Revamping Milwaukee Schools: From Lead Pipes to Literacy

Welcome back to what's going on with Earl Ingram.

And I'm really excited about my next guest.

She's a really important person.

And I mean, you have to be.

And I am honored.

I met you a couple of times.

I think the first time that I met you.

was over a year ago.

You had just gotten to Milwaukee.

It's Dr. Cassilius.

She is the superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools.

Good morning to you.

How are you?

Good morning.

I'm doing well.

Thanks.

I'm glad to be on your show.

It's been wonderful to meet you those couple of

times.

And the first time I met you,

I was at my alma mater, Washington High School, and especially at prom.

You had just gotten here, and I thought it was really important to see you, the new superintendent, at such a wonderful event.

I've been a part of it now for the last 16 years.

And then I looked up again a few weeks ago, and there you were again.

And it means a lot that you would show up.

for such, I think, one of the greatest events that happens inside the district.

So thank you very much for showing up and supporting all of those families and those young people.

It's a great

event.

It gives me just such joy to be able to show up to those events and particularly this one where our students have disabilities and to watch their faces and on the dance floor and to be able to dance with them and go into the glam room and put on some fun stuff on our faces and so it's just it's just a tremendous amount of joy and then you know

the students there create the food and they help with the decorations and so many staff they're supporting our children and their families.

So very incredible event and I'm so glad that you're part of it each year.

Thank

you.

Let's get started.

Tell us a little bit about Dr. Cassilius.

Oh, well, what do you want to know about me?

I'm pretty much an open

book.

Well, you know, many people across this state.

might not know anything at all about you.

This is going

to be

basically broadcast across the entire state of

Wisconsin.

I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

I grew up in poverty and I used to sell flowers on the street corner when I was little.

So our family was on welfare and just didn't have a lot and that's really what

for me and got me to go into education and go into working with children and particularly our most vulnerable children.

Because there were people who paid it forward for me when I was younger and I figured if it could work for me, it can work for any child if they have the right kind of support.

And so that's what I've dedicated my life to.

And the reason I came to Milwaukee was because we have a lot of children who need a lot.

and don't have much.

And when children don't have much, they should get more when they come to school and they should be supported when they come to school.

And I wanted to come join the dedicated employees here in Milwaukee Public Schools and help this district get back on its feet.

You've been in a couple pretty difficult districts.

So you have a little background in dealing with urban centers, urban cities and what goes on.

But one thing that you just mentioned,

that is so telling and really kind of tells about who you are.

And that's the fact that people who live in poverty and struggle shouldn't have to not receive an education, an equal education.

And unfortunately, we live in a society that that's not always the case.

That is true.

And you know, in particularly large urban districts and segregated cities like Milwaukee, you often see a system and there's it's just been accepted for many years that some kids get more and get better and other kids get less.

And you know, if you have less, you should not come to school and get less.

And so I've dedicated my life to making sure that our most vulnerable kids are the first ones who get the most in anything that I do.

And you'll see that with this budget as well that we're passing this year.

You know, we have investments into the five, three, two, six neighborhood of four schools where we have pledged to have additional staff at those schools.

They've had issues with staffing.

We've pledged to renovate their facility.

and we're putting major investments into that community over $20 million, which is critical.

We also are rebalancing around class size, making sure that our kids have a fighting chance to learn to read.

You probably know that 91% of our fourth graders are not reading on grade level as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

That's not good enough.

and our kids deserve better.

And so that's what we're delivering on.

So Dr. Casillas, what has happened?

I'm a graduate of Milwaukee Public Schools, you know, back when they had gas lights and for lighting.

And even the worst of my classmates could read and write and do basic math.

And

we lost our way on reading.

In particular, we went to a whole language model where we all learned to read with phonics.

And then we went away from teaching children with phonics.

And that was the biggest thing.

And that's how our brain learns how to read.

And so we've brought back the science of reading, which is really just understanding and being able to have high quality materials in front of teachers so that they could monitor and their reading level.

and kids' understanding of reading and the way that they're progressing with their reading based on a phonics approach.

