READER MAILBAG: MPS and education policy, fake electors, more

You asked, we're answering. Let's recombobulate together.

The Recombobulation Area is a thirteen-time Milwaukee Press Club award-winning weekly opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. Learn more about it here.

We put the call out for questions, and you answered. It’s mailbag time, folks.

QUESTION: Hi Dan! Curious to hear your thoughts on the current MPS situation with the potential funding withholdings because of missing financial documents. With how tight a race the referendum vote was in April, how do you see this affecting things moving forward? 

QUESTION: Any thoughts on why Aisha Carr resigned from school board? What exactly were members of MPS finance committee of the school board looking at over the last year since no reports were filed? Finally does Posley resign or get fired? Thanks 

QUESTION: I second this. There's a LOT of scumbaggary going on in the district that no one is covering. Also, why did Posley hire a CFO who has no financial background? And why did the Board allow it? And what is happening in their "closed door" Board sessions? But to answer the question about the Finance Committee (same as every other committee): the Administration sets the agenda and no one is allowed to ask about or address anything that is not on that agenda. And the Board is fine with it because then they can claim "they didn't know." Posley lies to their faces and everyone knows it and they never call him on it.

ANSWER:

We got a lot of MPS questions that came before and after that wild Monday night meeting where Dr. Keith Posley eventually announced his resignation after 2 a.m. So, I’m going to answer them collectively.

But first, I want to give you a bit more background about where I’m coming from on this and other education policy issues. There’s a reason I don’t often, or really ever, write about education policy issues. I consider it to be my weakest area of understanding when it comes to public policy. Of the jobs I’ve had in journalism, none put me in a school board meeting or a classroom or in conversation with superintendents or teachers. I’ve covered politics, I’ve covered public policy, I’ve covered business news and development and big projects and a variety of different industries and beats, but I’ve never written about education. In the years I’ve been writing The Recombobulation Area, I’ve never written a column about education policy. I’ve edited a couple guest columns, but they’ve never been my own views. Beyond generally believing that education at every level in this state and country is underfunded — not unlike so many other areas of our nation’s hollowed-out public sector — I don’t hold strong personal beliefs on a whole lot of specifics within the broad spectrum of issues that encompass the education realm. 

So, if you ask me my views on even the most big picture factors of education policy, my likely answer is going to be something along the lines of, “I don’t know.” I think it’s important to recognize what we do and do not know. I have personal views on schools, of course, that are informed by my own personal experience — both as a student and now as a parent — but I often worry about overemphasizing one’s own personal experience in analyzing public policy. Understanding the lens through which you see the world is important, too. 

That said, I’m working on changing this, and getting better at understanding education policy issues. It’s going to take some time before I’m more comfortable opining on such matters in any way resembling the way I approach other issues. And because so much of the data surrounding education policy seems to be so preposterously agenda-driven, and the way certain things are assessed seems disconnected from reality, finding the signal in the noise seems even more challenging than other fields. 

At the same time, you don’t have to possess an expert-level understanding of education policy to see that what’s been happening at Milwaukee Public Schools is nothing short of a disaster. 

There’s been some terrific reporting on the issues MPS is facing, from AJ Bayatpour at CBS 58, Rory Linnane at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Corri Hess at WPR, and many others. The news on the district failing to submit financial reports to the state, and the suspension of the district’s Head Start funding is startling, to say the least, and it certainly seems like the community lost faith in Dr. Keith Posley’s ability to lead this district. 

The public process of this has been beyond mismanaged. Frustrations among local media are boiling over, and with reason. But that important first step in a change in leadership is, at the very least, an encouraging sign, as is the hiring of former Waukesha superintendent Todd Gray as a financial consultant. The school board still has a whole lot of work to do to reestablish trust with the community and forge a better path forward, but negotiating terms of new leadership — messy as it was — seems like the best big-picture decision to be made in the current moment. 

There are also valid questions being asked about when these financial issues were disclosed, as it relates to the referendum that was part of the Spring Election. Would the same referendum have passed had this information been made public before April 2? Perhaps not. But I’m also not sure that what has happened since changes the larger calculus from a funding standpoint. The most persuasive argument made in the run-up to the referendum happened at a press conference held by Democratic state legislators, where State Rep. Evan Goyke said the following: 

"State leaders have not stepped up, so local residents of Milwaukee are saying yes, our kids (are) worth it. The only tool we have to provide the resources in the classroom that kids deserve is through this referendum. And maybe in future years, the Legislature will solve this problem. But today, right now, this next school year, the only thing we have is to vote yes."

Depriving students in Milwaukee the resources to better the school district would not have been the correct decision, either. As I touched on in my post-Spring Election takeaways column, the bad-faith, politically-motivated criticism of MPS often obscures the legitimate criticism the district and its leadership should be facing. But that legitimate criticism is indeed present, and it’s clear that some of these issues run so deep that it is going to take a long time to get back on the right path. 

