School flight

Enrollment in the Madison school district is on a concerning, downward trend

February 14, 2022

10:00 AM

MChe Lee/Unsplash

City leadership in recent months did away with a financial penalty imposed on some city employees who did not reside in Madison. Mayor Rhodes-Conway, citing fairness and the city’s housing shortage, eliminated the residency penalty that at the end of 2021 affected 400 professional and supervisory staffers, according to a report from Dylan Brogan in Isthmus.

While all city employees at one time were required to live within the city limits, the residency requirement was eliminated for Madison Metro drivers in the 1980s and in subsequent years for other unionized employees as well. Arguments to keep the requirement were based in part on concerns over a dwindling middle class, while opponents have cited the high cost of living in Madison and the quality of suburban schools.

Dan Rolfs, a community development project manager for the city and a union representative for the Madison Professional and Supervisory Employee Association, told Brogan that members have had concerns about sending their kids to public schools in Madison and were drawn to the new high school facilities of Verona, DeForest and Sun Prairie.

It’s understandable. The resource-rich tech and science labs, professional looking athletic facilities, expansive aquatic centers, and unique greenhouses in these suburban schools would be a draw for any parent. Who doesn’t want the best education for their children?

According to a 2021 report from the Madison school district, enrollment has been “decreasing slightly since the 2014-15 school year” and the district projects another decrease next school term. Enrollment for 4K-12 in 2021-22 was 25,936 students, down 482 students from 2020-21.

The report cites several factors that have potentially influenced this downward trend, including declining birth rates in Dane County and the COVID-19 pandemic. But it also notes that 63 percent of the students who attended Madison schools in 2020-2021 but did not return in 2021-22 transferred to “another Wisconsin public school district — either through the Open Enrollment program or by moving to a different district.”

Parents are opting to take their kids elsewhere. Whether it’s for what they perceive as a better education, or because of a job change or other factors, their choice is no longer MMSD. And as history shows, parental choice as it relates to schooling has broad societal implications.

Just look at Milwaukee, where school choice programs have “[enabled] the children of white families to attend — and subsidize — the region’s suburban schools…while further undermining the financial base of urban public schools,” according to a 2016 study published by the International Journal of Regional Development.

If you benefit from a city of Madison paycheck, putting that paycheck back into Madison schools and children is an example of good citizenship. Over time too many parents opting to send their kids to neighboring school districts will result in a divestment from the Madison school district.

In the grand scheme of things, 400 employees are not going to fundamentally alter the reality of the Madison school district. But it is ultimately a matter of principle. The trend of opting out of Madison schools is what can prove catastrophic in the long run.

Strong public education requires investment; investment not just from municipal, county or state government but from community members as well.

Madison kids deserve state-of-the-art high school facilities just as much as suburban kids. In fact, every kid in Wisconsin does. And they shouldn’t be punished for the systemic failures of our public school system or abandoned to suffer the consequences.

So while no individual parent should be shamed for “fleeing” Madison schools, as a collective, we all play a role in the health of our community.

Nada Elmikashfi is chief of staff to state Rep. Francesca Hong and a former candidate for state Senate.

Comments (3)

Comment Feed

Misguided

This piece is a bit misguided. Why subject teachers, and other low-paid government employees, to lives of poverty within the city limits? And for what? Looking good on state rankings?

The city has made woefully inadequate efforts to both compensate our public servants and provide an affordable life in the city. The least we can do is allow (without shame) them to live where they can enjoy some of the fruits of their labor, instead of giving it all up to a corporate landlord.

Rankings matter on paper. Lives matter in the real world.

Danny more than 2 years ago

Anderson comment continued...

If we refuse to face that immutable fact, the scene that is unfurling in front of our eyes shows that we will actually only make it worse for them.

For after eight years of these well-intentioned policies that, to avoid disproportionate outcomes, end in no consequences, by 8th grade, about 95% – 95%! – of black students in Madison’s schools continue, as before the intervention, to be unable to read at grade level. Not able to keep up with the class work, what else can we expect otherwise healthy teens to do as they seek to retain their self-esteem but act up. And, when they leave school with no skills to succeed in the new information economy, to yield to the siren song of the drug culture.

Could I be blunt? The reason why racial justice advocates have found themselves pushing hard against an open door in dominating the School Board is because the elites they thought they were fighting have found it simpler to pick up and take their kids out of the District’s schools.

The tragic price of that complex dynamic, as your essay makes clear you understand, is a future in which the District will find it increasingly difficult to raise funds, and, with the flight of black as well as white families focused on education, a failed school system in which the disadvantaged we both are determined to help are trapped.

I would urge you to consider, together, commencing a community dialog by young racial justice advocates like yourself with others who share the same goal before things reach a death spiral in our schools and it is too late.

Peter Anderson more than 2 years ago

Black as well as white flight from city's schools

You have put your finger on a vital concern to whether disadvantaged kids in Madison can continue to have a pathway out of poverty through a good education when middle class families with children flee the District.

If we think the District’s physical plant isn’t attractive now in comparison to Middleton’s, then we have to be extremely worried about what will happen to funding when less than 1 in 10 households have a child in the city’s schools, and very few from the professional classes that politics caters to.

My three children went to Madison schools, as are my three grandchildren now, because we’re deeply committed to public schools and a diverse education.

But, it would not be realistic to expect that from everyone. Most parents, black as well as white, put their kids’ education above everything else, and they have concerns that go far beyond the science labs, even though no one wants to talk about it out loud. When they see a collapse in discipline, and the serious deterioration in learning that follows, it is unrealistic to expect them to keep their kids in the District, since they only need to move three or four miles to escape that turmoil.

I want you to know that there are those who fight every day for racial justice, but have become very concerned that the direction the Board has been taking since 2014 is becoming terribly counterproductive to the justice goals you and I share. It is the unintended secondary impacts from those racial justice policies, not fancy buildings, that largely explains the flight from the District that concerns both of us.

As just one example of what I mean, the Behavior Education Plan had a great idea to designate a Positive Behavior Coach in each school charged with learning about the troubled kids’ problems. They were to be focused, whenever possible, on diffusing outbursts that fester in poverty to keep those innocent children as far away as possible from the criminal justice system.

The problem, however, is what to do when the constructive intervention doesn’t work, as will often be the case in the real world, because the underlying problems are too severe, the coach is not perfect, or the timing just doesn’t work out.

As things have stood for the past eight years, in order to avoid disproportionate outcomes, the disruption continues, and conditions spiral downward. Teens can be wonderful as they begin to spread their wings, but they are also devilishly clever at figuring out and exploiting grown up’s weaknesses. As a result, the message gets almost instantly picked up and passed along the grapevine that there are no consequences, after which all hell breaks loose.

That is to say, there are real-world limits to what we can do for kids, who for no fault of their own, were born into horribly impoverished lives. I volunteer at One City Schools and could cry at the struggles against adversity these wonderful kids go through every day, yet they continue, somehow, to persevere.

CONTINUED BELOW..

Peter Anderson more than 2 years ago