percent of that cost. A district’s voucher costs are the first draw on education funding. That money comes off the top before a penny is spent for public school students.

Make no mistake, the intent of voucher supporters is to make vouchers available to every Wisconsin student, rural or urban or suburban. School Choice Wisconsin Vice-President Terry Brown said: “A voucher in every backpack!” However, some years ago, when asked about statewide expansion, former Gov. Thompson responded: “We can’t afford two systems of education.” No, we cannot!

Another challenge in the State Budget – the “State Charter Authorizing Board.” As a group of political appointees, this board can authorize non-profits, local governments, etc., to create PRIVATE CHARTER SCHOOLS funded by state dollars as first draw on spending. Local school boards have no authority over these schools, but, once again, they can levy a property tax to make up lost revenue. Taxpayers, beware!!

We are GRUMPS, GRandparents United for Madison Public Schools. Many of us have grandchildren in public schools; we believe public schools are an important community asset.

Our local schools are the glue that holds diverse neighborhoods together – in schools children come together to learn from, and about, each other in a common setting. Fragmenting our schools threatens community unity. We are stronger together than we are as separate groups. We are more likely to move our children, and Madison, forward if we do it together. We should not tolerate, nor can we afford, separate systems.

Anne Arnesen, Barbara Arnold, Nan Brien, and Carol Carstensen co-authored this opinion. Find out more about GRumps.

Summer is almost here – and so is your child’s opportunity to be a Super Reader!

The Milwaukee Public Library kicks off  their annual Super Reader Summer Reading Program today. The program encourages children to read or be read to every day during the summer, while tracking reading progress in a folder and earning incentives like free food and free admission to Milwaukee attractions.

Super Readers who complete the program will be rewarded with a free book; those who complete by July 31 earn the chance to be recognized at the Aug. 18 Brewers game.

Interested families are invited to Sign-Up Saturday on May 18 at the Downtown Public Library, 814 W. Wisconsin Ave., from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

The library plans to have a record year in 2013, and hopes that this summer’s program will reach 23,000 children and teens ages 0-18. The program has increased by 46 percent since 2008. For more information, visit mpl.org/SummerReading.

This morning, Jenny Aicher, a teacher at Downtown Montessori in Bay View, wrote to share some big news on campus.

A 7-year-old, second-grade student in her class received a handwritten note from Vice President Joe Biden.

“Myles and I were having lunch one day when he said, ‘Barb, I have a really good idea’,” recalls Downtown Montessori reading specialist Barb Rankin. “Like any good teacher I bit and asked what his good idea was. He went on to say, ‘If people shot chocolate bullets then no one will get hurt and no one will be sad.’

“I could not argue with this logic so I suggested we share this good idea with the people who have more power than I do, like President Obama, Vice President Biden and Sen. Gwen Moore. Myles wrote the letters and they were placed in the mail.  A few weeks ago we heard from Sen. Moore and then today from Vice President Biden.”

Myles Nelson’s letter, short and sweet, read, “Dear Vice President Biden, I have a great idea to help make our country safer, better and the best. I think guns should shoot out chocolate bullets. Then no one will get killed and no one will be sad.”

And the reply, which arrived today:

“Dear Myles,” Biden began, in a handwritten note dated April 30, 2013, on Vice Presidential note paper, “I am sorry it took me so very long to respond to your letter. I really like your idea. If we had guns that shot chocolate not only would our country be safer, it would be happier. People love chocolate. You are a good boy, Joe Biden.”

Argue if you must with the idea, but Biden is clearly correct on a number of points, not least of which is that Myles is, most likely, a good boy.

The idea that every child – at every school – in Milwaukee deserves green space is one to which I subscribe. I’ve been a cheerleader for projects at Brown Street School, Fernwood and Maryland Avenue Montessori, 81st Street School and others.

