Author: NNS

Milwaukee educators and Republican state politicians have been at odds over school funding for years, but Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association (MTEA) Executive Director Lauren Baker and state Rep. Dale Kooyenga agree that the way schools are currently funded is not working. Kooyenga said a solution needs to start with students. “We need to have a student-centered approach,” he said. “Not a district-centered approach, not a school-centered approach, not an adult-centered approach, but a student-centered approach to how we fund education.” Baker agreed, saying per-pupil spending caps, which have been in place since the early 1990s, place different values on...

Seeds, Soil, and Soul, a new summer camp program at the Body and Soul Center and Alice’s Garden focusing on “STEAM” (science, technology, engineering, arts and math). Venice R. Williams, executive director of Alice’s Garden and a Lutheran minister, is enthusiastic about the summer camp. It consists of one-week sessions for elementary and middle school children. “It brings together Venice the farmer and Venice the minister,” Williams said, adding that people rarely think of her as “Venice, the farming minister. That’s what this program brings front and center.” While it’s easy to picture Williams, on a hot summer day...

Arts @ Large, the nonprofit youth arts organization that was created to support Milwaukee Public Schools, has purchased a vacant building at 1100 S. 5th St. in Walker’s Point. After renovating the three-story cream city brick structure on the southeast corner of West Washington Street, the organization plans to move from its much smaller rented space at 908 S. 5th St. “We are bursting at the seams,” said Teri Sullivan, co-founder and CEO of Arts @ Large, who explained that the organization has “expanded exponentially” recently as it has worked to fill the gaps created by a shortage of...

As a child, Veronica Chaparro-Barillas can remember interpreting conversations between her parents and their doctors during medical appointments. While Chaparro-Barillas eventually turned this experience into a career as a supervisor of interpreter and translation services at Aurora Health Care, she said that serving as a child interpreter has little in common with her role as a professional. “There were many issues with being a ‘child interpreter.’ I didn’t interpret completely and would make up words when I didn’t know how to interpret a certain word. I was definitely in over my head,” said Chaparro-Barillas. “It’s not a good idea...

Below the baritone voices of wise men rattling on about politics, business and life was a hypnotic rhythm of polishing brushes rapidly crossing over each side of their shoes. “We talk about everything,” said Joe Johnson, 78, perched above a hard-working shoe shiner as the sweet aroma of polish filled the small cluttered space. “I have been coming here for years. The talk varies every day,” he said, before striking up a conversation about the campaign for president and military spending. For the last 50 years, on a daily basis, this is what has gone down at Scruggs &...

The Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) Board of School Directors has until June 23 to make a decision about whether to accept a proposal to partner with Opportunity Schools Partnership Program (OSPP) Commissioner Demond Means. Means submitted a proposal to the MPS board in April; it outlines a partnership that would create one community school in 2016-17. Community schools, a national model that the district is already pursuing with United Way, are community controlled and governed, offer expanded learning opportunities and connect students and families with social services. However, the positions Means’ proposal would create — to provide coaching and...