Democrat Dos and Donts: Deming up Public Education

Here at Milwaukee Beagle, we think there’s utility in giving even the most morally bereft, psychotically moderate Dem power player a point when they occasionally do something right. And even our closest, most reliable allies should be held accountable when they fuck up. With that, we bring you Democrat Dos and Don'ts: a weekly-ish feature highlighting the good dogs/gallants/ballers and the bad dogs/goofuses/scrubs in (mostly!) Milwaukee politics.

Democrats Do Defend Public Education

Public financing is complicated, in part because some people would rather not have any public financing at all. If it were as simple as Milwaukee collecting tax revenue then spending that  revenue on public infrastructure, the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) district might not be in the godawful mess it’s in –unfortunately, the reality is complicated and stupid, just like most bureaucracies.

Thankfully, Senator Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) has been consistently, clearly cutting to the point on the problems with MPS. You can find his recent overview here.

MPS has a massive budget, but that budget shrank significantly along with student enrollment and staffing over the past 20+ years. This is the central, unavoidable problem with MPS: so long as *any* public funding and students go to private schools –via charter and school voucher programs– MPS will die a slow death.

In this video posted on June 18, 2024, Larson lays out what many fail to understand (or pretend not to understand because they actually want public schools to fail): MPS has longstanding structural problems that place too much authority –and too many responsibilities– under the superintendent. This was not always the case: until the early 1990s, much of the day-to-day financial business of MPS was handled by a separate, dedicated administrator. 

What happened? Former MPS superintendent and school voucher co-inventor Howard Fuller got his way and eliminated that position. When consolidating power under his control failed to miraculously fix MPS, Fuller did what generations of capitalist administrators have done: blamed the union and the school board.

If you create a massive, bureaucratic unit of government, require it to constantly scramble for funding, then treat the financial maintenance of that unit of government like a side job, you’re inevitably going to fuck over innocent students. Individual acts of fucking up may be the result of specific people fucking up, but you’ve built a system that’s designed to fail eventually. Democrats should consistently focus on fixing that system and call it what it is: a massive, complicated bureaucracy that shouldn’t have too much authority or responsibility placed under one unelected person.

Democrats Don’t Commit Fraud To Privatize Public Schools

As alluded to above, there are people aggressively, publicly working to destroy public education in Milwaukee. And some are, unfortunately, Democrats. And one is being charged with school board electoral fraud.

One of the most public-facing spokespeople for charter schools, vouchers, and statutorily defunding public schools in Milwaukee is former MPS school board member Aisha Carr, who was charged on Tuesday with lying about where she lived in order to run for school board in an open district. This makes Carr, allegedly, one of many carpetbagging candidates and elected officials in Wisconsin.

Strangely, however, Carr has never (prior to her resignation!) been the target of “grassroots” recall efforts: that would instead be four school board members who –to varying degrees of success– protect MPS from defunding, deregulation, and privatization.[1]

The “community leaders” trying to recall these democratically-elected school board members praised Carr the very same day she was charged with deceiving the public to gain political power. While most of the group is remaining anonymous, spokesperson Tamika Johnson –self-described “Minister, Life Coach, Motivational Speaker, and Author” and a teacher at a creationist private school-- has her name on at least one recall document. She’s continued praising and supporting Carr throughout the latter’s scandal(s), strangely failing to extend the same spirit of forgiveness to the rest of MPS’ board.[2]

One possible explanation for the recall effort’s defense of Carr and its hatred of anti-privatization school board members: Johnson and Carr both have ties to Howard Fuller and his organization City Forward Collective, a long-standing booster of charter schools, school vouchers, and undermining public funding of public education at every turn. While City Forward itself has not declared or denied its role in the recall effort, it has boosted the recallers’ press conference on multiple platforms.

Despite what you may think based on her love of privatization and deregulation, Carr isn’t a Republican – she’s a Democrat, one who used to be a staffer for progressive Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold. While Johnson’s affiliation is less clear, she was, until very recently the Wisconsin State Conference NAACP Education Committee Chair –and the NAACP is a long-standing, powerful ally to the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, Carr and Johnson’s conservative school privatization allies are using this crisis/opportunity to call for expanding the same voucher system that’s defunding MPS, even after the program was very recently expanded. It won’t be enough until MPS is destroyed.

There’s a clear lesson here, one that liberals sometimes seem incapable of learning: when you ally with conservatives and opportunists to institute and implement policy, the resulting policy will almost always be conservative. If it doesn’t start that way, it will end up that way.

Milwaukee Beagle isn’t suggesting that every charter school or voucher booster is corrupt, or conservative, or is willing to do whatever it takes to assert toxic control over what’s left of public education. It just seems that a whole lot of them are.

We invite other publications –especially those that still have decent resources and paid staff– to clearly ask: who is trying to recall these school board members, what is the core political motivation, and why are so few of them transparent about their connection to the charter school and school voucher movements?

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[1] Your author slash good boy Cujo has spoken off-the-record to a trusted source providing strong evidence that these four school board members are very consistently anti-privatization —and are deeply hated by City Forward Collective and its allies for it. More to come on this!

Additionally, our source notes that three board members on the MPS Board’s Committee on Accountability, Finance, and Personnel —Marcela (Xela) Garcia, Darryl Johnson, and Henry Leonard— are not targets of a recall effort that’s explicitly blaming the entire school board for MPS’ financial woes. Make of this what you will, beloved reader.

[2] Incidentally, Johnson’s name is seemingly only attached to one recall document– but multiple documents are attached to the same address: 333 W Brown Deer Rd, Bayside, WI Suite G #4135, a mailbox at Pack N’ Ship Ltd. in Bayside, WI. Multiple documents include the email mps.schoolboardrecalls2024@gmail.com. Do with this information what you will.