As the Legislature begins working on the Wisconsin State Budget, a dangerous idea to give school vouchers their own separate line item could become a huge drain on resources. | Getty Images Creative

The top issue Wisconsinites brought to legislators’ attention at budget hearings around the state last month was the need to adequately fund public schools.

But now, as the Legislature’s powerful budget committee is beginning to work on the budget in earnest, a low-profile plan that never came up in those public hearings aims to turn school vouchers into a statewide entitlement, sucking up all the resources that might otherwise go to public schools and putting Wisconsin on a path to a full–blown budget crisis. 

The plan, contained in two bills that failed in the last legislative session, would stop funding school vouchers through the same mix of state and local funding that supports regular public schools, and instead pay for school vouchers just out of the state’s general fund. 

“It’s certainly something that I personally support. … I’m sure it will be part of the discussion,” Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam), co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee, told Lisa Pugh on Wisconsin Eye when she asked about “decoupling” Wisconsin voucher school funding from the rest of the school finance system.

“Decoupling” would pave the way for a big expansion in taxpayer subsidies for private school tuition. While jettisoning the caps on available funds and enrollment in the current school formula, voucher payments would become an entitlement. The state would be obligated to pay for every eligible student to attend private school. It’s worth noting that most participants in Wisconsin’s voucher programs never attended public school, so what we are talking about is setting up a massive private school system with separate funding alongside the public K-12 school system. That’s more than Wisconsin can afford.

Anne Chapman, research director for the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials (WASBO), has followed the issue closely. “It could come up last-minute, on very short notice,” she warns. 

She worries that Wisconsin is following the same path as other states that have steadily expanded public funding for private schools without accurately assessing what the expansion would cost. In a recent WASBO paper, “The price of parallel systems,” Chapman writes that Wisconsin already ranks third among states with the highest proportion of state education dollars used in private schooling options (9%). The top two states, Florida (22%) and Arizona (12%), she writes, are “cautionary examples.” 

Florida’s universal voucher program will cost the state $3.9 billion this year. The state, which until now has been running budget surpluses, is projecting a $6.9 billion deficit by 2027-28, fueled by the voucher expansion along with tax cuts. Arizona is also facing much bigger than expected costs for its universal voucher program. After projecting it would cost $64 million in 2023-24, the state found that it underestimated the cost of vouchers by more than 650%. The real cost of universal vouchers in Arizona in 2023-24 was  $738 million. The result: a huge budget deficit and significant cuts to public schools.

Wisconsin, which launched the first school voucher program in the nation in Milwaukee 35 ago, has steadily increased both the size and per-pupil expenditures of its system of voucher schools. That’s despite a research consensus that school vouchers have not improved academic outcomes for students and, in fact, have done significant harm.

Testifying recently against a school voucher bill in Texas, University of Michigan professor and school voucher expert Josh Cowen described the “catastrophic” results of vouchers on educational outcomes across the country over the last decade.

‘Horrific’ voucher results

Cowen has been evaluating school vouchers since the 1990s, when the first pilot program in Milwaukee had a measurable, positive impact on the 400 low-income kids who used vouchers to attend traditional private schools. As school vouchers expanded to serve tens of thousands of students and “subprime” operators moved in to take advantage of taxpayer dollars, however, the results took a dramatic downturn. Cowen described the “horrific learning loss” he and other researchers have recorded over the last decade among kids who started in public school and then moved to private school using vouchers. He was used to seeing trends in education that simply didn’t work to improve outcomes, he told the Texas legislators, but “it’s very rare to see something that harmed kids academically.” The worst drops in test scores, he said, came in 2014-15 — the same year that states began taking the programs statewide. He concluded that the smaller programs that had paid close attention to students and offered them a lot of support became something entirely different when vouchers were scaled up. Yet despite the abysmal results, more and more states are moving toward universal voucher systems.

Imagine, Cowen told the Texas legislators, if “30 years ago a vaccine showed some positive effects in clinical trials for a few hundred kids.” Then, when the vaccine was approved and used on thousands of children, “the health effects became negative, even atrocious.”

“No one would say, ‘let’s just hang our hat on the pilot and focus on results from 30 years ago,” Cowen said. But that’s exactly what’s happening with school vouchers. The kids vouchers were originally supposed to help — low-income children in underresourced schools — have suffered the most. 

Studies from research teams in Louisiana, Indiana, Ohio and Washington, D.C., show learning losses for kids who left public school to attend voucher programs that surpassed the learning loss experienced by students in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or by children across the country from the COVID-19 pandemic, Cowen said.