But who is going to step up, then, too? One of our questioners here mentioned now-former school board member Aisha Carr’s resignation, following a host of issues, including allegations of planting a recording device in the superintendent’s office. But even with that open seat and even with the immense spotlight that’s currently on MPS, only one candidate stepped up to run in that special election for school board, which is genuinely baffling. 

For next steps, then, all options need to be on the table — and people need to be coming to the table. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s James Causey wrote about a potential mayoral takeover of the district. Former governor Tommy Thompson called on an overhaul of the district. Republican legislators have often talked about breaking up the district. I’m not sure the best answer is in any of these ideas. 

What’s clear, though, is that what happens next at MPS is going to be one of the biggest stories in the region and the state, and it’s going to take an enormous effort to get this right. This isn’t going to be the type of story that comes to a clear conclusion, either. This, like so many of the issues Milwaukee is facing, is a generational one, and not anything that’s going to be solved in short order. There’s a long road ahead.

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ICYMI: Recombobulating on the radio (Late May edition)

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QUESTION:

What are Gwen Moore's major legislative accomplishments in the U.S. House of Representatives? She assumed office in 2005 so we're coming up on 20 years of her being a congressional rep. Seems like a good chunk of time to make a difference in passing legislation. What significant pieces of legislation has she been a lead sponsor on (not just being one of many cosponsors or having just voted on something) that have passed? What are some specific things she has done to improve lives in her congressional district? - Dan Bomberg via email

ANSWER:

There’s a quote I often think of when someone retires at the end of a long career, or even when a public figure passes away. 

“It has always been my belief that people are remembered for the sum of their accomplishments but defined by their singular failure.”

This was written by the author Chuck Klosterman in the book “I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains,” and it’s possible this quote refers to something more of the pop culture variety, but I think it works with public officials, too. If you look at the deaths of, say, John McCain or Ruth Bader Ginsberg, each of those descriptors on accomplishments and failures are fairly clear.

When it comes to members of Congress, however, I think the inverse is true. I think the defining aspect of someone who has served this long is about the sum of that experience, not in any singular act. I think boiling down a career in Congress to any one singular accomplishment is the wrong way to assess that career. Is Gwen Moore’s vote in favor of landmark legislation like, say, the Affordable Care Act, her greatest legislative accomplishment? Would it be any individual project directed to her district from her position in the House Ways and Means Committee? Being part of Congress is more of a team sport than an individual one. Any individual achievement from any one representative is not nearly as important as the larger mission, and the work being done by the party — or House majority, or whatever it might be — is more representative of any long-term “progress” than 

That said, this is a really interesting question. I do think it warrants a look beyond a mailbag question, not just for Rep. Moore, but for other members of Congress in Wisconsin, too. Larger examinations on the breadth of someone’s career in public service should happen more often. 

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One year after a watershed election, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is at the center of the battle for democracy

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QUESTION: “Why hasn’t Josh Kaul gone after the “masterminds” (using the term very loosely) behind Stop the Steal/fake electors scheme? I’m wondering about Troupis and Chesebro in particular, although they’re just the tip of a dismal iceberg. Why did Kaul leave it up to Law Forward, who settled for the “we’ll never do it again” settlement terms agreed to by Troupis and Chesebro? Is it because Kaul wants to run for governor when Evers leaves and he doesn’t want to tick off Republican voters? The silence from Kaul’s office on this issue has been very concerning and frankly, embarrassing, given these traitors' ties to Wisconsin.” - Jill Morin, via email

ANSWER: There’s a certain theme to this installment of the mailbag where a bunch of questions got asked and then the news cycle kind of wound up answering them. This question was sent in late last week, and this week, Attorney General Josh Kaul filed charges Kenneth Chesebro, Michael Roman, and James Troupis in connection to the fake electors plot. 

My reaction to this was: Finally. It has long seemed absurd that other states — Arizona, Michigan — were taking action on holding fake electors accountable for their ridiculous actions, but Wisconsin, even as so much of what transpired had distinct connections to Wisconsin. 

But does this go far enough? Jeff Mandell and Scott Thompson of Law Forward, the liberal law firm that’s done much of the work to reveal the actions of Wisconsin’s fake electors, argue in a new opinion piece at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel argue Chesebro and Troupis are particularly culpable and centrally involved in this egregiously ridiculous plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election, saying, “There is a difference between good-faith legal arguments and unethical efforts to undermine democracy through delay and chaos. Chesebro and Troupis engaged in the latter.” And while the Law Forward settlement stipulated that such a plot would never happen again, Mandell and Thompson’s argument that “real accountability requires more” is spot on. 

So Kaul finally did take some action here. That’s good. But without a greater level of “real accountability,” the very real concerns that Trump and Republicans will again take anti-democratic action following this fall’s election have not been assuaged. Because if these bad faith actors do not face consequences for their actions, what’s to stop them from trying this again? This fight is far from over. Kaul still has plenty of work to do before the November election — and not only because of his own political future.

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Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. He’s also written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 18 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.

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