Call to Action: How much of an investment do you need?

Since the release of the individual school budgets two weeks ago I have heard from schools all across the city and all of them are saying the same things, “There is even less money than last year.”  “There is nothing left to cut.” ” We are closing a classroom.”  “We will have 40 children in a room.”  “This is unacceptable.” 

My blog last week asked MPS principals and school governance councils to hand back the budget number that the district allocated them and provide the district with a number that the school community feels they need in order to run a fully functioning school.  I have decided that there needs to be a bigger, bolder action on this idea if we are to influence how the system funds our schools and it begins with data collection. I am willing to collect and organize the data in order show what it is our individual school communities actually need from our central office to serve our children and offer them all an equivalent opportunity to learn.

The funding of schools is flawed from start to finish; from how the Federal government allocates dollars, to how the state of Wisconsin continues to disinvest in our children and all of the way down to how individual districts fund their individual schools.  It is time to do things differently and I would like to start with a real assessment of what schools need. 

Sources will be kept confidential and I am asking for every MPS school to fill in the blanks and email it to me at  onemkemom@gmail.com :

Our school __________________________________ is a Milwaukee Public

School and we are dedicated to educating our _________  students.  The minimum

investment our school needs is $__________ to provide a well rounded opportunity

to learn for all of students.

For Fiscal Year 2013 our school has been provided a provisional budget of

$__________, this number is fully inadequate and will cost our children and school

community the following:

(list all of the things you are slated to lose)

Sincerely Yours,

—————————————

It is TIME to tell the district what our schools need to provide a full and robust educational environment for all children!

As of 10 a.m. today, I have 21 – there are 170+ schools; keep sending them in.

At this point, what (more) have we got to lose?

Want to tell them yourself? 

Strategic Planning and Budget Committee (SPB)
Tues., Feb 7th, 6:30pm. Central Office, 5225 W. Vliet
They will be hearing public testimony.