U.S. exports of refined petroleum products carried on clean product tankers have increased steadily over the last year, with exports totaling 6.3 million barrels per day (b/d) in January 2026, about 10% more than in January 2025 and near record highs, according to data from Vortexa. Growth in exports of diesel, gasoline, and liquified petroleum gases (LPG) drove the overall increase. Exports of diesel both increased and shifted destinations, with more headed to Europe and less headed to South America, which has historically been the largest destination for U.S. distillate exports.
(The Center Square) – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers wants the public to concentrate on the bills and times that he had reached agreements with the Legislature as he is set to continue an interesting week of negotiations on a tax-cut…
(The Center Square) - A bill that will end the ability of the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to raise fees for animal market licenses, animal dealer licenses, animal trucker licenses and animal transport vehicle registrations is now…
(The Center Square) - Assembly Speaker Robin Vos believes that having a short timeline to discuss a tax cut bill before the end of the legislative session could be helpful in tax cut negotiations.
North Division High School had always been a staple in Milwaukee’s Black community.
But a Jan. 19, 1976, order by federal Judge John Reynolds for Milwaukee Public Schools to desegregate almost changed that.
The ruling led MPS to propose changes three years later with the goal to integrate the 97% Black North Side high school.
The solution? Close North Division as the neighborhood knew it and reopen it as a citywide magnet school for medical and science technology. Magnet schools offer special instruction and programs that are typically not available elsewhere.
The district had utilized a similar strategy in the years prior to integrate Rufus King High School and Golda Meir School by changing them to magnet schools.
The proposal for North Division would integrate the school by drawing more white students from other parts of the city but would also limit enrollment options for students in the surrounding neighborhoods.
Residents quickly fought back, organizing the Coalition to Save North Division.
Howard Fuller, who led the coalition, remembers the community’s reaction when the plan was first announced.
“We ended up filling up the auditorium at the board meeting at Central Office,” said Fuller, who went on to become superintendent of MPS from 1991 to 1995. “That’s when I gave the speech and ended by saying ‘enough is enough.’ That then became the slogan for the Coalition to Save North.”
Fuller said the group organized marches and meetings, canvassed across the neighborhood and eventually took legal action and won.
Desegregation at MPS
Lawyer and politician Lloyd Barbee, among others, filed a lawsuit against the Milwaukee Public School Board of Directors in 1965 to desegregate MPS, Milwaukee historian and author James Nelsen said.
The suit alleged that the district’s policy of assigning students to their neighborhood school maintained school segregation because of the widespread residential segregation across the city.
The case ran until 1976, when Reynolds ruled that Milwaukee Public Schools needed to take action to desegregate the district.
Reynolds then established a monitoring board to enforce and oversee districtwide desegregation plans.
Nelsen said shortly before the ruling, the Board of Directors welcomed new Superintendent Lee McMurrin, who had implemented magnet schools in Toledo, Ohio.
Once he came to Milwaukee, McMurrin pushed to rebrand some neighborhood high schools as magnet schools, encouraging students from across the city to go to different schools.
When a new North Division building opened in 1978, the district tried attracting white students to the school but was unsuccessful.
This, in combination with low performing grades at the school, led McMurrin to target North Division to become the city’s newest magnet school. The school would open a medical and science technology program for high schoolers across the city.
“We’re not satisfied with the results at North Division,” McMurrin said in a 1979 Milwaukee Sentinel article. “We will not have a change about unless we make it a brand new school.”
Community pushes back
Fuller, students and the neighborhood had major concerns about the new plan.
“The thing that concerned me the most was that once they built the brand-new building, then the first thing they were going to do then was to put all of the neighborhood kids out,” Fuller said. “In part, it was also a pushback against the way that desegregation was being implemented in the city at that time.”
Howard Fuller speaks to a crowd of students and community members in protest of Milwaukee Public Schools’ plan to turn the predominantly Black neighborhood school into a magnet school. (Courtesy of Howard Fuller)
North Division’s student council organized a rally in which 400 students walked out of school and marched to the Central Office in protest, according to local news reports.
The plan would close enrollment to freshmen and sophomores. Willie Washington, then a North Division junior, spoke out against the plan during the protest.
“We feel that we should not be used as guinea pigs for integration,” Washington told the Milwaukee Journal.
Fuller said the coalition spent the summer going door to door in the neighborhood, held community meetings and built a parent group.