Today, Tippecanoe-Dover parent Erin Dentice shared plans for greening some of the space at that Bay View school’s playground. (Next year when the campus’ two programs will be officially merged under the name Milwaukee Parkside School for the Arts, in reference to the school’s location across from Humboldt Park.)

Dentice had a vague plan to green the sea of asphalt that rages behind the unassuming modernist facade of the former Fritsche Middle School on Howell Avenue, just north of Oklahoma Avenue.

When she approached a nearby Home Depot with the idea to collaborate, she learned the store was already working with the district to get a new tot lot up and running at the school. That work is already underway, and so is work on installing a new playset at Wisconsin Conservatory of Lifelong Learning (WCLL), in the former Sarah Scott Middle School on 12th and Vliet Streets. That’s another schoolyard that could use some green space.

With the support of the store and the school’s principal, Jeff Krupar – who will retire next month – Dentice brought in a landscape designer to draw up plans to encircle the tot lot with green space.

Krupar also asked that Dentice consider adding some wow factor to the wide front lawn.

Now, there are plans to add raised beds out front, which teachers can use to help kids learn about gardening and nature, and a portion of the planned green space out back appears set to become a reality in late June. How much will be accomplished immediately depends on the financial support Dentice can muster.

But even if it’s just a piece, that start can help lead to the completion – and, hopefully, further expansion of the plan later on. That, she says, will help meet the project’s objectives:

• Ensure landscapes support safe outdoor learning in tandem with all aspects of education including socialization tools for school-aged children.
• Develop a greater sense of pride for those attending and working at the school, vested interest in the general environment and a source of inspiration for art-related activities.
• Make changes in our surroundings so they will be more beautiful, useful, convenient, functional, ecologically sound and easily maintained.
• Create an aesthetically pleasing focal point for the community that stimulates interest in the school through curb appeal.

Dentice promises to keep us updated on progress, so when we have photos of the first phase, I will share them here.

Meanwhile, on Dentice’s tip, I went to see John Greenleaf Whittier School, almost as far south at the airport. Whittier is an example of a school that is basically already surrounded by a park.

The colorful flowers adorning the front of the school are just the start. Sure, there’s an asphalt play area, but there is also ample open green space and the school’s playset is located in an adjacent wooded area.

What Whittier may not be a utopian playground, but it’s something most schools in the city can only dream of. Let’s make it a reality for every Milwaukee school.

I’m having a parenting dilemma that is becoming harder and harder for me to ignore and I am very interested to know if anyone else has faced it.

How do I tell my children that some adults are stupid, and some of their rules are stupid, without teaching them to disrespect authority and other people in general?

Sure, we’re all safer if we stop for red lights, it’s a good idea to cover your mouth when you sneeze, and running at the pool is a surefire way to get hurt.

There are other rules, though, that are simply designed to force people to toe an arbitrary line. Several months ago, I waited respectfully while the adults who run my son’s afterschool program went through a disciplinary process intended to get the children to cooperate and quiet down.

After more than five minutes of scolding and forcing the children to start this process over and over each time one of them made a peep, I realized the adults were going through all of this in order to get the kids to settle down before lining up to go to the bathroom. The. Bathroom.

The children had been in school all day. It was warm and they wanted to get outside to the playground. They were ultimately going to the bathroom without any adult escort. The whole thing struck me as nothing more than an effort to let the children know who was really in charge, and it certainly wasn’t the children.

There have been other instances, though detailing them would surely offend someone with whom I need to preserve a relationship.

My struggle is this: I want to tell my children that sometimes adults do and say stupid things. I want to tell my children that some of life’s rules are not worth following.

How do I do that without inadvertently teaching my children they don’t have to follow the rules that make sense? That will surely be a problem because a child does not have the experience yet to understand the difference between a rule that actually protects his well-being and one that is only meant to protect the authority of the rule-maker.

I know I can’t be the only adult out there who thinks this. What do you do when you think the rules are silly? How do you tell your children they occasionally have to bend to society’s norms without breaking their spirit?