And I think that's gonna get us some good results across the entire district.

So you've walked into a hornet's nest.

I don't know if you knew the conditions that existed in Milwaukee public schools economically, socially, and all those other different things.

And you're expected to turn this around overnight.

And so generations of young people have graduated or come out of Milwaukee public schools, functionally illiterate at a time.

One out of every four Milwaukeeans read at a third grade level or below.

And this is at a time when we live in a technological global society.

That wasn't the case when I was coming up.

There wasn't a global and technological society, which means it's even more important that young people educated.

Now, there are many different ways that you want to approach this.

One of the things is you want to kind of change the format from K through six and then seven through 12.

Tell me why that's important.

Well, one, it's important to focus on elementary grades so that they're ready to take the rigor that comes when they get into junior high school and high school.

That's one.

We need to ensure that students have an elementary basic foundation of learning with the basics, the way that, you know, we learned.

K6 allows us to do that with really understanding where they're headed in K5 and then in sixth grade doing a boost for those kids who are below grade level and then launching them into the

seventh through twelfth grade in more rigorous coursework and getting our middle school kids engaged a lot sooner into their

programming around career pathways, support programming for their social emotional well-being, you know, young adolescents, they tend to engage in riskier behaviors and not having counselors, social workers, having them engaged in after school clubs, athletics is not good for them.

And so we want to make sure that they don't lose their way when they're in junior high school because they're, you know,

They have just one teacher, for instance, who's teaching all of them, all of the subjects.

One teacher can't teach all the subjects at that level of rigor that you need to have introduced when you are in a smaller K-8 school.

I have to tell you, in my lifetime that I can recall, there's been 10 different superintendents in Milwaukee public schools.

And so I've been able to understand at least

the last seven since I've been an adult and watched it very closely.

And I have to tell you, when you and the other two finalists were at the school board and you guys were doing your interviews and those kinds of things, I'm an open book.

I clearly said, I don't think she's going to make it.

I think it's going to be one of the other two.

I'm truthful.

I'm straightforward.

And I have to tell you, just judging by some of the things I've seen,

in progress that you're attempting to do.

I think part of why you are here is some of us, especially us, the taxpayers and longtime community people and graduates of the district, wanted to see change.

There had to be change because we were watching our community fall apart.

And so we didn't wanna see more of the same.

Let's talk about some of the changes that you've wanted to implement and why.

Well, you know, I'm not real flashy.

I kind of just wear my wear everything on my sleeve.

And so I just kind of get in there.

So one of the things I really wanted to get and shift was the engagement with our community and to have the community be part of these decisions.

So, you know, we launched the nine different sessions this summer to do listening tours.

We had our investing grow admittedly that didn't get much.

update from the community.

But we'll just continue to try additional ways.

We did four budget hearings.

Our academic superintendents and the restructuring are directly working with the principals and their communities and those learning communities, which was very intentional in terms of an engagement strategy.

So that's been a real key goal of mine is to engage again with the community and make sure that they see the work and that they feel part of it.

And then of course, getting out of our financial mess.

That was

a huge, huge piece of, and has been a piece of my work over the past year was to finish those three audits to get a good site on where our finances were, where we were overspending, where we were under budgeting, how we were, some schools were getting more money than other schools and more resources than other schools and more staffing than other schools and trying to get that rebalanced.

That was a heavy lift.

Didn't make everybody too happy, but those things

need to happen and then really starting to get our academic plan in order.

Bumpy at first.

fully admitted it was a challenge at first but we are well on our way now with our literacy curriculum and our academic agenda moving forward and I'm very very encouraged by the professional development that we're going to be doing with our teachers this summer and into next year and I feel like we're almost ready to pivot.

As soon as we get through this budget piece we're going to be pivoting to a really strong academic program both at the elementary level and then planning for this restructuring of our middle

schools and the high school work is already underway with the with the portrait of the graduate work that's been undergoing all year.

Happy and excited to be able to launch that this summer and really begin talking more about our high school redesign work that we that we've been undergoing.