When the new school year started in September 1979, Fuller and over 200 students gathered for a mass meeting on North Division’s front lawn. Fuller told students to study hard and “demand that they be educated.”
After months of protesting, Fuller said, the coalition escalated to legal action through the monitoring board, established to observe desegregation efforts.
Success at a cost
Fuller said the Board of Directors eventually reached an out-of-court settlement and dropped the plan.
“It was the first battle where the board reversed its decision on closing a school in the Black community because all of the protests before had never gained any traction,” Fuller said.
The school would remain a neighborhood school but also offer a career specialty program, according to the settlement.
The agreement said the school should aim for about 2,000 students, 60% Black and 40% white. A set number of seats would be set aside for non-Black students, and Black students could not fill those spots.
As those changes were implemented, problems at North Division High School continued, Fuller said.
Fuller said nobody knew he would eventually become a superintendent of MPS. When he took on the role in 1991, he gained access to documents and information nobody thought he would see.
An assistant superintendent at the time told him that the board had taken actions to sabotage North Division after the coalition won.
“Some of the problems that exist at North today can be traced back to the conscious attempt to sabotage North once we won in court,” Fuller said. “There was such anger on the part of the administration that they had to do this.”
For example, Fuller said the coalition worked with North Division Principal Bob Jasna to set up a program and curriculum for the school, then replaced Jasna with a middle school principal who knew nothing about the work he and Fuller did.
“That sabotaged the entire effort that we had made,” Fuller said.
Today, North Division High School remains predominantly Black — 90.5%, according to the latest state report card. The school scored an overall 54.9 on the report card, meeting few expectations, according to the Wisconsin Department of Education.
“For me, this struggle around North Division has never ended,” Fuller said. “It’s been ongoing for 30, 40 years.”
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.
What happens when residents near proposed data center sites have no idea what’s being built in their communities? Wisconsin Watch’s Tom Kertscher recently followed up on a tip discussing nondisclosure agreements in cities like Beaver Dam. In this video, Wisconsin Watch also met with community members Prescott Balch and comedian Charlie Berens to discuss these issues. (Video by Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
The $46 billion in data centers proposed or under construction in Wisconsin continue to make news over who should pay for the electricity to power them, whether municipalities should use nondisclosure agreements to keep details confidential and more. Here are some of the latest updates:
Utility rates: The state Public Service Commission is accepting public comment on a We Energies proposal for determining whether the general public pays any share of the costs of constructing and operating power plants needed to meet data centers’ electricity demands. One concern is creating more “stranded assets” — power plants that are shut down before their debt is paid off. Wisconsin Watch reported in December that Wisconsin ratepayers owe $1 billion for stranded assets.
Legislation: A state Senate committee is holding hearings Tuesday, Feb. 17, on three data center bills. Senate Bill 729 seeks to limit how much general ratepayers can be charged by utilities for the cost of providing electricity to data centers. Senate Bill 843 contains a similar provision and has passed the Assembly, but also contains a controversial requirement that renewable energy used for a data center be on the data center site. Senate Bill 969 would prohibit local governments from signing nondisclosure agreements with data center developers. Separately, a new bill would impose 14 requirements on data center proposals, including prohibiting NDAs between local governments and data center developers. Wisconsin Watch found that local officials in at least four communities signed NDAs to hide details of data center proposals.
Wisconsin Watch reporter Tom Kertscher joined Charlie Berens on “Old Fashioned Interview” to discuss his recent reporting on data centers and their impact on Wisconsin — from rising utility costs to residents being unaware when projects are proposed in their communities. (Video by Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
Janesville: The City Council put on the Nov. 3 ballot a referendum proposed by data center opponents that could give voters direct say over a hyperscale data center. If the referendum is approved, it would create an ordinance requiring separate referendum approval for any type of development project worth $450 million or more that is proposed for the former General Motors site. The data center proposed for Janesville is worth $8 billion.
Port Washington: Business groups are suing to block a proposed ordinance affecting economic development projects. The proposal was made by citizens who claimed a lack of transparency by the city over a $15 billion data center now under construction.
Grant County: A company seeking a site for a $1 billion data center has included rural Cassville in southwest Wisconsin in its search. A local official said he expects to learn in spring whether the county is still being considered.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The towns of Two Creeks, Two Rivers and Mishicot all approved resolutions calling on Manitowoc County to place a one-year moratorium on new data center projects.