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, I’m offering up an encore of this 2011 blog posting.

This weekend, I found a tiny square photograph at my mom’s house. It shows me and Mr. Pepper, my third and fourth grade teacher, in the auditorium of my grade school. The photo is small, but Mr. Pepper’s influence on my life wasn’t.

There are other faces I recognize in the picture, but none of them is as meaningful to me at Mr. Pepper’s.

Jack Pepper was my third grade teacher and to the best of my knowledge, everyone in my class adored him. He was friendly but firm. And he knew us and he knew what made us tick and what motivated us. And he knew when each of us needed a little discreet extra help.

At the end of the year we were sad. Not only because we were wrapping up our year with him but because, if I remember correctly, he was leaving our school, too. On our final report cards we got next year’s teacher assignment. I don’t remember who it was, but it wasn’t Mr. Pepper.

Or so we thought. Our assigned teacher didn’t appear on the first day of school. Instead, Jack Pepper was back at P.S. 199. And even better, he was assigned to our class!

That year, we took part in a dance festival in the schoolyard and Mr. Pepper spent much of the year taking us to the gym where we learned to do the Charleston to an awful 1970s update of a vintage tune.

We made our own class magazine. I made a speech when we planted a tree on Arbor Day. I recited the Gettysburg Address, donning a Lincoln-sized hat, onstage during a school production. And when the year was over, we were once again sad.

But I got to see Mr. Pepper again a few weeks later when he showed up at our house. It was around my birthday, if not actually on the day, and tucked under his arm was a copy of The Beatles’ “Yesterday and Today.”

Mr. Pepper knew I was a blossoming Beatles freak. And he knew which records I did and didn’t have.

Mr. Pepper was THAT teacher. I lost touch with him for years afterward and I regret it. In 2007, I stopped at P.S. 199 and a security guard told me she knew him. He’d returned to the school where he worked in an office that the Board of Education occupied there. But, she said, he had died a year or two before. (Note: I have since discovered that he died in 2004.)

I can’t say exactly what Mr. Pepper taught me, because, I think, his influence was wide-ranging and profound. He taught us math and reading, certainly, but he also taught us kindness and diplomacy and, of course, how to do the Charleston, too.

I know that 35 years after I last saw him, I remember him fondly and I know with certainty that he was the best teacher I ever encountered.

My kids will never meet him in a classroom, but there are Mr. Peppers in classrooms all across the country who, this very minute, are having the same effect on children, and I hope they get to meet at least one of them – if not more – on their journeys.

This evening, the public will have a unique opportunity to view the work of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Visual Art students at MPS’ Ronald Reagan College Preparatory High School.

The students, who participated in the two-year intensive visual arts program, have each created a 30-piece body of work with a central theme and have chosen their finest pieces for display at the IB Gallery Showcase tonight, May 3, from 5 to 8 p.m. in the third-floor art galleries at Reagan High School, 4965 S. 20th St.

Light refreshments will be served.

Some of the students’ work will be submitted to a New York Times project that calls for young people to document their hometown and environment.

Works from the creative arts alliance known as Voices of the Young will be on display as well.

Back when I used to blog about politics, I was a constant critic of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s PolitiFact operation. Or, as I called it, Politi”Fact,” with the emphasis on the sarcasm quotes.

Why? Because PolitiFact Wisconsin, as the local franchise is known, tries to set itself up as a neutral arbiter, and so it usually plays the “both sides do it” card. It can’t be too critical of one side, even if that one side plays far more fast and loose with the facts than the other side does. (Also: there are only two sides, so the truth must lie in the middle!)

This kind of faux-neutrality is the hallmark not of fact-checkers but of a distant, entitled media, hoping to maintain an “above it all” reputation and the good graces of the folks who generously douse the state’s largest media operation with significant political ad buys every couple of years.

