WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education announced sweeping efforts Tuesday to outsource its special education programs and civil rights enforcement to other agencies, in another major step by President Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle the department.

The Department of Health and Human Services will administer programs under the Education Department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, or OSERS, while civil rights enforcement under Education’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR, will be transferred to the Department of Justice. 

The move follows 10 earlier interagency agreements, or IAAs, with the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior, State and Treasury that transfer several of Education’s responsibilities to those agencies.

The Education Department clarified in fact sheets that in the agreements announced Tuesday, it “will continue to perform all statutorily required duties and responsibilities.”

“The Trump Administration has been clear: as we scale back federal micromanagement when it hinders success, we are equally committed to bolstering the efficacy of federal oversight where it is essential,” U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement Tuesday.

The administration has sought to do away with the 46-year-old department as part of Trump’s quest to return education “back to the states.” That push continues despite much of the oversight and funding of schools already occurring at the state and local levels. 

Congress created the Department of Education, and only Congress has the authority to abolish the agency. 

Special education

On a background call with reporters, a senior department official said OSERS “will maintain its independent statutory functions without interruption to vigorously enforce compliance with all of OSERS programs.” 

OSERS is responsible for administering the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which guarantees a free public education for students with disabilities. The umbrella unit OSERS includes the Office of the Assistant Secretary, Office of Special Education Programs and the Rehabilitation Services Administration. 

The official added that “students will not lose any rights, including their right to a free appropriate public education,” adding that “no agreement can alter the rights that students with disabilities are afforded under federal law.” 

“In coordination with and at the direction of OSERS, HHS will support meaningful stakeholder outreach; grant administration; enforcement, compliance, and monitoring activities; annual performance determinations and assessments; collection, reporting, and analyzing of data for monitoring compliance; and drawdowns of Federal funds,” according to a fact sheet. 

Civil rights oversight

Meanwhile, Education’s agreement with the DOJ is intended to “support and bolster the federal government’s enforcement of federal civil rights laws,” a senior department official said. 

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR, is tasked with investigating civil rights complaints from students and families. 

Under the agreement, “OCR will utilize the Civil Rights Division to evaluate, investigate and resolve complaints filed under the laws enforced by OCR,” the official said. 

The official also stressed that under the interagency agreement, OCR “retains management and leadership of OCR in accordance with federal law.” 

Education will also partner with the DOJ on student privacy protection, in which the Justice Department will “review complaints alleging privacy act violations, conduct necessary investigations and recommend potential resolutions,” per a fact sheet.

In another agreement, the DOJ will “provide technical assistance” in training and advisory services regarding the desegregation of public schools, according to a fact sheet.  

‘This isn’t efficiency — it’s chaos’

The announcement sparked fierce condemnation from Democratic members of Congress, labor unions and advocacy groups Tuesday. 

Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, the union representing Education Department workers, said the interagency agreements regarding special ed programs and civil rights enforcement “will leave our most vulnerable students and families who have been shut out of our education system without the services they need and without protection when they face discrimination,” in a Tuesday statement. 

“This isn’t efficiency — it’s chaos,” Gittleman added. “Secretary McMahon is yet again targeting historically underserved students, eroding public trust, and sowing dysfunction for the federal employees who are trying to do their jobs on behalf of the public.” 

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that “instead of helping kids get a great education, this administration is spending its time, energy, and taxpayer resources fixated on where employees sit and illegally trying to shutter the Department of Education,” in a Tuesday statement.

“It’s an outrageous betrayal that undoes decades of hard-won progress for students,” Murray added. “More kids with disabilities will be denied the education they are entitled to by law, and more college students who were harassed or assaulted will go without the justice they are owed.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the country, said the decision “will have dire, real-world consequences.” 

“Congress — the only body that can legally take such actions — has refused to follow the whims of the White House when it comes to abolishing the Education Department,” Weingarten said. “And parents, educators, students, and the disability and civil rights communities are rising up — and will fight in every way possible to reverse this in the courts, at the ballot box and in the court of public opinion.”

WASHINGTON — Democrats in the U.S. House on Wednesday called for greater protections for transgender and diverse students, criticizing congressional Republican and Trump administration efforts to dissolve diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“Today I tell you, rain or shine, we’re standing up for Chicago,” Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois said at the early-morning press conference at the Capitol, attended by supporters including advocates from the Chicago Public Schools. “We won’t betray the fundamental belief that every single child is precious and deserving … of love, care and opportunity.”  

