Tosa District Opposes UWM Charter School

The Wauwatosa School Board will vote Monday night on a resolution asking Gov. Scott Walker to veto a provision of the proposed state budget that would allow the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to create charter schools outside the City of Milwaukee.

While the resolution does not mention it by name, the target is clearly the Forest Exploration Center's planned University Lab School, intended to occupy the historic Eschweiler Campus buildings on the County Grounds and already approved by the city.

Forest Center Executive Director John Gee is seeking a charter through UWM, which is expected to be approved by the university later this year. UWM administers 12 charter schools in Milwaukee with a 13th primed to open this year.

But such independent charter schools have up to now been barred from opening outside Milwaukee and Racine; only public school districts can authorize them elsewhere.

School officials including board President Michael Meier and Superintendent Phil Ertl are none too pleased with the state budget proposal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Monday.

The idea of preserving charter schools to public districts is to keep local control and per-student aid within the districts, they said in that report.

Each student enrolled by a public school district draws about $7,000 in aid from state, federal and local sources beyond the property tax levy.

To have UWM "using taxpayer money and tuition money to come into Wauwatosa and compete with us for students? We don't agree with that," Meier told the Journal Sentinel.

If the School District were to persuade Walker to use his veto on the UWM charter school measure, it would seriously upset efforts over the past year to preserve the Eschweiler Buildings by finding a tenant for them.

Wauwatosa just last month approved a complex resolution on the fate of the Eschweilers. It allows the Forest Exploration Center to lease the buildings for a short term while it pursues fundraising toward a hoped-for fall 2014 opening.

If, however, the FEC fails to show enough fundraising capacity within about 20 months to two years to restore and use the buildings, three of the four historic structure would be torn down.

Gee and the FEC are working with developer Barry Mandel, who would purchase the property from UWM, build new apartments on the campus and give the old buildings over to the charter school.

But if the school cannot be chartered under state law, no viable scenario would 
remain under which the historic buildings could be preserved. Mandel has presented projections showing that the buildings cannot be adapted for commercial use in any economically feasible way.

Mandel has said so far that he would be able to preserve the Eschweiler Administration Building, the largest of the historic structures, but he also indicated that he would need as much as $2.5 million in city TIF assistance to do so.

"The city has been walking a tightrope on this issue," said Ald. Dennis McBride, who also sits on the Wauwatosa Historic Preservation Commission. "It's been a balancing act between three needs: to save the butterfly habitat, promote economic development, and preserve the Eschweiler Buildings.

"If the School Board is successful in removing the charter school provision from the budget, that would throw a monkey wrench into this effort."
"I'm a 100 percent supporter of public education and the Wauwatosa Public Schools," McBride said. "At the same time, the city has received and approved these proposals for the use of that land and those buildings. It's not my role to get in the way of private education, as long as it's a legal use."