MIWAUKEE – A military-style voucher school that serves some of Milwaukee’s most troubled students is apparently having difficulty purchasing a vacant building from Milwaukee Public Schools.

It may be another case of MPS, and its supporters in Milwaukee city government, trying to block competitors from buying vacant MPS buildings and attracting students away from the public school district.

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MPS loses state dollars every time a student leaves to enroll at a private school through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, or one of the many popular independent charter schools in the city.

Right Step Inc., the military-style school, wants to purchase the former Centro del Nino Head Start building in Milwaukee, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The building would be used for an all-boys school, serving as many as 150 students, the newspaper reported.

The school already operates in one Milwaukee building, serving about 150 students in grades 5-12.

The proposed purchase will be considered by the Milwaukee Common Council’s Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee this week – and perhaps by the full Common Council – this week, the Journal Sentinel reported.

But there is suspicion that the city, which owns the building, may be dragging its feet, in yet another effort to keep an MPS competitor from opening a school in a vacant building and attracting MPS students.

A mass exodus of students from MPS in recent years left the district with approximately two dozen empty buildings. The structures have drawn the interest of many growing private and charter schools, because there is a shortage of classroom space in the city.

In January 2011, MPS labeled every empty building as “surplus” and therefore for sale, according to a published report. Six months later, when interest among private and charter schools became obvious, “MPS took all of its vacant buildings off of the market,” the report said.

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From that point forward, MPS has been actively trying to keep its students trapped in the district, despite its denials.

The former president of the MPS school board, Michael Bonds, admitted as much a few years ago, when he said selling a particular vacant school building to a private school would be like “asking the Coca-Cola Company to turn over its facilities to Pepsi so Pepsi can expand and compete with the Coca-Cola Company.”

The state passed a law last year designed to prevent MPS from keeping former school buildings in mothballs, simply to block out competitors and stifle school choice.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which represents Right Step Inc., claims that the city has already violated that law by failing to act on the purchase proposal.

“By law, they must complete the process in 60 days, and that was three months ago,” WILL Deputy Counsel C.J. Szafir told the Journal Sentinel.

Right Step Inc. serves students who were described by one of its leaders as “weapon-carrying, drug-using habitual truants’’ and “the most at-risk of at-risk kids,” the Journal Sentinel reported.

Standardized test scores for the troubled students at the current Right Step school have been dismal, with only seven percent proficient in English and zero percent in math, according the newspaper.

On the positive side, the school has reportedly managed to maintain order. There were no police log costs, citations or arrests at the school over a recent three-year period, according to a study done by Right Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, Milwaukee Public Schools students also struggle academically.

Only 27 percent of MPS students (the general student body, not just troubled students) were proficient or advanced in English language arts on last year’s statewide Badger Test, and only 17 percent met the standard in math.

Across the state, 51.2 percent of students were proficient in English and 43.7 percent in math.

Safety and security are also apparently major problems at MPS.

According to a recent report from News Talk 1130, “As of May 25th, there have been more than 31,000 referrals issued in Milwaukee Public Schools this year for fighting or violent or aggressive behavior toward classmates or staff members – an average of more than 172 per day.

“There have been 646 referrals for sexual assault this year, and 399 for weapons in schools.”