Milwaukee schools moving employees out of central office, into classrooms to address academic outcomes

Teachers working in the Milwaukee school district’s central office will be moved into classrooms next school year to help address academic outcomes in the struggling district. 

Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius announced the changes Wednesday in a letter to staff. 

In total, 181 job changes will be made under Cassellius’ plan. 

“First and foremost, academic outcomes for our students are not where they should be,” she wrote. “We must have the courage to make changes that will benefit our students urgently.” 

Cassellius wrote that in her two months as head of MPS, she believes the challenges are “rooted in broken systems and structures,” not people. 

MPS Chief of Academics Jennifer Mims-Howell will move 40 certified teachers into classrooms throughout the district. 

District leaders expect to have close to 80 vacant teaching positions at the start of the school year. 

A total of 181 positions in the academics office will be “excessed.” Affected staff will be notified Thursday. 

About 140 of those jobs will be reposed and existing staff will be able to apply. Many of the new jobs will be classified as academic coaches and literacy specialists. 

Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association President Ingrid Walker-Henry said the union is in “staunch opposition” to Cassellius’ plans.

“It is to our great disappointment that Superintendent Cassellius ordered the unnecessary wholesale excessing of 181 dedicated MPS educators who have devoted their careers to the students of Milwaukee Public Schools,” Walker-Henry said in a statement.

In February, before Cassellius arrived, an independent audit commissioned by Gov. Tony Evers found MPS was not adequately supporting student success. 

The damning 41-page report outlined a number of internal and external factors at the district that have caused multiple failures, including  an “absence of clear vision” and “leadership routinely disempowered to lead.”

Cassellius said the staffing changes come in direct response to that report. 

“Our students deserve highly effective teachers at the head of their classrooms and this change can make that possible for more of them,” she wrote to staff. 

MPS has about 67,000 students. Half of the children are Black and 84 percent are economically disadvantaged.

Only 9 percent of fourth graders performed at or above the National Assessment of Educational Progress proficient level in reading in 2023, down from 12 percent in 2022.

Fifteen percent of eighth graders were proficient.

Cassellius said the changes will also provide the district with cost-savings that can be directly reinvested into schools, not the central office. 

“This will include additional support and resources for embedded teacher professional development and school-level instructional leadership,” she said. 

Next week, Cassellius plans to share her proposed leadership structure with staff.