You know Dr. Casselius you left out a really critical important

issue you had to deal with when you came here and that was late in the schools.

These things have been

going

on.

They've been going on forever and ignored.

And again, I've been around here for a long time and I remember when MPS had a system where they would address those things somewhere along the way, the ball got dropped.

And so

And so you walk in, you have to address that before you can deal with anything.

You guys have done a great job in working on that before you even get into anything else.

Let's talk a little bit about what that was like.

Well, that was a big challenge.

I didn't actually realize how big of a challenge that was.

I also didn't understand until I really got underneath the financial challenge that the district had as well.

And then, of course, our HR challenge with our vacancies, too, and not having enough teachers to cover and not having the right strategy to go out and actually recruit teachers.

And now we do have that strategy in place, which is great under our new chief of HR.

I'm losing my brain.

The HR, not the HR, but the lead issue.

So with the lead issue, I came into the lead issue and was able to hire

Mike Turza, who had been in the district many years.

I don't know if you know him, but he had been in the district.

He was the business manager and worked in the facilities area and worked in transportation.

And so he came out of retirement.

I think he'd been retired already 10 years to really help us with that.

And then I had a great

partner with the city with Mike Tordoraitis, the health commissioner, and we were able to put together a strong action plan.

And then we knew that we had to get into these 50 schools in the summer and we knew that we didn't have enough folks to be able to do the kind of extensive amount of work that we need to do.

It's almost like painting 3,500.

houses that we had to do with that much square footage.

And so that's a huge tremendous undertaking.

And we hired JCP, a minority owned firm, to come in.

and work with us.

They did a awesome job for us.

We were able to open school on time.

We were able to meet the deadlines and get all of our schools done by December 31st of last year.

I'm very, very proud of our team and the way that they rallied.

Our facility team has just done such an incredible job and now they're working on our four investment schools and I just can't be prouder of that team.

And then we also got a large grant from

Congress on testing our kids.

So we're testing over 8,000 students for lead to make sure that parents get this information earlier, can take care of any problems that they have in their home to make sure that our kids are safe, not only at school, but at home.

And still to this day, we only had one student who had been tied directly to schools.

But once one student was too many, and we took every action to make sure that our students were safe, super proud of that work.

So thank you again for bringing that up.

So let me speak now from the perspective of a taxpayer.

The district's budget is somewhere around $1.5, $1.6 billion a year.

And the entire Milwaukee County budget is $1.4 billion.

And so, you know, back in my day, there were 110, 120,000 students in Milwaukee public schools.

And so the district was built to accommodate baby boomers.

And so you still have somewhere around 140 buildings, 145, whatever the number is, and whatever the number of students, 58, 60, whatever number it is, somewhere around some say 55, it all depends who you're talking to.

But people don't want to see, it seems as though people don't want to see buildings shut down, that a housing, one third of the population,

of the building and what MPS has always done a great job of is maintaining buildings.

That's a great investment in keeping buildings going for smaller groups of students.

Why do you think people continue to push back on doing what is inevitable?

And that's paring back the buildings.

Baby boomers aren't coming back.

People aren't having, like my parents had 13 children, they're not doing that anymore.

they're having two or three.

So why won't people understand that this is inevitable?

Well, you know, one of the things that I love about Milwaukee is there's a lot of pride here in Milwaukee public schools and people have very fond memories of their school.

I do as well.

Yes, and their families and you know, they're pillars and they have been pillars of the community for a long time.

And so that emotional attachment is real.

It's also, you know, when you close down a school, you lose resources in that community and you don't want to see a vacant building, a vacant lot.

Many of our schools have these big, long, concrete lots, you know.

And so, you know, I think that makes it hard too.

And so, you know,

It is inevitable though that we are going to be faced with having to merge in closed schools.

However, there's some really exciting work happening in San Diego that I've been interested in that I've been talking to the city about and trying to create some partnerships to see if there's interest in us doing some shared housing projects for some of our employees who maybe don't make a good.

So can we give some relief on the housing side and turn some of these school buildings in the housing for some of our employees, which might be a really good benefit to the community.

