By Paul Brennan | Watchdog.org
Milwaukee, Wis. — The words “bizarre” and “hilariously tragic” aren’t normally associated with real estate transactions.
But there’s very little normal about the problems private schools and charter schools face when they try to buy one of Milwaukee Public Schools vacant school buildings.
“The whole thing was very, very bizarre,” Henry Tyson said, reflecting on his experience dealing with city and MPS officials.
Tyson, superintendent of St. Marcus Lutheran School, spent more than a year trying to buy one of the city’s vacant school building.
In 2013, St. Marcus, a highly regarded school that accepts voucher students through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, needed to add a second campus.
Its classrooms, from the K3 program serving 3 year olds through those for its oldest students in eighth grade, were full. The school had a waiting list of more than 300 students whose parents were eager for them to attend.
There were plenty of vacant MPS school buildings available. There still are, as a new report from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty documents.
According to “Kids in Crisis, Cobwebs in the Classrooms,” there are 17 vacant public school buildings in Milwaukee and an estimated 27 more schools using less than 60 percent of their facilities.
On average, those vacant buildings have been empty for seven years.
As the report explains, there are considerable costs associated with these buildings.
The vacant properties must be maintained. MPS has spent $1.6 million just on utilities since 2012.
The costs associated with the underutilized school building go beyond dollars and cents.
“On average,” the report states, these schools “are lower performing than the other MPS schools and have nearly twice as many police calls and a much higher habitual absenteeism rate.”
Although there’s no proof that making students attend classes in largely empty buildings is a direct cause of those problems, there’s no denying a strong correlation exists between those problems and the under utilization of MPS schools.
What is certain is that there is no shortage of demand for all that empty space.
The reports notes that over the years, MPCP schools and charters schools have “expressed interest in purchasing or leasing nearly every single building.”
When Tyson started looking for a second campus for St. Marcus, he didn’t have to look far.
“There are over 300,000 square feet of vacant MPS real estate in three buildings within 10 blocks of St. Marcus,” Tyson told Watchdog.org. “That’s the equivalent of five football fields, covered and heated.”
Tyson set his sights on the building that previously housed the Malcolm X Academy. The 170,000-square-foot property would provide St. Marcus with plenty of room to grow.
EMPTY SCHOOLS IN MILWAUKEE: A new report documents the problem of vacant school public school buildings in Milwaukee. But when St. Marcus Lutheran School tried to purchase the closed Malcolm X Academy (pictured here), the private school encountered problems.
Tyson contacted then MPS Superintendent Greg Thornton about the building.
“He expressed an interest in selling and told me to write to the school board,” Tyson said. “I did.”
Then he waited.
After three months of waiting, Tyson finally received a response.
“I got a single line response that said they weren’t willing to sell us the building,” Tyson said.
“Frankly, I was more irritated by the way they responded than the response. If they had given some rationale — like they had plans for the building — it would have been different.
“It’s unacceptable. You can’t have a public organization like MPS have that kind of facility unused for six years and then to just refuse to sell it without providing a reason,” Tyson said.
It may be unacceptable, but it shouldn’t be unexpected, according to the WILL report.
“Milwaukee officials have chosen to block the expansion of choice and charter schools into unused and underutilized buildings. This hostility comes in many forms: local administrative policies that ban sales of facilities to certain non-MPS schools, the failure of MPS to keep a public list of what buildings are empty and underutilized, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett’s insistence of charging a ‘school choice tax’ as a condition on selling or leasing empty buildings, and the creation of last-minute ‘deals’ done solely to thwart the sale of facilities to schools in the choice program in high demand by Milwaukee families,” the report asserts.
Watchdog.org contacted MPS and was provided with a prepared response by MPS Media Manager Tony Tagliavia.
“WILL’s report includes factually inaccurate claims that should raise questions about its ability to accurate analyze the situation,” the response said.
As an example of these inaccurate claims, MPS points out, “It lists that Rufus King International High School is moving when it is in fact Rufus King International Middle School.”
The MPS response does not dispute WILL’s numbers for vacant or underutilized schools or address WILL’s contention that Milwaukee officials obstruct the efforts of choice and charter schools to buy MPS properties.
St. Marcus encountered an obstacle course’s worth of those obstructions in its attempts to buy an MPS building, because Tyson did not give up after receiving the one line rejection letter.
“We mobilized our parents,” Tyson said. “We did a small march — maybe 40 people — and then a month later a bigger march with 400 people. It got the attention of city leaders.”
It also got the attention of the national media.
“A meeting with the mayor followed. But there was no progress. The board was unwilling to sell,” Tyson said.
Technically, the decision to sell a vacant property doesn’t rest with the school board. The buildings belong to the city, and since 2011 the Milwaukee Common Council has had the authority to make a unilateral decision to sell a vacant or underutilized property. But the Common Council still defers to MPS when it comes to selling properties.