In Monday’s paper, the PolitiFact crew examines some claims made about school vouchers by groups both favoring the program’s expansion (including Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker) and opposing it, claiming it is “sorting out the truth” about voucher schools. It should be no surprise that I oppose expansion, though I am not personally involved in the anti-voucher groups cited in this story.

That said, then, my problem lies less in what they did write than in what they left out.

They covered three things: comparisons of student achievement, issues related to special education, and background checks for employees. Among those, the biggest omission is their discussion of voucher-program attrition across the board. While they note that the School Choice Demonstration Project admitted to having trouble with high-schoolers leaving the program during the study (a full 75% of all the students who entered the voucher program as ninth-graders in all of Milwaukee left the program before graduation, leading to some real problems with the data), I’ve noted on this site before the problems with students who enter and leave the program at all grade levels. Students who move from voucher schools to MPS — amuch more likely direction for switching than the inverse — are more likely to have lower achievement scores than students who never left MPS in the first place. As I noted at the time, experts blame the chaotic marketplace that Milwaukee’s voucher program has spawned for this achievement deficiency.

Another omission from the PolitiFact story is the financial consequences of the voucher program on the public schools they supplant. As you have seen in Milwaukee over the last 20-plus years, pulling tens of thousands of students — and their attendant funding — out of the public schools has a devastating effect. And there is what’s known as the voucher funding flaw, a kink in the math of the way the program is paid for that punishes Milwaukee taxpayers in several different ways.

This is not a “both sides are right and both sides are wrong” issue; the financial effects are real and painful and need to be accounted for if there is going to be further program expansion.

But perhaps the biggest omission in the PolitiFact collection of grievances against voucher expansion is the notion of oversight and accountability. The voucher program with its approximately 25,000 students, if it were its own school district, would be the state’s third largest, behind Milwaukee and Madison. The voucher program spends well over $150 million a year of your taxpayer dollars. And yet despite its size and cost, there is next to no accountability to taxpayers or to the state.

There is no elected school board that oversees the voucher program; there is no central administration that coordinates instruction or ensures that each school actually offers the curriculum it promises or pressures schools to boost student achievement. There is no central repository of data about how well individual schools perform, no “report card” for any of the voucher schools that can be compared to the public schools’ data reporting. Voucher schools do not have to comply with many state and federal requirements, up to and including open meetings laws for their governing bodies, creating a level of opacity that no taxpayer-funded enterprise should be allowed to maintain.

For some, this is the great appeal of the voucher system — a set of schools free from the domineering regulation of the state, free to succeed or fail at the whim of the market, like New Coke or Daiwoo.

But the “market theory” of governance, the notion that these schools do not need oversight because parents can exercise “choice” and shut these schools down, has consistently failed over the years to shutter the worst-performing schools. Even the paltry requirement that schools must acquire some form of accreditation once has failed to stop repeat offender schools from enrolling children and taking taxpayer funds. The state Department of Public Instruction, which has the greatest level of oversight of these schools, is largely powerless to do anything about schools that underperform or otherwise fail to teach children unless those schools commit a paperwork violation. Any and every attempt over the last decade to empower DPI to offer more rigorous oversight of voucher schools, or to impose greater accountability or reporting requirements upon them, has failed in the state legislature.

When schools in Milwaukee or Racine (or Beloit or Waukesha or any of the other places the Wisconsin Republicans want to expand vouchers into) fail to live up to expectations, there are intense federal and state guidelines to follow for how to push for improvement, and the elected school boards and central administration must be responsive to parent and taxpayer concerns. What expansion means is a massive increase in the number of unregulated and unaccountable schools that ultimately answer to no one.

That PolitiFact doesn’t bother to note these objections, objections that simply cannot be answered with a “truth” that lies somewhere in the middle, is both disappointing and not entirely unexpected.

Many observers have called Gov.Scott Walker’s proposal to expand private school vouchers bad education policy.  I agree. Today I would like to address voucher expansion from the perspective of fiscal policy.