And then you have employees and folks who are in the neighborhood and they're raising their families.

in these things.

And you could do mixed use too.

We could have like a school that maybe is serving a smaller population of students or an early childhood center in the bottom floors and then have the housing in the upper floors or some sort of economic development, some sort of businesses in the bottom floors and then you do the upper floors.

San Diego is doing some of this now and it's really exciting, exciting work.

And so we have to start thinking about that because the birth rates we know are going down.

People are having less

children, and we are a district that is about half our size.

And so the tightening of the belt there is really important.

Not only that, it creates greater efficiencies and gets rid of some overhead and all that deferred maintenance.

Our buildings are about 85 years average age.

Average age across the nation for school buildings is about 45 years.

So we've just been kicking the can down the road, not really making these tough decisions.

And I think God sent me here to kind of help the district to make some of these tougher decisions, you know, to humbly talk to the community about their choices because they can get a better education for their children in other schools, you know, that are nearby.

If we make those investments, we're trying to prove it with the 5306 neighborhoods with four of our schools.

Well, I grew up in 5306,

but

I'd also tell you.

that at the root of the changes that you are making, people are impacted and affected.

And so, and I've said this, you know, it's unfortunate, but there's a finite amount of dollars.

And so people are going to be affected because change has to happen.

And so I know clearly

that the MTEA is not very happy with what it is you're attempting to do.

But when they shut down industry in this city, a lot of us who got impacted and affected, we weren't happy that they shut us down.

But guess what?

It happened.

And so it's hard to make dramatic changes.

without either of two things, $50 million budget deficit, you correct me if I'm wrong, either facilities or people.

You've certainly reached out at Over on Belete Street and done some things that to be quite frank with you, people have been talking about whispering in the community for a long time.

And you decided to put a lot of those bodies back in the schools.

Tell us.

how difficult a decision that was.

Oh, really difficult decision because, you know, every single employee is valued.

And I know that they have families, you know, when you get a $50 million deficit, you know, rounding up is really $46 million.

That's not small money.

Even in a $1.6 billion budget, that's

real dollars.

And it is really making a huge impact.

But I had three audits that showed that we were too heavy at central office and not heavy enough in our classrooms.

You know, we had class sizes that were too big.

And teachers just were telling me they're unmanageable.

And so what we did was transfer those resources to schools.

So we closed out 264 positions.

And even with 264 positions being closed out, that still only gave us $30 million.

So we still had another 24, well, 14 to make up.

And so we had to make up that other money somewhere.

Plus, we have increased health care costs and compensation costs that go up about another 20 million.

We're anticipating, we're anticipating a 5% increase in energy.

I'm sure everybody and all of your

listeners

are telling you these gas prices right now are just out the roof and people are very upset and pinching their nose.

But these are real

realities for us and the referenda will be fully implemented after the next year.

That 244 million, we used about 150 the first year, I think 50 something the next year, 47 coming up in this year and only 14 is going to be left.

And so that's not enough new revenue to pay for raises again.

to pay for all of the energy increases, to pay for the health care increases that will for sure happen, and transportation increases, food nutrition increases.

We are a business still at the end of the day.

and we have to balance the budget and be responsible.

And so I'm not just balancing a budget for one year, I'm balancing it for two and three and four years because five years out, it shows a $400 million deficit if we don't do something now to correct.

And you understand in the twinkling of an eye, five years is here.

And if you haven't addressed the issue then, the future of the district is basically over.

it would be very tragic.

And that can happen because like I said, when we first opened, we have some of the most vulnerable children that we serve in Milwaukee public schools.

I mean, our children often have, we have 20% of our children have disabilities.

Many of them, over 85%, are living in conditions of poverty.

Many of them, almost 25%, are not speaking English proficiently.

I mean, we have quite a challenge.

And anytime you have students who have those challenges, you have to do more, and it costs more.

And so we have to be very responsible with our funding and making sure that we get the dollars closest to our students.

So let me tell you why I'm such a support of Milwaukee public schools quickly.

12 brothers and sisters, again, who graduated.