The school board may have been unwilling to sell, but in the wake of the marches and media attention it did finally announce a reason for not selling the building to St. Marcus.
School board president Michael Barnes unveiled an ambitious and convoluted plan for the building.
Malcolm X would be sold to a real estate developer who would convert part of it into apartments and the rest into a community resource center. MPS would then lease and eventually buy the community resource center.
The WILL report describes this deal as “a sham transaction done solely to prevent St. Marcus from obtaining the building.”
This was an opinion held by many at the time, particularly after it was revealed the developer had not secured the financing needed for the project.
“The thing stinks to high heaven,” State Rep. Joe Sanfelippo, R-West Allis, said.
But Barnes insisted it was a good deal that had long been in the works.
“We’ve been working on this Malcolm X project for a year and a half to two years,” Barnes said.
The Common Council voted to approve the deal.
The deal fell apart in less than a year.
Even worse, instead of being paid for the building, MPS ended up owing the developer $500,000 for work done on the property.
As the Malcolm X deal was floundering, Tyson was busy with another attempt to acquire an MPS building.
While attending the city’s annual birthday celebration on Jan. 30, 2014, Tyson had been approached by Mayor Tom Barrett.
“He said he wanted help us,” Tyson recalled.
BIZARRE; Henry Tyson, superintendent of St. Marcus Lutheran School, called his dealing with city and school officials “very, very bizarre.”
This time things moved quickly.
The director of city development began working with Tyson to find a new campus for St. Marcus.
They settled on the vacant Lee Elementary School building.
“The city offered to pay for an appraisal of the building at a cost of $5,000,” Tyson said. “That the city was willing to spend that much on an appraisal I took as a sign they were serious about going through with the deal.”
Despite how well things were going, obstacles began to appear.
“The first was with the school district. As soon as we announced we were doing this, they announced they had another offer on the table for Lee and they were going to look at both,” Tyson recalled.
The other offer was from an MPS teacher who claimed to want the building for a charter school that had no students or charter.
Tyson continued his talks with city officials.
A price of $880,000 for the building was agreed to and St. Marcus was also set to pay a PILOT — payment in lieu of taxes — for the property, since as a private school it would be exempt from property taxes.
“We agreed to that because we understand that any property in the city, even one owned by a nonprofit, uses city services,” Tyson explained.
The PILOT was expected to be $204,151.
The next obstacle appeared at what Tyson thought was going to be the final meeting with the city officials to set the terms of the sale.
“This second obstacle was hilariously tragic,” Tyson recalled with a rueful laugh.
“The mayor’s assistant gave me a piece of paper with a second PILOT on it. They wanted us to pay an additional $1.3 million to cover what they said the city would lose by students using vouchers to go to our school,” he said.
“I just about jumped out my seat. I couldn’t believe they were serious proposing on a purchase of $880,000 what was basically a tax of $1.3 million,” Tyson said.
A “school choice tax” is how the WILL report describes this sort of payment Barrett wants from voucher schools that seek to purchase MPS buildings.
Barrett has long been dissatisfied with the way the voucher program is funded, saying it is unnecessarily expensive for the city.
$1.3 MILLION: Mayor Tom Barrett wanted St. Marcus Lutheran School to pay an extra $1.3 million after the school agreed to pay $880,000 for the vacant school building.
“The mayor told me if we didn’t want to pay this tax, I needed to go to Madison and get the Republicans to fix the way vouchers are funded,” Tyson recalled.
“Suddenly it all became clear. Somebody somewhere along the way had decided St. Marcus is the sort of the darling of the voucher movement — a program strongly associated with Republicans — so putting St. Marcus over a barrel would help get the funding changed.”
As bad as that was, the argument made in favor of St. Marcus paying the extra $1.3 million was even worse in Tyson’s opinion.
“The mayor’s assistant looked at me and with all sincerity said, ‘You do realize that money is equivalent to six police officers.’
“Our city has some of the lowest performing public schools and one of the highest incarceration rates in the country for young men, and we’re talking about putting more police officers on the street rather than creating another high-performing school,” Tyson said.
“That’s the mentality of our city’s leadership. The mayor of Milwaukee it seems would prefer to lock up children and young adults than educate them.”
Watchdog.org contacted the mayor’s office about its dealing with St. Marcus, but did not receive a reply to questions submitted via email.
Tyson gave up trying to buy an MPS property after the demand for the second PILOT, and St. Marcus instead purchased a building that belonged to a now-closed private school.
It’s a smaller property and doesn’t allow St. Marcus as much room to grow as the school needs.
“We’re already using every available square foot,” Tyson said.
Asked if he’d be interested in trying again to purchase one of the many empty MPS buildings, Tyson paused, then said, “I’d be very reluctant to try that route again.”
Contact Paul Brennan at pbrennan@watchdog.org