Ramirez was joined by Rep. Mark Takano, chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, and Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania. All three are members of the House Education and Workforce Committee, which held a hearing shortly after the press conference about parental rights, inappropriate content and legal mistreatments in schools.

The lawmakers blasted the focus of the committee hearing for not relating more to increased funding for public schools and strengthened protections for transgender and diverse students. 

They also denounced the recent approach by Congress to dealing with topics of gender identity and diversity in educational settings. 

‘Gender ideology’ bill

Just last month, the House passed a major bill that would bar federal funding provided under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 from public elementary and middle schools unless they require a parental sign-off to update a student’s pronouns, gender markers or preferred name on their records. 

The measure would also prohibit schools from using federal funds to “teach or advance concepts related to gender ideology,” a term defined in a January 2025 executive order as “the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex.”

“The very school districts that have taken steps to make sure trans kids aren’t bullied, aren’t harassed and aren’t teased have received the ire of this administration,” Takano said at Wednesday’s press conference. 

“I am disgusted by this political agenda that attacks the rights of school districts and parents to decide the policies of their schools in their own backyards,” he added, as advocates holding signs that read “hands off our schools” and “we need investment not investigation” nodded along in agreement behind him. 

Ruling on trans athletes coming soon

Others spoke out in addition to the three House members on Wednesday, including a parent and a teacher representing Chicago Public Schools, Senior National Director of Advocacy for the NAACP Wisdom Cole and Senior Vice President of Equality Programs at the Human Rights Campaign Ellen Kahn. 

Their comments came as the U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to soon rule on two landmark cases from Idaho and West Virginia involving laws that ban transgender athletes from participating on women’s sports teams.

“Congress should be addressing the real issues of families like mine, instead of trying to erase my child’s very existence,” said Mary Kay Devine, a Chicago mother whose children attend the city’s public schools. “Leave our schools and our families alone. Congress, do your job and I’ll do mine.”  

“It really blew up our world,” public schools advocate Heather DuBois Bourenane says of the failed school funding and tax-cut deal that Republican legislative leaders and Gov. Tony Evers trumpeted as a “blockbuster” before it fizzled in the state Senate, ending in finger-pointing and recriminations. 

“It was the first time the carrot had been dangled so close to public schools,” DuBois Bourenane says, describing the “moment of utter euphoria” when her group, the Wisconsin Public Education Network, made up of parents, teachers and school officials from every corner of Wisconsin, first heard about the deal. “It seemed like what we’d been fighting so hard for for so long was finally about to happen.”

But then DuBois Bourenane and the other members of her organization got the details.

The funding for special education was not locked in at 50% in the second year of the plan as they’d hoped. Instead of a “sum-sufficient” or guaranteed allocation to cover a set percentage of costs, the 50% was an estimate. If costs go up, that percentage would go down. As for the $300 million increase in general aid to schools, as a Legislative Fiscal Bureau analysis explains: “the additional aid would provide property tax relief but not additional resources for school districts.”

Tax cuts made up the lion’s share of the deal — about 80% of the total $1.8 billion. Those included property tax cuts, interest earnings reductions, no tax on tips and overtime and, biggest of all, an $870 million income tax rebate that would have put $300 checks in the mail to people who earned enough money to qualify. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau projected that the deal would leave the state with a nearly $3 billion deficit. 

Most of that deficit would be caused not by school spending, but by what Dubois Bourenane describes as a wasteful tax giveaway. “What the heck?” she says. “You’re wasting the surplus while pretending to fix the thing [school funding] you broke the worst!”

School funding in Wisconsin was broken by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s historic budget cuts. The damage has compounded each year for more than a decade and a half as school budgets haven’t kept pace with inflation. In such dire circumstances there were, DuBois Bourenane acknowledges, public school advocates who felt anything was better than nothing. But the two-year stopgap deal Evers and Republican leaders reached did not come close to fixing the long-term problem. 

On the bright side, says Dubois Bourenane, at least politicians in both parties have stopped pretending the last several budgets actually funded schools sufficiently. The need to address the funding crisis in Wisconsin public schools has become a bipartisan talking point. Even Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany (who, as a legislator, voted for former Walker’s massive cut to schools) lists it as a top priority.