Instead of helping those struggling students, who often attend the “subprime” schools Cowen discussed, the voucher programs in Wisconsin and other states mostly provide a taxpayer-financed benefit to private school families — 70% of whom have never put their kids in public school.

Anti-government ideologues and school choice lobbyists are selling a faulty product with the rapid expansion of school vouchers.

Part of the scam is the effort to hide the true costs from taxpayers. That’s the part Chapman, the school business expert, is worried about. As school districts struggle with lean budgets, under the current system, at least local taxpayers can see how much they are paying to support the voucher schools in their districts. If the Legislature succeeds in moving the cost of school vouchers into the general statewide budget, that transparency will be lost. And, at the same time, the state will open the door to unlimited spending on vouchers, no matter how expensive the program becomes. 

School choice advocates in Wisconsin have long pushed for “a voucher in every backpack” — or universal eligibility for the private school voucher program.

“Eligibility” doesn’t mean the same thing as “access,” however: In Wisconsin voucher schools have a track record of kicking out students who are disabled, challenging to educate, LGBTQ or for any other reason they deem them a bad fit.

Those students go back to the public schools, whose mission is to serve all students. In contrast, private schools in the voucher system can and do discriminate. Yet, Chapman reports, we are now spending about $629 million for Wisconsin’s four voucher programs, which serve 58,623 students. That’s $54 million more than the $574.8 million we are spending on all 126,830 students with disabilities in Wisconsin, as school districts struggle with the cost of special education. 

Federal tax deduction windfall for voucher schools

As if that weren’t enough, at the federal level, the Educational Choice for Children Act of 2025 (ECCA), currently being considered by Congress, would give a 100% tax deduction on donations to nonprofits known as Scholarship Granting Organizations, which give out private K-12 school vouchers.

Normally, donors to nonprofits can expect a tax deduction of 37 cents on the dollar at most. The 100% tax deduction means financial advisers across the country will push clients, whether they are school choice advocates or not, to give money to voucher schools. Under the bill, contributors would also be allowed to give corporate stock and avoid capital gains tax. “This would allow wealthy ‘donors’ to turn a profit, at taxpayer expense, by acting as middlemen in steering federal funding into private K-12 schools,” the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reports. ITEP estimates that the ECCA would cost the federal government $134 billion in foregone revenue over the next 10 years and would cost states an additional $2.3 billion.

The very least we can do as citizens is to demand accountability and transparency in the state budget process, before we blow all of our money on tax breaks and tuition vouchers for people who don’t need them. 

Kristen Payne, a member of Lead Safe Schools MKE. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Update: The Milwaukee Health Department announced Thursday that 22 children were screened at the clinic, and two needed follow-up blood tests. The department said in a statement the turnout was lower than officials had hoped for, but that the department will host additional school-based screening clinics. The department also is advising families to visit pop-up clinics at Children’s Wisconsin hospital’s Next Door Clinic and the Sixteenth Street Health Center Community Outreach program.

As a lead screening clinic was being set up inside Milwaukee’s North Division High School Wednesday, a coalition of parents, teachers and locals gathered outside to voice their frustrations about the response to lead contamination in Milwaukee Public School’s (MPS). The group had gathered to “demand that lead contamination in our schools, our city and our state, be urgently and effectively addressed in a manner consistent with health science data,” said Kristen Payne, a member of Lead Safe Schools MKE, during a press conference outside the high school. 

The press conference brought together several groups including Lead Safe Schools MKE, Freshwater for Life Action Coalition, Get the Lead Out and Metcalfe Park Community Bridges. Inside North Division, the  Milwaukee Health Department set up a clinic in the cafeteria and prepared to screen up to 300 children. Concern over lead in MPS buildings has grown since January, after a student was reportedly poisoned. Just under 400 MPS students have been tested and several schools temporarily closed due to lead hazards so far this year.

“Testing our kids for lead poisoning is important, and it’s also not nearly enough,” Payne said. “Until the district, city and state work proactively to address root causes of lead exposure, these testing clinics will do little to prevent exposure of a harmful toxin.” Every year, more than 1,200 children in the city of Milwaukee test positive for lead poisoning, with an average age of 3 years old. With over 70,000 MPS students among the tens of thousands of children in the city, ensuring that enough children are getting tested can be challenging.

