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In a new attack on public education, the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) district in Wisconsin is considering closing 13 school buildings as part of its long-term facilities master plan. The 13 buildings are located in a three-square-mile area in the city’s poorest neighborhoods, with six of the buildings in the city’s poorest zip code.

While any public comment on the school closure plan has been avoided, the operation is largely overseen by Democratic Mayor Cavalier Johnson and the Democrat-controlled Common Council. At a press conference in June, Johnson warned of “deep problems” in the state’s largest school district, saying they “require solutions, and they require immediate solutions.”

The mayor has said he has no interest in taking over the school district and trusts the current superintendent and board of education officials to find solutions to the financial crisis.

Democrats, who control the governor’s office and one of the two houses of the state Legislature, also cut state aid to Milwaukee schools by $81 million in 2024-25. Additionally, the Biden-Harris administration allowed federal Covid-19 school funding to expire. Wisconsin received $2.4 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, funding.

The Milwaukee school district used three rounds of ESSER funding totaling $786.42 million to hire staff, purchase technology and textbooks, and improve air quality in classrooms. After the funding ended, the district laid off nearly 300 school employees.

MPS’s announcement is part of a nationwide attack on public education. Finally, Seattle Public Schools (SPS) announced that 17 to 21 elementary schools will close next year, resulting in hundreds of teacher and staff layoffs. More than 100 schools in Chicago are in danger of being destroyed. “More than 100 schools are being analyzed for possible cuts, closures, or consolidations,” Chicago Teachers Union leaders wrote in a Sept. 13 email to all union members.

The leaders of the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and their Democratic Party-aligned state and local organizations have been complicit in school closures. There have been no calls for strikes, strikes, or protests, and the history of school closures — especially in Chicago, where the Democratic Party government closed 50 schools after the CTU sold out the teachers’ strike in 2012 — serves as a sobering lesson for educators everywhere. The fight against school closures should be addressed through the formation of rank-and-file committees of educators to wage a fight independent of union bureaucracies.

The district hired Perkins Eastman, a New York-based architecture, urban design and strategic planning firm, to prepare the school closure and merger plan.

Last week, the district held a “town hall” session chaired by both school officials and representatives from Perkins Eastman. The event was open to the public and took place with the participation of parents and teachers. The firm’s findings and recommendations were presented on a deck of 56 slides bearing the logos of both MPS and Perkins Eastman.

The firm used a “sorting tree” strategy to apply one of seven recommendations to each building. The “closure or merger” recommendation applied to buildings with an occupancy rate below 50 percent, a stable or declining enrollment, and those located within 1 mile of another building. Possibly redirecting students to a nearby school with capacity could enable the closure of a building and the associated cost savings.