Junior high school student, Sophia Knetter, discusses the common misconceptions about starting a youth-run business, noting the advantages of being young.
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In his eighth and final State of the State address Tuesday night, Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday night said Republicans have chronically underfunded Wisconsin schools and blamed them for increased property taxes after negotiations for a tax cut stalled this week.
A Wisconsin bill would create a path for victims of sextortion to sue and attempt to recoup financial compensation. The bill's supporters have cited the case of 15-year-old Bradyn Bohn, who died by suicide after his parents said he fell victim to sextortion.
Thousands of people flocked to northern Wisconsin to get a glimpse of the ice caves within the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore on Monday, which officials have closed to the public after a single day.
As concerns build about tactics used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, some Wisconsinites have struggled to figure out when a car belongs to ICE — and when it doesn't.
WASHINGTON, D.C.— Growth Energy, the National Corn Growers Association, and the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) released a joint statement regarding the lack of progress toward a permanent, legislative fix offering consumers year-round access to E15. After reaching an impasse in January, House leaders agreed to establish an E15 Rural Domestic Energy Council, which was charged with reaching a deal on consensus legislation no later than February 15, 2026. No such deal has been announced.
“Year-round, nationwide E15 is an urgent priority for rural America, and it can’t wait. House leaders already have bipartisan, consensus legislation that has broad support from the overwhelming majority of biofuels, agriculture, fuel retail, and oil refining interests. The solution is on the table, and we urge council members to refocus their attention on proposals that already have widespread support. Year-round E15 will deliver real savings for hard-working families and open a reliable market for U.S. farmers struggling to stay afloat. We cannot allow a tiny handful of mid-sized refiners to take year-round E15 hostage while demanding outlandish handouts, just to line their pockets at the expense of everyone else,” said Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor, RFA President & CEO Geoff Cooper, and Ohio farmer and National Corn Growers Association President Jed Bower.
“Our rural champions in Congress — backed by President Trump — understand that voters want to see more American-made energy, lower prices at the pump, and a stronger farm economy. House and Senate leaders should listen,” they added.
We discuss the potential impact of the national jobs report on school district budgets, the DOT’s non-domiciled CDL final rule and cutting-edge technology takeaways from the Geotab Connect conference.
“It’s all about service: I went from servicing my country to now servicing my community.” Bernando Brown, director of student transportation for DeKalb County School District in Georgia, shares how his military experience shaped his work ethic, leadership style and focus on training and mentorship. He also discusses handling retention, budgeting and operational challenges.
Before a school bus incident even happens, it’s important for student transportation professionals to be aware of federal safety recommendations and crash investigation procedures. Meg Sweeney from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will be at STN EXPO East to give attendees the latest updates.
Her session “NTSB Investigations & Recommendations: Lap/Shoulder Seat Belts to the School Bus Danger Zone” on March 31 wraps up the conference by outlining various facets of school bus crash investigations. She will discuss occupant protection, which will include NTSB recommendations on lap/shoulder seatbelts and their safety impact during crashes, and shed light on “Danger Zone” crashes, including incidents where vehicles struck stopped school buses or hit a pedestrian.
Sweeney will provide attendees with background on the NTSB and its mission to further safety for students and transportation staff. Attendees will also learn about how NTSB conducts investigations and what school districts can expect when NTSB investigators arrive on scene of a school bus crash.
She will also provide insights into NTSB school bus investigations of high-profile crashes and incidents, including one in Maine that killed a 5-year-old boy, who was dragged 280 feet after the school bus loading doors closed on his arm while he attempted to board. Sweeney also worked on the development of recently released urgent recommendations related to an August crash in Leander, Texas and the use of lap/shoulder seatbelts to prevent student injuries and fatalities.
Sweeney is an accident investigator and project manager in the NTSB’s Office of Highway Safety. She has also worked in the NTSB Safety Studies Division, where she studied child restraint safety, multi-passenger van safety and operator fatigue, as well as at the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
STN EXPO East will be held March 26-31 at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Charlotte Concord Golf Resort & Spa in Concord, North Carolina. Over the five-day conference, attendees will have access to the best in student transportation training, including hands-on training and events, educational sessions, product demonstration labs, green energy panel discussions, an inspirational keynote address, the STN EXPO Trade Show, the Ride and Drive at the Charlotte Motor Speedway and more. Register now at stnexpo.com/east.
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