Katie Doss is the grandmother of one of those children who tested positive. “She was hospitalized,” said Doss, and  received a blood transfusion. The experience led  Doss to work with the Coalition on Lead Emergency (COLE) and city officials to help get as many children tested as possible. She eventually became a lead program coordinator. “Since then, I’ve got over 400 children tested,” said Doss.

Doss wasn’t alone. “I believe that my grandchildren have the right to go to school without the threat of exposure to lead,” said Maria Beltran, a local resident, grandmother and member of Freshwater for Life Action Coalition. “Lead exposure in children, like my entire family and myself — I have seven kids, seven grandchildren, and married — lead exposure in children can damage the brain and nervous system, cause developmental delays, learning challenges, behavioral issues, [and] hearing loss. Also in adults, lead exposure and lead poisoning can cause high blood pressure, kidney damage, brain damage, miscarriage, and infertility that I have experienced in my entire family as well.”

The group of parents and residents that joined Payne expressed their feeling  that MPS and the Health Department have been more reactive than protective when it comes to addressing lead contamination. Some questioned why only elementary schools, and not middle and high schools, are the focus of current testing and remediation efforts. Others felt that they’d been left in the dark as to how lead poisoning affected their loved ones, or felt that school officials were sending out last-minute warnings to parents about lead hazards. Such notifications often came as emails, sent in the evening hours or  near weekend days, parents at the press conference said. 

The coalition demanded that MPS test all buildings for lead in dust, paint, water and soil. Additionally, the group called on the school district to follow the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations for lead-in-water readings <1.0 (parts per billion), and for better lines of communication to be established between school officials and parents. The group further demanded that the MPS Board of Directors pass a recently introduced lead-safety resolution, that city departments implement more proactive measures and that Gov. Tony Evers and the Legislature help remediate lead in schools statewide. 

Melody McCurtis, deputy director and lead organizer of Metcalfe Park Community Bridges, said that city officials are concerned with “growing the city without repairing the past harm that the current residents in this city is facing, especially in terms of lead.” McCurtis added,  “This city is prioritizing policing in our schools, prioritizing more than half of our city budget going to the police, but not going to prevention of crises like the lead crisis. It is going to take more than the Milwaukee Public School, the Health Department, and the city elected officials to come together to not just treat the issue, but to prevent it from happening.”

Inside the high school’s cafeteria, Health Department Commissioner Mike Totoraitis and Deputy Commissioner of Environmental Health Tyler Weber were helping oversee the final preparations for the screening clinic. They said  lead dust and paint are a target and the city’s youngest children are being prioritized for lead testing. “That’s not to minimize that there are other hazards here at the schools and potentially in the homes,” said Totoraitis. 

Although older children and adults will need to be included in testing eventually, it’s unclear how long that might take. The city is still re-grouping after plans to send specialized lead teams from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to Milwaukee were cancelled by the Trump Administration. The teams would have helped with blood screening analysis to detect trends and gather more information. Totoraitis said that the health department has monitored citywide data for screenings, and has not noticed any new trends. Milwaukee is  also working with partners in other states including Ohio and Michigan. More parents have been taking their children to pediatricians to get tested, which is encouraging, Totoratis said. “That is the best way for parents to know if their child has been poisoned,” he said.

MPS assumes that lead paint exists in any building built before 1978, and the school district has 54 schools built before 1950. Addressing the full scale of the problem will take creativity, dedicated effort and time, health officials say. Weber said that although it’s good that positive tests since January have been relatively low, many more children still need to be evaluated. 

“Oftentimes, the children that we see tested aren’t always the children that need to be,” said Tyler, noting that although more than 1,200 children test positive annually, only 40-50% of children are tested who need to be.

Doss told Wisconsin Examiner that it can be difficult to convince parents to get their children tested. “It’s extremely challenging,” said Doss. “There are a lot of parents that’s lost hope and faith in the community as far as getting the children tested. They want to know what’s going to happen on the reaction. If they get their child tested, will they be actually judged if the child comes back with lead and they don’t know where the lead is coming from?” 

Doss said some parents fear that a positive lead test will lead to their homes being visited by authorities, or even that their children could be taken away. “So that’s why it’s very important to let the parents know that it’s nothing that they did. It’s in our environment, it’s in our water, it’s in the paint…The only way that you can help your child is to get your child tested to know if your child has it. And you need to get your child tested once a year. It’s very important.”