If voucher advocates are successful in expanding private school vouchers in this budget, vouchers will eventually become one of the largest taxpayer-funded entitlements in Wisconsin.

I realize this is a strong statement. I also understand that voucher proponents argue the Governor’s proposal increases voucher eligibility to just nine new school districts in 2013-14. If you let the nose of the camel inside the tent, however, it won’t be long before the rest of the camel is inside the tent as well.

The ultimate objective of private school voucher advocates is a statewide system of private school vouchers for all Wisconsin school children. Voucher advocates, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, have repeatedly voiced their support for statewide vouchers. This objective became crystal-clear in a recent news interview when School Choice Wisconsin Vice-President Terry Brown identified the goal of voucher proponents as “a voucher in every backpack.”

So, how much could this entitlement end up costing Wisconsin taxpayers?

Let’s just focus on those students currently enrolled in private school, because of course, lawmakers wouldn’t deny those children access to a voucher simply because they are already enrolled in private school.  It wouldn’t be fair and it probably wouldn’t be legal. Let’s also remove the question of income eligibility because Governor Walker has already expressed his desire to remove the income eligibility requirements for vouchers.

According to the Department of Public Instruction, we have 97,488 students currently enrolled in private schools in Wisconsin but not receiving a taxpayer-funded voucher. If we multiply that number by the current voucher payment of $6,442, we get just over $628 million.

But, the governor’s proposal would increase the voucher payment to $7,050 for K-8 students and $7,856 for high school students.  Just for perspective, if we multiply the private school enrollment figure by $7,050, we get over $687 million.  And, if we multiply the enrollment figure by $7,856, we get almost $766 million. Clearly, voucher expansion will be a large and growing fiscal commitment for Wisconsin taxpayers.

So, what would voucher proponents have lawmakers do to fund this growing entitlement? Raise taxes?

In the 1990s, Gov. Tommy Thompson was asked about his lack of support for statewide voucher expansion. He answered, “We can’t afford two systems of education.”  His words ring just as true today as they did then.

We simply can’t afford two systems of education in Wisconsin.

After spending nine years on the staff of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, I have to say I am perplexed that so many fiscal conservatives would support growing entitlement spending of this magnitude.

Voucher expansion is not only bad education policy. It is bad fiscal policy as well.

John Forester is the director of government relations for the School Administrators Alliance (SAA).

The women of the MPS board: Claire Zautke, Annie Woodward, Tati Joseph and Meagan Holman. (Meagan Holman photo.)

Director Michael Bonds was unanimously re-elected Tuesday evening as president of the Milwaukee Board of School Directors for the 2013-14 Board year.

Director Meagan Holman was unanimously elected vice president. She replaces Director Larry Miller in that role.

The Tuesday administrative meeting was the first Board meeting for newly-elected Board directors Tatiana Joseph, who represents the re-drawn 6th district, replacing Peter Blewett, and Claire Zautke, who represents the 7th district, replacing David Voeltner.

According to U.S. News & World Report magazine, Shorewood High School is the top school in the state of Wisconsin, followed by King International (Rufus King), Marshfield High in Marshfield, West High in West Bend and Carmen High and Technology in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee School of Languages was rated 25th in the state.

Schools were ranked according to the student-to-teacher ratio, college readiness, math proficiency and reading proficiency.

Shorewood also ranked 476th in the nation.

I graduated from Shorewood High School and I always say this: I had some issues socially (mostly because I was a big Goth dork) but I received a really excellent education. My first year of college was a breeze.

Go, Greyhounds!

The latest results from a new system of standardized tests for Wisconsin students has set off yet another round in the seemingly endless debate about education in Milwaukee.

Which is best? Public schools or voucher schools?

If you’ve been paying attention to the debate that has surrounded this issue for the past 30 years or so, you probably have your own opinion.