A recent Marquette poll showed that 80% of Wisconsinites who were contacted about the rushed deal right after it failed, with little time for discussion or analysis, and asked if they would like to receive $300 in the mail from the state, said yes. But voters deserve a full, public discussion of their options, and whether tax rebates worth $278 to most individual Wisconsin tax filers and $574 to most married joint filers, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, are worth putting the state in a $3 billion hole with no long-term fix for the school funding crisis. 

DuBois-Bourenane wishes the Legislature would take up a bill introduced in March that would guarantee a 60% special ed reimbursement from the state, easing the burden on local property taxpayers, who have been filling the hole by passing local referendum requests at record rates, raising their own taxes as the state reneges on its obligation to fund schools. 

But couldn’t committing the state to once again cover the real costs of public education put us in a deficit? Maybe, says DuBois Bournenane. “We’d have to cut money in other ways. But we would stop balancing the budget on the backs of children” — instead of acting as though the state can always avoid paying its biggest bill.

“There’s not really a surplus here,” she adds. “There’s just a pool of money that used to be used to fund public schools that now is not used at all.”

That’s the pool of money Walker “saved” by cutting funding for schools, and Evers and Republican leaders wanted to dole out over the next two years — 80% of it in the form of tax cuts and 20% to schools. 

She finds Evers’ public expressions of frustration with Democrats for not supporting his deal mystifying. “It seems to me it’s a predictable problem he could have solved in advance by consulting with his colleagues on the deal before moving forward.”

But most of all, for public schools, kids and communities across Wisconsin, the whole thing was “incredibly cruel,” she says.

“If we were being led by adults they’d laugh it off and get back to the table and get a new deal,” she says. Instead, the long-term problems threatening public education in Wisconsin continue, with no real fix in sight. 

“I know it doesn’t look like it from a distance, but it’s not about the money,” DuBois Bourenane says. “It’s about are the kids OK? Can we meet their needs?”

The answer, coming from districts that are facing steep cuts, growing class sizes, fewer extra curricular activities and school consolidations and closures, is no. The kids are not OK.

Compounding the damage is a looming crisis that was not part of the budget deal discussion at all. In 2026 all caps come off Wisconsin’s school voucher program. An unlimited number of families will be able to send their kids to private schools at taxpayer expense, and the funding for that program, under a law signed by Walker and supported by Tiffany, comes off the top of state funds. As school voucher programs have steadily grown in Wisconsin, most new students enrolled come from families that already had their kids in private school. The potential explosion in new families joining that group will put the current school funding crisis in a long shadow.

Still, DuBois Bourenane is optimistic Wisconsin can fix the problem. Her group is part of a lawsuit charging the state with failing its obligation to provide a “free, adequate public education” to all Wisconsin children. 

She believes the problem could be solved right now, and that “it’s irresponsible to walk away from the table” after the budget deal disaster. And that the pride and anger of the politicians who don’t want to keep trying is hurting Wisconsin kids.

But she also sees a huge opportunity for voters to put pressure on the politicians running for office this fall to change the attitude in the statehouse and “elect people with more energy to do things for our communities.”

“I don’t think all is lost. We will fix it in the long run. But we could fix it now,” she says. “And we’re choosing not to.”

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On his way out of office, Gov. Tony Evers has negotiated a school funding and tax cut bill with his fellow retirees, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. Call it a retirement celebration for three soon-to-be-ex politicians. Evers is promoting a big bump in school funding in the “blockbuster” deal and urging Democrats to vote for it. But the most joyful celebrants of this sudden windfall are Republican legislators, who have taken to calling it the “big, beautiful, bipartisan bill” —  a not-so-subtle echo of Trump’s triumphant name for the massive tax cut and spending bill he jammed through Congress.

Wisconsin Democrats are less than thrilled. On the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee, the “blockbuster” proposal passed on a straight party-line vote, as Erik Gunn reports, with all of the Republicans on the committee voting in favor and all the Democrats voting against it. The bill is not so much a blockbuster as a budget-buster, said Joint Finance Democrats Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay), Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha). 