The scale of the problem, and a lack of capacity within the health department, creates stubborn obstacles. “And our old housing stock, the red-lining that’s happened over time, the disinvestment in communities, and so it’s a lot for a single department to get to the point where we get ahead of this,” Weber said.  “‘Cause it is devastating to have to see every day the results that come in from different children, and respond to those.” 

Weber added that ideally lead levels in soil, homes, water and human bodies would be zero. “We’re an old city with a lot of deeply rooted challenges, and there’s a lot of work that we have to do collectively.”

Angélica Infante-Green, Rhode Island’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, speaks at a forum on Tuesday, May 6, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Screenshot via YouTube)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats on Tuesday blasted the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, underscoring the impact of the dizzying array of cuts, overhauls and proposed changes to the agency on students, families and educators.

Sen. Patty Murray, who hosted the forum in a U.S. Senate hearing room alongside several Democratic colleagues, said Trump is “essentially bulldozing the Department of Education, regardless of who depends on it, regardless of who is still inside, and regardless of the very loud outcry from parents and educators and students about this.”

The Washington state Democrat brought in education advocates and leaders, who emphasized the importance of the department in delivering on federal resources for public education, investigating civil rights complaints and helping students cheated by predatory institutions.

Trump and his administration have sought to dramatically reshape the federal role in education, including an executive order calling on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the closure of her own department, the gutting of more than 1,300 employees at the agency, threats to revoke funds for schools that use diversity, equity and inclusion practices and a crackdown on “woke” higher education.

‘Unnecessary confusion and chaos’

Angélica Infante-Green, Rhode Island’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, said she and colleagues who lead state education across the country have spent a great deal of time trying to decipher the intent of Trump’s executive orders and the department’s directives and policy changes.

“They seem unclear and cause unnecessary confusion and chaos for all of us,” Infante-Green said. “While the impact of the confusion may be hard to quantify,  what is clear is that students and families and educators are the losers in this new paradigm.”

Denise Forte, CEO of the nonprofit policy and advocacy group EdTrust, said “most urgently, we are alarmed by the mass firing of over half of the department staff.”

“This isn’t reform — it is sabotage,” Forte said, pointing to the layoffs hitting wide swaths of the department, particularly in the Office for Civil Rights, Office of Federal Student Aid and Institute of Education Sciences.

“With the Office for Civil Rights now severely understaffed, civil rights complaints will skyrocket while response capacity plummets,” she said.

Students with disabilities 

The cuts at the agency and Trump’s proposal in March that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “will be handling special needs” have sparked worries among disability advocates over whether the department can carry out its responsibilities to serve students with disabilities.

Diane Willcutts, director of Education Advocacy, said she’s been getting “panicked phone calls from parents of children with disabilities who are wondering, ‘What does this all mean?’”

Willcutts has worked for over two decades in Connecticut and Massachusetts helping families of children with disabilities navigate the education process.

“I think everyone’s shell-shocked, and we’re looking for direction — how can we be helpful to you in order to protect the U.S. Department of Education?” she said. “I know there’s this assumption that ‘Oh, the states will take care of it.’ That is absolutely not the case, I can tell you in my state that is not what is happening right now, and so, as I said, there’s a level of panic but we’re looking for direction.”

Trump’s budget request

Meanwhile, Trump also released a budget request last week that calls for $12 billion in spending cuts at the department.

Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin said the budget includes “devastating cuts to many critical programs,” and that the proposal “comes at a time when too many students are chronically absent and achieving at levels that will not set them up for success.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Trump administration is “cutting so many things — don’t feel alone, Department of Education.”

“They don’t know what they’re doing about just about anything, and they want to cut everything, but to cut education, which has been sacrosanct in America, is just awful,” the New York Democrat said.

Schumer said Tuesday’s “spotlight hearing” is just one in a series Senate Democrats will be hosting in response to Trump’s cuts to the department.

Trump administration officials said the outrage was misplaced. 

“If Senate Democrats were truly interested in fighting for parents, students, and teachers as they claim, where was their outrage over this year’s dismal math and reading scores? Don’t get it twisted,” Savannah Newhouse, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education, said in a statement shared with States Newsroom.

Senate Democrats “are fighting President Trump’s education agenda for one reason: to protect the bloated bureaucracy that has consistently failed our nation’s students,” Newhouse said.

“By returning education authority to the states, President Trump and Secretary McMahon will help every American child — including those in public schools — to have the best shot at a quality education.” 

The Milwaukee public school district struggles with a “culture resistant to change” that has undermined its ability to function properly, disproportionately harming its most vulnerable students, an audit ordered by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and released on Thursday found.

