Milwaukee Public Schools Report to the Community
Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2025
2024-25 School Year
(Most Academic Data from 2023-24)
Your Tax Dollars at Work in Our Schools
The 2024–25 fiscal year began with the district facing repercussions from the state after falling behind in its financial reporting, resulting in a shakeup in district leadership in June 2024. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction ultimately withheld $41 million in aid to MPS and imposed corrective actions on the district. New Superintendent Brenda Cassellius, who joined the district in March 2025, prioritized strengthening the district’s financial systems and bringing its reporting into compliance.
The Office of Finance, which also began the 2024–25 school year with new leadership in place, worked to correct MPS accounting practices and to file required reports. With the filing of the fiscal year 2023 and 2024 financial reports, about $33 million in withheld state aid was released to MPS as of August 2025.
In addition, the referendum question approved by voters in April 2024 assured that gains made in physical education, art and music education, language programs, career and technical education, and attracting and retaining certified teachers—funded by an April 2020 referendum—would be sustained. This funding was critically important, as general school district revenue from the state has lagged inflation by more than $3,300 per pupil since 2009. Inadequate funding is projected to lead to financial challenges in the near future despite the revenue created by the referendum.
The Difference Made
In Music
In 2018-19, only 19% of all MPS students had access to music classes. Thanks to the referenda, more than 90% of students now are in music classes. More teachers, new musical instruments, and fresh opportunities await students.
At Milwaukee School of Languages, students put on the school’s first-ever musical, Hairspray, in April 2025. The musical was a direct result of the hiring of a vocal teacher for the school, made possible by the referendum, who combined forces with the school’s band and orchestra instructor. “Collaboration is the building block of an all-school project like a musical,” said MPS music curriculum specialist Sharie Garcia. Federal ESSER funds also had allowed the school to upgrade its theatrical lights and sound system
The district’s schools continue to add bands, orchestra, and choirs. When students are able to join an ensemble, it’s a sign that music instruction has hit the next level, Garcia noted. Ensemble playing and singing not only provide a richer experience for the student; it has been shown to help students’ problemsolving skills, attention, and memory, and develops their social-emotional learning as they learn to play together with fellow student musicians.
Additionally, as the number of ensembles in MPS’s middle school years grows, it brings district students up to state standards, which call for students to begin ensemble playing and singing in 6th grade. Previously at MPS, students didn’t have the opportunity to play or sing in ensembles until 9th grade. Now, students are better prepared for high school, having options to perform in band, orchestra, choir, and drumline.
In Physical Education
Health and physical education instruction has grown by leaps and bounds at MPS. By 2024–25, nearly all students had access to weekly physical education, taught by 179 health and physical education teachers working in 150 schools. Vacancies dropped from 37.4 in 2022–23 to 15.7 vacancies in FY24 to six vacancies in FY25.
The referendum allowed MPS to hire instructors such as Lowell educator Joseph Borchardt, who expanded his students’ horizons by participating in the federal air quality flag program. In the program, students raise a daily flag, the color of which signals the air quality. Activities then are tailored so that a child’s exposure is minimized on days with poor air quality. The class’s participation drew positive attention from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Educators are teaching students in other distinctive and lasting ways, such as through the universal Ropes and Challenges course site, at MPS’s Potter’s Forest in Hales Corners. Students with a range of abilities experience confidence building, problem solving, and teamwork. One MPS student wrote after experiencing it, “I think this proves why teachers/staff do this stuff for their students, because I did not expect to come out of this field trip a champion. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank you guys enough for giving me an opportunity of greatness and acceptance, this experience changed my life and made me a better person. Thank you, all of you.”
In Art Education
In 2024–25, vacancies for visual-arts educators dropped to five. Central Services arts staff provided weekly support to educators new to teaching, new to the district, or new to their grade level, and to international teachers, new to the country.
In addition to receiving more access to art since the referenda were approved, more students were being educated in dedicated art rooms, such as a new art space at Fairview School that includes a kiln for making pottery.
Instruction benefited students beyond art class. Two arts integration teacher leaders focused on sketchnoting, helping educators teach this form of visual notetaking to their students in 2024–25. Sketchnoting combines the handwriting of notes with drawings and other visual elements. In surveys, teachers indicated that sketchnoting of classes increased students’ engagement, helped students retain information taught in class, and reached diverse learners.
In Career and Technical Education
CTE in 2024–25 built on the gains made since the 2020 referendum, which allowed it to add staff, and the 2024 referendum, which allowed it to retain its additional teachers.
In addition, CTE added a new culinary arts lab at Bay View High School in 2024–25 to allow the school’s culinary students to learn working with state-of-the-art equipment.
Among other advances in 2024–25, the CTE lab at Audubon was renovated to modernize it, to add a new robotics workspace, and to allow for a studio green screen for students studying broadcasting.
Achievement Overall
Although the 2023–24 Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction report card finds Milwaukee Public Schools Meets Expectations, the need to improve student learning is urgent.
The Nation’s Report Card
In January 2025, the nation’s report card — issued by the National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP — found MPS students near the bottom in reading and math in 26 urban school districts tested across the country.
Just 27% of MPS 4th-graders could read at a basic level or better. Reading scores for MPS 4th-graders were lower than in 2019 or 2022; the drop was the fourth largest of the 25 large school districts tested for the report card.
NAEP showed work must be done in mathematics to lift the district’s 4th-graders, as well. Thirty-nine percent of the district’s 4th-graders performed math at a basic or better level, holding steady from the 2022 results.
Meanwhile, 48% of district 8th-graders could read at basic or better levels, also holding steady from 2022, and 32% of 8th-graders scored as basic or better in math, down 2 points from 2022.
Looking Ahead
Work has begun in reading and in math. MPS is in alignment with the 2023 state legislation known as Act 20, which requires science-of-reading instruction emphasizing phonics in students’ early years. In 2024, the district adopted a new math curriculum aligning with state standards.
In 2025–26, Milwaukee Public Schools is rolling out a new literacy plan focused on helping all students read — and all means all.
We will be using a “science of reading” approach that aligns with recent state legislation that has accelerated the district’s move in this important direction. The new plan shifts from a focus on intervening with struggling students to providing high-quality literacy instruction to all students from the very start. It also shifts from older tools such as “3 cuing” that allow students to guess at words based on pictures and contexts to an intentional focus on “decoding” words by sounding them out. To put it in place, the district is providing 40 hours of intensive training this year to help make all educators experts in the science of reading.
Changes in Standards
State cut scores for the Forward Exam, the scores at which a school falls into categories such as Meets Expectations, were changed by DPI in Summer 2025 and will be applied to the 2024–25 report card data, to be released in November 2025. (DPI last changed the cut scores for 2023–24.) The change allows the state to keep pace with innovations in education as it measures student progress. It also means, however, that comparisons with previous years cannot be directly made.