Proposed legislation would penalize the Milwaukee Public Schools if the district cancels plans to place police officers inside school buildings. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Republican lawmakers are proposing a law that would financially penalize the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and the city of Milwaukee if they stop complying with a state law that requires police officers in schools. 

The bill, coauthored by Rep. Bob Donovan (R-Greenfield) and Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), comes after months of noncompliance with state law by the school district. Wisconsin Act 12, which provided a boost in funding to local governments, included requirements that Milwaukee Public Schools place 25 school resource officers — sworn police officers assigned to schools. 

The law took effect in 2023, and officers were supposed to be in MPS schools by Jan. 1, 2024, but the district missed the deadline. On Tuesday, the city and the school district voted to approve an agreement to install the officers in response to a lawsuit. 

Donovan said during an Assembly Criminal Justice and Public Safety hearing Wednesday that it’s “unconscionable” the district took so long to follow through on the requirement.

“The biggest district, the one in my estimation that could benefit the most, has, along with the city, dragged their feet for 400 days. It’s absurd and the safety of our kids is at jeopardy,” Donovan said.

Citing a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report found MPS averaged 3,700 police calls each year over 11 years, Donovan said the calls were “pulling officers from street patrols to respond.” He added that “SROs trained specifically for school incidents can handle many of these situations quickly, leaving officers to stay in our communities.” 

The school resource officer requirement was controversial when Act 12 was passed.  Officers had not been stationed inside Milwaukee schools since 2016, and the district ended its contract with the Milwaukee Police Department in 2020 in response to student and community opposition to the practice. At Wednesday’s hearing, Wanggaard blamed the district’s contract cancellation on  a “fit of anti-police bias.” 

Many advocates opposed to police officers in schools have pointed to potential negative impacts. 

A Brookings Institution report found  that the presence of school resource officers has led to increases in use of suspension, expulsion, police referral and arrest, especially among Black students and students with disabilities.

The agreement that the Milwaukee Common Council and Milwaukee School Board both voted to approve Tuesday was in response to a lawsuit against the district. 

In October 2023  the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) sued MPS and the city of Milwaukee on behalf of Charlene Abughrin, a parent in the district, arguing the district’s noncompliance presented a “substantial risk to her and her child’s safety.” 

Last month a judge ordered the district and city to comply with the state law and instructed  the district and the city to split the cost for the officers evenly.

According to the agreement, officers in schools will have to be properly vetted and required to  attend state- and city-mandated training, including a 40-hour National Association of School Resource Officers course. The agreement also specifies that officers will not participate in enforcing MPS code of conduct violations and that school conduct violations and student discipline will remain the responsibility of school administrators, not police officers. 

Despite the agreement, the bill’s authors said Wednesday that a law is needed to serve as an enforcement mechanism and address potential future noncompliance. 

“If that agreement is terminated, this legislation provides a similar compliance framework to ensure that both remain in compliance with Act 12,” Donovan said. “To prevent the ongoing and future non-compliance, consequences must be in place.” 

If the agreement is terminated, the bill would implement a timeline requiring a new agreement within 30 days, another 30 days for the city to certify with the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee that officers are trained and available. The district would then have 30 days to certify with the committee that officers are present in schools.

If there is noncompliance, 10% of the city’s shared revenue payment will be withheld by the state and 25% of the school district’s state aid payments would be withheld. 

Under the bill, MPS would be responsible for paying 75% of the cost for the school officers program, while the city would be responsible for the remaining 25%.

Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) asked about the discrepancy between the 50-50 payment implemented by the judge and the one in the bill. 

Wanggaard said that bill assigns a larger share of the cost to the school district because  “it was MPS that made the schools less safe by not having officers in the school, not the city, and based on these factors and other conversations I’ve had, I believe MPS was the major cause of delaying returning officers to the schools.” However, he appeared open to amendments, noting that the bill is still pending. 

MPS is opposed to the bill, in part because of the difference in how it apportions the cost.

The district said in written testimony that school officials have been working on getting a memorandum of understanding with the city for over a year, sought the selection and training of police officers, and worked to negotiate a fair apportionment. The statement noted that the district has no authority to train or hire officers. 

The district statement endorsed a plan proposed by Gov. Tony Evers, which assigns 75% of the costs to the city and 25% to the district. The statement said that because “the school resource officers were part of a legislative deal negotiated without the participation of MPS and that provided hundreds of millions of dollars to the City of Milwaukee, the Governor’s proposal appears as the fairest.” 

The district statement also called for the state to reimplement a law in the 2009 budget that allowed districts to use generated funds to “purchase school safety equipment, fund the compensation costs of security officers, or fund other expenditures consistent with its school safety plan.”