Evers, who served as Wisconsin’s superintendent of schools before becoming governor, ordered the independent audit last year after it became known the district failed to submit financial reports to the state leading to the resignation of the district’s superintendent and the withholding of funding by state officials.

The audit found that the Milwaukee Public Schools district, which is the state’s largest, with more than 66,000 students, must make sweeping, high-level changes to be more transparent with parents and taxpayers.

“MPS must make systemic changes to ensure that students — particularly the most vulnerable — are at the center of every decision,” the audit by MGT of America Consulting said. “Ultimately, this work is in service of students, whose future success hinges on a district capable of delivering equitable, high-quality education.”

Auditors identified “critical issues stemming from leadership and staff turnover, fragmented planning, outdated systems, and unproductive reporting protocols, which have led to siloed operations and inefficient practices.”

Evers, in a statement, urged the district to quickly accept the audit’s 29 recommendations.

“This audit is a critical next step for getting MPS back on track and, ultimately, improving outcomes for our kids,” Evers said.

The school district said in a statement that the audit will serve as a guide for improvement.

“While acknowledging the need for focused support, the report makes clear that we have an opportunity to build on this momentum, strengthening our schools and communities while creating a more unified path forward,” the district said.

The audit was released two days after Milwaukee Public Schools announced it was hiring former Boston Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius as its new superintendent. The audit also comes amid a race for the state superintendent of schools, in which school and student performance is a top issue.

Evers made $5.5 million in public funds available for a pair of audits. The first one cost $2.5 million, and Evers said the remaining $3 million will be used to help the district implement the audit’s recommendations. He is proposing that an additional $5 million be spent to address future audit results, including one pending related to instruction.

The money would only be awarded if the state is satisfied that the district is making progress, Evers said.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Milwaukee school audit finds widespread problems hurting Wisconsin’s largest district is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Unless things change soon, it appears unlikely that the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee Public Schools will meet the Feb. 17 deadline to place at least 25 student resource officers in schools.

Wisconsin Act 12, a law enacted in summer 2023, mandated that police officers be placed in MPS and stipulated that they must first complete 40 hours of training through the National Association of School Resource Officers.

This has yet to happen.

A school resource officer is a law enforcement officer who works full time in collaboration with a school district, according to Act 12.

School resource officers typically carry firearms, according to the National Association of School Resource Officers.

No trainings scheduled

Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, said no Milwaukee Police Department officers have completed or are scheduled to take the weeklong training before Feb. 17. 

“We are never going to recommend that an officer start working in a school without first being put through this training,” Canady said. “We’re talking about the most unique assignment in law enforcement: putting men and women in schools and trusting them to do good work with adolescents in the school environment.”

MPD did not confirm its timeline for training or whether it has enough officers who have completed the training in the past.

Even if there were officers with past training, though, that wouldn’t necessarily be the best or safest option, Canady said.

“We don’t have a timeline on when you should retake the training,” but “there have been massive changes” in the past five years, Canady said. 

Subjects that have been updated or added include training on how adolescent brains develop, forms of bias and how to understand trauma, he said.

A spokesperson for MPD deferred all questions to the City Attorney’s Office, stating the department is “unaware of the status of the agreement.”

Several attempts to speak with the City Attorney’s Office were unsuccessful as were attempts to speak with every member of the Milwaukee Board of School Directors except one. 

Training is the most important concern when it comes to officers in schools for Henry Leonard, Milwaukee Public Schools board director of District 7.

Without this training, Leonard said he fears “a haphazard approach to this and it turns into a disaster.”

Next steps

There are no consequences for having not met the 2024 deadline stipulated by Act 12, according to an analyst with the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan agency that provides research and legal services to lawmakers.

An additional hearing has been scheduled if the Feb. 17 deadline is not met.

Jeff Fleming, a spokesman for Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, said there have been some productive meetings between the city and MPS.

“The Mayor is optimistic the outstanding issues can be resolved,” he wrote in an email to NNS.

How we got here

In 2016, MPS pulled officers from inside its schools and, four years later, ended a contract with MPD for patrols outside its buildings.

Act 12 required the city to beef up its police force by 2034 and ordered officers back into MPS by Jan. 1, 2024. That deadline came and passed as the school district and city jostled over who would pay the estimated $2 million cost to fund the officers. 

Pressure to bring officers back into schools picked up after a mother of an MPS student who was bullied sued the city and school district for not meeting Act 12 requirements.