But a new round of standardized tests that found Milwaukee public school students performed better than their counterparts in voucher schools was immediately touted by MPS officials who understand much of the money that goes to school choice in Milwaukee comes from the same pot of tax payer money as public schools.

More and more, it’s getting harder to keep what is essentially two separate education systems functioning at the same time without knowing exactly what the benefit will be in the future.

The debate over school choice – a program that allows students to attend private schools at taxpayer cost – comes out of  a general dissatisfaction with the state of public education by many African-American parents. That movement evolved to point where it accumulated various political enemies, including the state teachers’ union and the usual assortment of Democrats and Republicans fighting across partisan lines.

Somehow, the need to improve the education of failing black children got lost in the mix. But the new state tests were supposed to address that.

Being able to compare tests scores has always been a sore point for some MPS officials because many voucher schools have not been required to take the same kind of standardized tests as other students in the state.

Since new test cut scores designed to raise standards in reading and math was adopted last year, many school systems have to adjust to having less students rated “proficient” or “advanced” than in recent years.

In a statement Tuesday, MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton noted that MPS students continued to outperform their counterparts who used publicly funded vouchers. According to the results, MPS students scored 3.4 higher than voucher students in reading and 6.5 points higher in math.

But nobody could deny the overall results of the standardized testing revealed daunting problems still remain with under-performing students in Milwaukee Public Schools.

In his remarks, Thornton praised the results but noted there was more to do.

“We have seen some promising increases in achievement among students who have  historically underperformed,” Thornton said. “We are working hard to make sure that the significant reforms we have put in place … will yield stronger results in the coming years.”

School choice supporters will no doubt question the veracity of these latest round of new standardized tests. Some spokespersons for various voucher schools have already criticized the way the testing was done for some private schools included in the results.

School choice remains a political and racial football because of its origins as a movement by African-American parents to give their children the same quality of education that some white families get. Due to the nature of using tax money to duplicate what public education is supposed to do, the fight over school choice has split across partisan lines that often cloud the essential issues.

In his latest budget proposal, Gov. Scott Walker wants to freeze spending on public education in Wisconsin even while proposing the expansion of voucher schools in other parts of the state. Some educators in Milwaukee fear that means the pot of money for public education will continue to get reduced.

For some educators, given the results of latest test scores, it seems like this is the wrong time to offer less help instead of more.

When you work with young people in Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods, it’s easy to see how important it is for them to be able to get a job one day.

Before they do, it’s even more important they know how to apply for a job.

Many young people looking for jobs this summer want to work but lack some fundamental training in how to make that happen. Sadly, many of them live in households where some that type of information isn’t readily offered by the adults in their lives.

James M. Ferguson, executive director at Career Youth Development, puts it more plainly. 

“They don’t know because many of them don’t live in households with working parents,” he said, referring to chronic black unemployment in some areas of Milwaukee. “There’s no working parent for them to learn from.”

That was the reason CYD began to offer application workshops so young people could learn an important first step in seeking a job: Learning how to fill  out the application.

Ferguson said although some of the problem could be attributed to poor reading or writing skills, with other young people it was a matter of getting young people to learn how to describe their previous work experience for an employer. Many young people at CYD have worked for years at various summer or part-time jobs but the act of filling out an application remained an uncomfortable one.

“We want to show them how to fill out an applicant correctly so the employer is interested,” said Ferguson during an interview at CYD offices on King Drive. “A lot of them have work experience but they just can’t articulate it. Sometimes it’s because they don’t come from households where that comes easy to them and there’s tension.”

Ferguson said the city’s jobs program for young people through the Milwaukee Area Workforce Investment Board was offering “hundreds” of jobs this year for youth ages 14-17 years old. As in previous years, CYD is working to prepare young applicants for the interview, including personal presentation and awareness about workplace protocol.

CYD is holding regular application workshop sessions until the May 1 st. deadline at their offices at 2601 N. King Dr. Some items required for the workshop are a copy of a birth certificate, social security card, drivers’ license or proof of income from a parent or guardian.