The problem with the legislation, according to its critics, is that it consists largely of one-time expenditures – including a temporary infusion of cash to schools and $300 checks to be mailed to Wisconsin state taxpayers — that will drain state coffers of about $2.9 billion after the whole package of proposals is paid out. While it effectively erases the state’s budget surplus, it won’t fix the structural problems with the way the state consistently underfunds schools and leaves property taxpayers to pick up the bill, or with the growing drain created by an expanding system of taxpayer-subsidized private schools, which will also get more money through this deal. Meanwhile, it creates the very real possibility that new legislative leaders and a new governor will be staring at a nearly $3 billion revenue hole when they begin to work on the next state budget, in an uncertain economic time.

The plan does include a burst of state funding for special education – sorely needed and, as Evers underscores, a big boost from current levels to a projected 50% reimbursement in the final year of the current budget cycle to school districts across the state. Evers’ office put out a comprehensive list of school districts and the millions in new money they will receive. The deal also allocates $350 million to bring down property taxes. And it eliminates taxes on tips and overtime, in keeping with Trump’s new federal policy. These are all popular proposals, and they provide a shot of relief to stressed and strapped school districts and taxpayers.

But advocacy organizations you would expect to embrace the governor’s move to increase funding for special ed have come out against the deal. 

“People with disabilities depend on programs and services that get state and federal funding,” Sydney Badeau, chair of the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities, said in a statement on the deal. “Spending down Wisconsin’s savings and reducing income when the state is already not providing enough funding to cover actual costs means there will be even less money next budget to pay for the programs people need. Less savings and less income means budget cuts next cycle at a time when many state programs, services, and infrastructure need more investment.”  

Kids Forward, the statewide antiracist policy center, also opposes the deal, saying it “relies on one-time money to paper over long-term challenges, all while legislators preparing to leave office pass the responsibility — and the blame — onto future lawmakers and families across Wisconsin.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are already turning the deal into campaign talking points on their most challenging issue – affordability

“Folks need help now,” declared Joint Finance Committee Co-Chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam), adding that inflation has been a problem “for at least five years,” a spin on voters’ cost-of-living worries that conveniently avoids the Trump administration’s responsibility for surging gas prices and massive healthcare cuts, which are dragging down state Republicans as they campaign this year.

Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) touted the deal in a Tuesday press conference, saying Republicans have always been better stewards of the economy, and it was because of their wise leadership that Wisconsin built up a budget surplus in the first place (mostly by abandoning the state’s obligation to fund public schools). Now, she declared, it’s time to give all that money back to the taxpayers – “it’s their money” and rightfully belongs to individuals, she said, not “progressive politicians in Madison.” This is the drown-the-government-in-the-bathtub philosophy at work – defund schools and hand out checks to individuals. It works best if you are extremely wealthy and don’t mind trading in public education and other forms of public infrastructure for a pay-as-you-go system where you spend your own cash for private education, private health care and private security.  

Nedweski rolled directly into campaign mode, declaring that the benefits to taxpayers in the deal “would all be at risk” if the Democrats win control of the Legislature next year.

Without a doubt, Evers has handed Republicans a massive election-year gift.

Democrats, if they do manage to win legislative majorities – which has seemed more and more likely as Republicans flee the Capitol in droves, including some who represent key, swing districts — would be in a much stronger negotiating position than Evers is now. Instead of a one-time boost in school funding and a flurry of tax-rebate checks, they could recommit to guaranteed state funding for public education, as a lawsuit brought by students, parents and teachers argues they must under the state constitution. 

Now, as the national economy is in turmoil, they will confront the next budget cycle with a looming $2.9 billion hole – the budget surplus blown by a bunch of guys who are heading out of office and won’t have to worry about what comes next.

It was one thing for Evers to wrangle with Republicans and try to claw back funding for schools when the GOP-led Legislature was single-mindedly determined to block his every move. It’s a different matter to trade away the bulk of the state’s budget surplus now, in the waning days of his term, with everything up in the air.

The lack of communication between Evers and members of his own party has rankled Democrats for a long time. But the deal he is pushing to a reluctant Democratic caucus and delighted Republicans is a blow both politically and, more importantly, to the future health of the state. 

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Louisiana is not experiencing ordinary political turbulence. We are watching democratic instability unfold in real time.