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge David Borowski decided in favor of the mother, ruling that the city of Milwaukee and MPS are responsible for getting officers in schools by Feb. 17.

Impact on current officer shortage

NNS reported in December about hiring challenges within MPD as the number of new recruits wasn’t enough to offset the retirement and departure of other officers or potentially the new requirements of Act 12.

Leon Todd, executive director of the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, said officers placed at MPS would come from the current ranks of the MPD, which could stretch the department’s already thin ranks.

“One of our top priorities is to grow the size of MPD, and we obviously want to limit the strain,” Todd said. “While these officers would be placed in MPS and wouldn’t be available to take other calls for service, the number of calls are going to be reduced as they won’t need to respond because they will already have officers in schools.”

According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, there were 40,643 calls to police from MPS-associated addresses from 2013 to 2024, although 7% of those calls were during nighttime hours.

The Fire and Police Commission is typically in charge of hiring all new officers. But because the school resource officers are going to be current officers, Todd said, the police chief or the department’s executive command staff will decide who is sent into schools. 

Canady emphasized the importance of carefully selecting those officers.

“There should be input from the school community,” Canady said. “These should be officers who are veterans, who have been with the department at least three years, so we know something about their character. They should be officers who have shown sincere interest in working with youth.” 

Leaders Igniting Transformation, a youth-led nonprofit in Milwaukee, doesn’t want officers back in schools at all. 

“We are angry and terrified at the thought of placing armed police officers back in Milwaukee classrooms, who have shown time and time again that they are unfit to work with students and have no place in our schools,” a recent statement from the group said.

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More than a year after ending its decade-long affiliation with the Milwaukee Education Partnership, Milwaukee Public Schools is still trying to recoup money from the organization for work it never performed. 

MPS sent an invoice to Milwaukee Education Partnership on Dec. 19, 2023, for $64,170. The district sent four follow-up invoices to the organization before turning the matter over to Kohn Law Firm in May 2024, according to records obtained by WPR. 

The school district is still awaiting payment from the now-defunct organization, which was led by Gerard Randall, a top Wisconsin GOP official who helped secure the Republican National Convention for Milwaukee.

Randall did not respond to requests for comment from WPR. 

School board member Missy Zombor said the money Randall owes to MPS could be used to serve students. 

“That’s potentially an educator in front of a student,” Zombor said. “I mean, $64,000 is not a small amount of money, so not being able to recoup those funds impacts students directly.” 

MPS ended its relationship with Randall after reporting by WPR in collaboration with Wisconsin Watch brought the questionable history of his nonprofit to light.

During its relationship with MPS, Milwaukee Education Partnership received nearly $1.3 million in no-bid district contracts, promising to improve student achievement in the district. 

In 2022, the partnership received $64,170. That money was for the group’s Milwaukee Connects program, which aims to “enhance the pipeline of graduates from Milwaukee to Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” according to the contract.

The contract required the partnership to provide 10 graduating MPS students with semester-long paid internships to include professional mentoring, housing and transportation between Oct. 1, 2022, and Sept. 30, 2023.

In an email exchange last year with WPR,  Randall said “a cohort is being developed for the semester beginning January 2024.”

He would not answer further questions.

The students were never provided mentoring or internships, but Randall did receive the payment, according to documents obtained by WPR. 

Milwaukee Education Partnership was also listing several high-profile officials in tax filings as board officers without their knowledge. 

They included Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly, former Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Keith Posley, former Milwaukee Area Technical College President Vicki Martin and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone.

Despite the controversy, Randall  continues to serve on a variety of high-profile boards, including the Wisconsin GOP, UW-Madison’s Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership and Visit Milwaukee. 

After being elected to the MPS board in 2023, Zombor began examining various MPS no-bid contracts. When she visited the Milwaukee Education Partnership website, she found it featured years-old financial reports and listed names of people no longer associated with the group.

Zombor began asking questions, which ultimately led to Posley suspending the district’s relationship with Milwaukee Education Partnership in November 2023.

Zombor says she would like MPS to explore its options for awarding contracts.

“It feels like this contract was potentially for a fictitious nonprofit,” Zombor said.  “We have to trust that when vendors or partners come to MPS that they’re being honest about the services they provide. But I think we have to continue to enhance the accountability of the procurement process so that we can safeguard public money.”

This story was originally published by WPR.

Milwaukee Public Schools still trying to recoup money from GOP official’s defunct nonprofit is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.