It seems a simple enough checklist but for a young person living in a challenging environment, it’s not as easy as it seems. Ferguson said that many CYD youth had trouble getting their parents to provide items like birth certificates or even social security numbers.

He suspects many of them are intimidated by the application process, which doesn’t bode well for young African-Americans living in a city with a huge black unemployment problem.

“Every year, it’s a struggle to get them to apply,” said Ferguson, who said his agency was requesting about 30 summer jobs for young people in the area but would probably receive less than that.

He was concerned that some young people didn’t understand the importance of filling out a job application correctly, particularly given the competition from other young people across the city.

“If (employers) don’t see what they want, they will just weed them out,” said Ferguson. “That’s why we want our kids to be able to compete.”

With all of the political attention on photo ID for voting, it’s likely CYD’s efforts to teach young people on the north side how to use personal information in a job search will pay off with a more informed population. It could also lead to a future generation of citizens who won’t have any trouble producing the kind of documents required.

It will be even better if some of these young people learning how to fill out job applications today end up getting that much desired call as a result.

By April Spray Newton

Just like, oh, the rest of the world, Iʼm horrified by what happened in Boston this week during the marathon. Bombing anyone, at any time, for any reason, is absurd. During war, we say itʼs necessary, but we still know itʼs absurd. It becomes even more bizarre when civilians are the target and the purpose is merely to terrorize.

Iʼm also struggling with something more personal, and possibly related, though itʼs connection may be difficult to see at first.

When I picked up my son from his after-school program on Monday, after ripping myself away from the bombing information on Twitter and the news sites, a little boy in the same room as my son started singing, “his mom is white and his dad is black”, in reference to my child. He sang it with that schoolyard cadence used for jump-rope or picking dibs on the next swing.

And his little tune kicked me in the metaphorical gut.

Itʼs true: my sonʼs mom, that would be me, is white. And my sonʼs father, my husband, is black. What got me is that the first person, in all of my sonʼs 5 1/2 years, to feel the need to point out his racial background, was a 7-year-old.

I’ve spent years bracing myself for a nasty exchange with a close-minded octogenarian. I’ve worked out a plan, though it requires that the other person receive the same script, for the time when one of my peers comes at me with a snide comment.

It never occurred to me that my first exchange would be with a child and that there wouldn’t really be an effective, or appropriate, way to “handle” it.

As I’ve tried to process Captain Obviousʼ sing-song racial inventory, Iʼm realizing it will be virtually impossible to protect my son from people who want him to be responsible for his parentsʼ choice to marry and procreate.

The same is true of those poor people in Boston. I doubt anyone could have protected them from someone intent on making them the victims. I promise you that the story surrounding the bombing will involve forcing innocent people to take arbitrary responsibility for foreign policy, religious beliefs, political ideologies or something equally as unfair.

Please donʼt think for a second that I am equating a childʼs taunt with a deadly terror attack. That would be as absurd as the bombing itself. I think Iʼm merely trying to process that there is no true way to prevent people from bringing the innocent along on their warped world tour of misunderstanding, hatred and violence. We canʼt stop going places, we canʼt stop interacting with others, and we canʼt stop making an effort to learn more, do more and be as heroic in our responses as those we saw in Boston.

(Milwaukee Public Schools photo)

Seventy-nine Milwaukee Public Schools students have won national honors for their German language skills from the American Association of Teachers of German.

More than two dozen of the MPS students – 27 – received Gold Certificates for scoring in the top 10% nationally on this school year’s AATG National German Exam.

Another 30 MPS students are Silver Certificate winners for scoring in the top 20% and 22 won Bronze Certificates for scoring in the top 30%.

MPS’ Milwaukee School of Languages is home to 55 of the award-winning students, including 10 Gold Certificate winners, 24 Silver Certificate winners and 21 Bronze Certificate winners.