Within a matter of days, voters across this state have been forced to absorb three major disruptions at once: the dismantling of Black voting representation through the ruling in Louisiana v. Callais; the suspension of congressional primary elections already in progress; and a statewide constitutional amendment that could fundamentally reshape public education in East Baton Rouge Parish and beyond.

The timing could not be more critical. Election Day is May 16. Early voting began Saturday. Absentee ballots have already been distributed. Yet Gov. Jeff Landry’s executive order suspended Louisiana’s closed party congressional primaries after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the state’s congressional map. 

Voters are now left in a vacuum of information, told that congressional races will still appear on their ballots, but that their votes in these contests won’t count.

That should alarm every person in this state, regardless of party affiliation.

A democracy cannot function when election rules shift after the machinery of voting has already begun moving. This creates confusion and distrust precisely when public confidence is most fragile. 

Black communities, in particular, understand the historical weight of sudden procedural changes in elections. Louisiana does not get to separate this moment from that history.

This erosion of collective representation is not limited to the ballot box. It is also manifesting in the very structure of our local institutions. 

On the May 16 ballot voters are being asked to decide on Constitutional Amendment 2, which would formally recognize the St. George Community School System with independent authority to receive state funding and raise local revenues though taxes.

When coupled with its implementing legislation, the amendment mandates the transfer of public school lands, facilities and assets from the East Baton Rouge Parish School System to the new St. George system by June 30, 2027. Reports indicate that East Baton Rouge schools could lose roughly $100 million if this separation proceeds.

This is bigger than one city, one amendment or one election cycle. This is about fragmentation: the fragmentation of voting rights, public education and, ultimately, public trust. The people most harmed by this fracturing are always the communities with the fewest resources to absorb the blow: Black families, working-class families, disabled residents and children already navigating underfunded schools.

Supporters of these measures frame them as issues of local control or administrative necessity. But language matters less than outcomes. When systems repeatedly reorganize power away from collective accountability and toward isolated control structures, inequity expands. History has shown us this repeatedly.

The most dangerous part is how normalized this chaos is becoming. Louisianans are being conditioned to accept government by disruption. Maps change overnight, elections pause midstream, public assets become bargaining chips. 

That is not healthy governance. That is democratic erosion dressed in procedural language.

The people of Louisiana deserve clarity before elections begin, not after. They deserve stable representation and public institutions designed to serve communities rather than divide them into competing islands of power. Because once citizens begin believing their vote is conditional, their schools are negotiable, and their representation is disposable, democracy itself begins to fracture.

And fractured systems rarely fail equally.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Each day she goes to school, Hmong American Peace Academy senior Eva Vang feels so welcomed among her teachers and peers that she’s received awards for perfect attendance.

“Maybe it’s just because we’re at a predominately Hmong school, but we kind of connect in a lot of ways,” Vang said. “It’s easy to kind of relate to them and relate to the same experiences that we have.”

Aside from a brief stint at a different school in the third grade, Vang has spent each year since kindergarten at Hmong American Peace Academy, or HAPA, in Milwaukee. The Northwest Side charter school serves students from kindergarten to 12th grade with a curriculum rooted in Hmong cultural values and heritage.  

In 2025, the Elementary School and Secondary Education Act Network recognized HAPA as a distinguished school for exceptional student performance and academic growth. It was one of only two Wisconsin schools to receive the national honor last year. 

The school achieved the recognition largely through its efforts to address chronic absenteeism, retain teachers and expand their college and postsecondary career programs, HAPA Chief Academic Officer Brendan Kearney said.

Here’s how it did it.

‘Amazing sense of purpose’

Middle school English language arts teacher Austeen Yang is in her fourth school year at HAPA, and she said the school’s respect for teachers keeps her coming back. 

“HAPA is amazing at asking for our advice and then making decisions based off of that advice,” Yang said. 

Each year, the school solicits teacher feedback through annual surveys, then reports the findings and plans to respond to suggestions and concerns. 

“I think it’s a really big part of the culture, and we’ve seen a lot of things change because of those surveys,” Yang said. 

HAPA recently reported a 96% staff retention rate.

Sara Shaw, deputy research director at Wisconsin Policy Forum, said many schools across the state have struggled with teacher retention since the pandemic. Researchers observed a spike in teacher turnover going into the 2022-23 school year, and while numbers have decreased slightly, they’re still above pre-pandemic levels. 