“Whatever the apportionment, there should be no debate that school safety costs be adequately funded,” the district statement said. 

The Wisconsin Police Association and WILL support the bill, according to the state’s lobbying website.

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Environmental and community advocates in Massachusetts argue that making too much room for biofuels in a pending state plan to decarbonize heating systems would slow the transition from fossil fuels and cause more pollution than a plan that prioritizes electric heat pumps.

As the state works on the creation of a Clean Heat Standard, a report released last month by Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility raises questions about the effects using biodiesel in fuel-oil heating systems could have on air quality and public health, saying there is not enough information available about the pollutants released in the process. 

Advocates say there is no such uncertainty about electric heat pumps, which create no direct emissions and should therefore be heavily favored in the new state policy. 

“We absolutely think the thumb should be on the scale of electrification,” said Larry Chretien, executive director of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance. “If they give credit to biofuels, it ought to be conditional.”

Oil heating is much more prevalent in the Northeast than in the rest of the country. In Massachusetts, 22% of households are heated with oil, as compared to less than 5% nationwide. Moving homes and businesses off oil heat, therefore, is an important element of the state’s plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, which sets a target of reducing emissions from heating by 93% from 1990 levels in that timeframe. 

The process of developing a Clean Heat Standard began when then-Gov. Charlie Baker convened the Commission on Clean Heat in 2021. In 2022, the board recommended the creation of the standard, which was also included in the state’s Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2050, released later that year. A stakeholder process began in 2023, and in the fall of that year the state released a draft framework for the standard that included the expectation of issuing credits for some biofuel use. 

Open questions about public health

The program is expected to require gas utilities and importers of heating oil and propane to provide an increasing proportion of clean heating services like home heat pumps, networked geothermal, and other options, or buy credits from other parties that have implemented these solutions. 

Whether the other options that qualify as clean heat will include biofuels — fuels derived from renewable, organic sources — has been a matter of contention since the idea for the system was first raised.

Climate advocates have tended to oppose the inclusion of much, if any, biofuel in the standard. Though biodiesel creates lower lifetime greenhouse gas emissions than its conventional counterpart, the recent Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility report contends that there are many unanswered questions about how burning biodiesel impacts public health. 

“Given the sheer amount of doubt, there’s more research that should clearly be done before these fuels are subsidized by the state government,” said report author Carrie Katan, who also works as a Massachusetts policy advocate for the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, but compiled the report as an independent contractor for the physicians group. 

The physicians’ report notes a study by Trinity Consulting Group that found significant health benefits to switching from fossil diesel to biodiesel for building heating. The physicians’ report, however, questions the methodology used in that study, claiming it cherrypicks data and fails to cite sources. 

Katan’s report also notes that the health impacts of biofuels can vary widely depending on the organic matter used to create them, and points out that most of the research on burning biofuels is focused on the transportation sector. 

Climate advocates also argue that embracing biofuels in a Clean Heat Standard would unnecessarily prolong the transition to electric heat pumps while encouraging the continued burning of fossil heating oil. Typically, a heating oil customer using biodiesel receives a blend that is no more than 20% biofuel. Providing credit for that fraction of biofuel would therefore improve the economics of the entire heating oil system, contrary to the overall emissions reduction goals of the policy, Chretien said.

“We’re trying to create a system that is rewarding steps towards greenhouse gas reduction,” he said. 

Making the case for biofuel

Advocates of biofuels, however, say they are confident that existing science makes a solid case for the health and environmental benefits of biodiesel. 

“There’s a decades-long body of work showing the overall benefits to public health of biofuels, specifically biodiesel,” said Floyd Vergara, a consultant for Clean Fuels Alliance America, a national trade association representing the biodiesel, renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel industries.

Vergara, who was involved in the Trinity Consulting study, called out in the physicians’ report, also defended the methodologies and sourcing of that paper. 

Further, he said, though biodiesel is typically limited to 20% in current blends, it is quite possible to run a heating system entirely on biofuel, with just a few tweaks to the equipment. These conversions could yield immediate reductions in emissions, he said, rather than waiting for the slower process of replacing thousands of heating oil systems with electric heat pumps.

The difference could be particularly acute in low-income or other traditionally disadvantaged neighborhoods, where many residents can not afford to make the switch to heat pumps, he said. 

“You’re getting those benefits immediately, and you’re getting them while the states are pursuing zero-emissions technologies,” he said.

State environmental regulators expect to release a full draft of the clean heat standard for public comment sometime this winter.

Physicians group warns against propping up biodiesel as part of Massachusetts’ clean heat transition  is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.