MILWAUKEE – Perhaps the Milwaukee school board is starting to learn a lesson about student retention.

Milwaukee Public Schools has experienced a significant decline in student enrollment in recent years, with many parents choosing to send their kids to charter schools or private voucher schools.

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Through it all, the MPS board has stubbornly resisted applications for new charter schools – particularly those that do not want to be staffed with MPS-hired union teachers – even though such schools often produce significantly better academic results than regular MPS schools.

But the board changed direction last week, officially chartering the new Milwaukee Excellence Charter School, a “no excuses” school that promises to establish and uphold high academic expectations for students, as well as a strict disciplinary policy, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The school will be free to hire its own staff, which means it’s likely to hire non-union teachers.

Why did the school board suddenly change its mind about the school, after giving it a lukewarm reception last spring?

Apparently because the founder of the school, former Teach for America executive and MPS graduate Maurice Thomas, promised to aggressively recruit students away from private voucher schools and independent charter schools and lure them back into MPS.

The situation could be a win-win for everyone involved. The charter school students will receive what’s promised to be high-level instruction in a disciplined environment, without the entanglements of union staff and work rules. The district will receive the state funding attached to every student, including those who return to MPS from outside schools.

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The board has obviously learned to combat the attraction of better schools by creating better schools itself.

“My belief was just that if we built a high-quality school, people would come,” Thomas was quoted as saying by the Journal Sentinel. “But when MPS came back to us and told us they wanted a more robust focus on bringing parents back into the MPS family, I didn’t see anything wrong with that.”

The new school holds great promise for the students it will serve, primarily those who come from disadvantaged socio-economic circumstances, according to Alan Borsuk, who writes an education column for the Journal Sentinel.

“Maurice Thomas’ planned Milwaukee Excellence Charter School, set to open in 2016, promises an ‘unapologetically college preparatory’ education for grades six to 12, complete with longer school days, an extended school year and strict disciplinary standards,” Borsuk wrote in July, following the board’s initial approval of the school. “By 2024, Thomas said, 100% of graduates will be at a four-year college.

“Such ‘no excuses schools’ have produced higher rates of graduation and better test scores than conventional schools in some parts of the country. Such a school could be especially impactful at the planned location on the city’s northwest side, a historically underserved area in education.”

The board’s embrace of the new school is significantly different than its attitude toward other charter applicants in recent years.

In May, former MPS board member Bruce Thompson, writing for UrbanMilwaukee.com, noted that the school board has been increasingly hostile to charter proposals, particularly those that envisioned hiring non-union teachers.

“Early last year, then-superintendent Gregory Thornton presented a plan that would have targeted 25 low-performing schools for various turnaround strategies,” Thompson wrote. “Thornton’s proposal was rejected by the board.

“The board’s primary objection was that Thornton’s proposal envisioned soliciting proposals from operators of successful charter schools in Milwaukee and nationwide to operate some of the schools targeted because of their low performance.

“The board’s opposition to charters has only hardened since. I recently served on MPS’ Charter Review Committee. The number of applications was down from previous years – only two – likely reflecting a growing view that MPS is not friendly to charter proposals.

“An extremely well-written proposal for a non-instrumentality school (a non-instrumentality is one that need not use union teachers) was unanimously recommended by the outside members of the review committee, but opposed by the two board members. When the committee’s recommendation went to the full board, it was rejected.”