Shaw attributes the retention issues to both a change in labor market conditions, where inflation rose and it became more favorable for workers to negotiate employment elsewhere, and problems specific to education.

Shaw said the strains from COVID-19 caught up to a lot of teachers, who originally worked to support students during the pandemic but left when things became too difficult. 

HAPA administration recognized that attracting and keeping good, quality teachers would be critical to accomplishing the school’s academic goals, Kearney said.

The school made several adjustments to meet the needs of new educators and returning teachers, including reducing minutes in the workday and the number of workdays in the calendar year. The school also made changes in compensation, class sizes and professional development opportunities, Kearney said. 

“We won’t get done what we need to if we can’t keep good teachers in the building getting better year after year and serving our scholars,” Kearney said. “We don’t want our scholars to show up and see a bunch of new people.” 

Something else that Yang appreciates about HAPA is the school’s focus on providing a culturally based education. 

Yang, being of Hmong heritage, said she feels a “great, huge amazing sense of purpose” and connects with the school’s commitment to preserving and teaching Hmong cultural values.

Supportive teachers and postsecondary success

HAPA senior Angelina Yang, who’s attended the school since kindergarten, said she felt motivated to come to school this year because of HAPA’s Money Coach program, where senior students learn financial literacy skills. 

“I don’t really have a strong knowledge or education on financial literacy,” Yang said. “Going to that program really helped me understand why it’s important to be present in that program because it betters me.”

Vang appreciates the school’s college and career office, which focuses on postsecondary success. She said the office helped her figure out what she wants to do after school and apply for colleges and scholarship opportunities. 

“It is a time right now where it’s very overwhelming, but because we have such a great college and career team, they do support us a lot,” Vang said. “In a way, I think they did also kind of grow my expectations for college.”

Vang said she knew she wanted to go to college since her freshman year. 

She has choices – she’s been accepted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Loyola University and DePaul University. She’s looking to study medicine and become an emergency physician. 

The office has also supported Yang, who plans to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

“A lot of the students here are first generation,” Yang said. “Having that support really builds our self-esteem and making sure that we know what we want to do in the future and how we can go to college or enter the workforce.”

After seeing how transportation barriers to hospitals in Laos impacted her uncle during her freshman year, she decided to study health promotion and equity. 

“That really made me recognize the health disparities in my community and in my family,” she said. “Going into health administration … would help me at least try to help remedy those uncertainties.”

Kearney said HAPA has invested in greater college support in the past five years. 

Traditionally, counselors at the school helped students in a more one-size-fits-all fashion. Currently, the school has four college advisers, a coordinator and a director of college and careers who work to personalize the experience for students and connect their work now with their post-graduation goals. 

“The goal is that every student here leaves with a plan,” Kearney said. “For very many of them, it’s college, but we also support students who want to pursue career or technical education.”

Chronic absenteeism

Neither Yang nor Vang has struggled much with attendance at HAPA. Still, the school has not been immune to chronic absenteeism, especially after the pandemic. 

HAPA tackles absenteeism through a multi-tiered system of supports, a collaborative group of staff members who help identify the causes of absenteeism and support the scholars and their families, Kearney said. 

“A big part of making that work has been investing in student services staff,” Kearney said. “Post-pandemic, we’ve added several staff members who can help to serve different parts of the scholar.”

The team helps design an intervention or support plan based on what’s causing the student to miss school. Sometimes that includes connecting students with social workers, counselors or helping those dealing with homelessness, Kearney said.

If a student hasn’t been to school in a while and can’t be reached on the phone, HAPA sends impact coaches to check on students at their homes.

Austeen Yang said the system works well for teachers because they talk with other educators about the student of concern and collaborate to address issues. When teachers have exhausted all their options for helping the student, the support team comes in to support students. 

Kearney said the system came from teacher feedback. 

“It’s a part of why we’ve invested in student services staff,” Kearney said. “When teachers are expected to do all things for all students, it becomes an unsustainable job.”

Angelina Yang said the supportive teachers keep her coming back and her attendance strong. 

“HAPA does a really great job at hiring teachers who actually really care about their students and their well-being,” Yang said. “Having that support makes me feel more inclined to go just because I have a space that I know that I am welcome in.”

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Alex Klaus is the education solutions reporter for Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

Hmong American Peace Academy received national recognition for exceptional performance. How did it do it? 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.