Mom who retired, countless nieces and nephews.

And more than anything else, I'm a treatment foster parent, my wife and

I. We took

in a disabled young man 20 years ago.

22 years ago.

He was born with half a brain.

He requires 24-hour care.

Milwaukee Public Schools, he had a one-on-one.

From the time he was six years old until the time he was 21.

No other school district anywhere would have done for us and for him what Milwaukee Public Schools did, for him and us.

And so I understand.

And it's why I'm such a supporter of the district.

is because I am around now, a volunteer for the last 12 years and I'm still in the district now volunteering.

So I want to see it succeed and I want to see you succeed.

And so if you don't succeed, we don't succeed.

And so that's my hope and wish is that we do all we can to support you.

You just got here.

people who want to see you snap your finger and change the situations that have been occurring in our district for decades are not right in that.

And so I've created enemies because I clearly tell them you can't expect somebody who just got here to turn this around overnight.

They don't expect pro football teams to be turned around overnight, right?

So listen, I'm a supporter, whatever it is I can do to assist you in what it is and your vision, because I've seen you already accomplished more inside of one year than many of the other superintendents I saw in the past.

I'm a supporter of you and what you guys are doing.

And so I wanna do everything that I can to make sure I think you're headed down the right path.

And anything I can do, I'm willing to support you and the district in that.

Well, I sure appreciate that.

And we're not out of the woods yet.

Even being here a year, I still find things each week that I go, oh my gosh, I can't believe that.

So I've been at this about 37 years now.

And some of the things that I see, I just

There are systems things that should just be there, you know, and that are not there that we are needing to fix and to make sure that there's good connectedness between, you know, the right hand and the left hand speaking and just some really hard decisions coming down the road too.

But we are, you know, we did spend this year doing a lot of cleanup and I do expect a pivot now to our academic programming in a really deep way.

So I'm getting excited.

I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

But, you know, there are

still surprises.

So I jus the community for their and also just their support as we go through the really h have to go through to get there.

But we're not quite there I want to be really honest with everybody that there coming down the road.

But I do

It has been given to me personally as a new person living in Milwaukee, as well as the support given to all of our educators here.

And for those who are listening and don't know the story, and I don't want to mislead people, Milwaukee Public Schools has some of the best schools in the entire state and entire nation.

That's right.

And that you don't often get to hear about.

But it's not all failure.

And there are a lot of young people who come out of the district who are doing great things.

It's been that way.

It's been covered up a lot.

But your Montessori schools, some of the other schools that...

the high schools that, and I don't want to start mentioning them for fear of leaving somebody out.

But there are a lot of great schools in the district, let's be honest.

We need to talk a little bit more about those as well.

Yeah, and just grateful to the Milwaukee voters as well to that they passed the referenda for the school district that allows us to have amazing art programs, music programs in our schools.

You've already mentioned our Montessori programs.

They are really state of the art for now.

I don't think in any system I've been that I've seen such adherence to the Montessori method as I have seen here in our schools, just excellent Montessori schools and our international baccalaureate schools within our

high schools as well.

We have some work to do with our international baccalaureate feeder programs with our PYP, our primary years program, and our middle years program for IB.

But we're doing that strength building now to build a strong pipeline for that rigor into those international diploma programs that you see at like Rufus King, Pulaski High School, Reagan High School, et cetera.

Dr. Kasselius, I know you got to run.

It's been a pleasure and an honor, and I hope we can do this again.

so many other aspects of it that I'd like to cover with you.

We'll see what we can do at getting you back again.

I

would love that.

I would love to come on again, maybe talk about our academic literacy

plan.

Absolutely.

talk about how we're connecting to the workforce with our career pathways for our high school students and present the portrait of the graduate to the community.

You know, those would be two really great opportunities in the future.

So we're going to get this across the entire state of Wisconsin.

Thank you very much.

Keep up the

good work.

And my good friend Tony Teglava.

Congratulations, man.

Good to see you back.

Thank you.

All right.

That's

a wrap on what's going on with Earl Ingram.

See you next time.

Thanks, Earl.

Thank you.