MPS’ Rufus King International School is home to 24 winners, including 17 Gold winners, 6 Silver winners and 1 Bronze winner. 

“These are incredible accomplishments that make my very proud of my hometown and strengthen my belief in Milwaukee Public Schools,” said Dr. Michael Koch, chair of the Wisconsin testing committee for AATG. “These young people know how much German has broadened their horizons and will benefit them in the future.”

“We are proud to offer strong foreign language coursework for our students, including traditional courses in middle and high school as well as our popular and successful K4 through 12th grade language immersion programs,” MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton said. “My congratulations to the students, their families and their teachers!”

The winning students and their teachers are:

Under the instruction of Janelle Morgan (winner of the German Embassy’s Teacher of Excellence Award) and Richard Wiegand, Milwaukee School of Languages:

Karl Arnhold   - Gold
Julianna Carroll  - Gold
Alaric Mueller  - Gold
Alex Erickson  - Gold
Angelisa Dickey  - Gold
Gilbert Graf  - Silver
Katherine Denney  - Silver
Jonathon Roecklein  - Silver
Johnryan Cooper  - Silver
Isaiah Morgan  - Silver
Karissa Rohde  - Silver
Abby Scardino  - Bronze
Samuel Charnon  - Bronze
Brandon Quartana  - Bronze
Serena Bartz  - Bronze
Isaiah Muehlbauer  - Bronze
Adam Baranek  - Bronze
Amber Feiter Brown  - Bronze
Ryan Dushek  - Bronze

Rebecca Lork  - Gold
Carly Floyd  - Gold
Terran Brockway  - Gold
Andrew McKee  - Gold
Forrest Fink  - Gold
Ben Gorzek  - Gold
Jessica Schweizer  - Silver
Christopher Huhta  - Silver
Misty Voss   - Silver
Sarah Graf   - Silver
Aaron Glazewski   - Silver
Dravin Thomas   - Silver
Emily Skorik   - Silver
Ameila Zietlow   - Silver
Calvin Mattheis   - Silver
Jeremiah Barkstrom   - Silver
Stormi Buczak   - Silver
Miranda Marshall   - Silver
Tristan Rohde   - Silver
Zainah Masri   - Silver
Michael Carvan   - Silver
Gabrielle Osterman   - Silver
Doren Schaefer   - Silver
Troy Humes   - Silver
Katharina Carvan  - Bronze
Hanna Durrell  - Bronze
Julia Barkstrom   - Bronze
David Koehler  - Bronze
Mayaserena Her  - Bronze
Ashanti Rogers  - Bronze
Rain Cebertowicz  - Bronze
Jonathan Zager  - Bronze
Angelynn Dickey  - Bronze
Micah Williams  - Bronze
Paul Brower  - Bronze
Jack Chevremont – Bronze
Shana Koch   - Bronze

Under the instruction of Sabine Beirold (two-time winner of the Duden Award for the Outstanding German Teacher in Wisconsin), Rufus King International School:

Emily Trific  - Gold
Daniel Anker  - Gold
Elizabeth Anderson  - Gold
Kimberly Phillip  - Gold
Jordan Kreitzman  - Silver
Madeleine Brekke  - Silver
Ashante Alfrord  - Silver
Elizabeth Penn  - Bronze

Annie Beamish Crouthamel  - Gold
Madeline Griffith  - Gold
Madeleine Carroll  - Gold
Chelsea Mattheis  - Gold
Daniel Fullmer  - Gold
Aubrey Krzynski  - Gold
Lauren Saindon  - Gold
Pauline Scharping  - Gold
Darlene Johns  - Gold
Paige Taft  - Gold
Moriah Mucha  - Gold
Eric Dushek  - Gold
Jacob Grudnowski  - Gold
Jessica Jackson  - Silver
Sarah Grudnowski  - Silver
Gabryana Bowen  - Silver