Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Holy crap! I agree with WisGOP on something educational!

Yes I do, and it involves lifting the residency requirement for workers at Milwaukee Public Schools as well as City of Milwaukee workers. Needless to say, a lot of my fellow lefty Cheddarsphere bloggers and many Milwaukee city officials are against this, and the City of Milwaukee's Department of Administration released a paper with studies to back up why they thought it was a bad idea.

First of all, as a former teacher and city employee, I'll admit that the residency requirement did not and would not affect me if I worked for an urban school system or city government. I prefer to live in the communities I work in and like cities, and thoroughly enjoyed my time on the east side of Milwaukee, much like I enjoy my current time on the east side of Madison.

However, I'll disagree with Tom Barrett and others, as I think getting rid of the residency requirement would increase the quality of applicants, and increase the results of these governmental organizations. I think some potential applicants do keep from applying for these places because they don't want to live in the city, either because the location is not conducive to their spouse's job, or (more likely) they do not want their kids have MPS be their neighborhood school. This is a classic adverse selection problem, where the more-qualified people who might be wanting to take a job with MPS due to the challenge or the pay won't end up doing it because they don't want to live in the community themselves. Likewise, the people who ARE left to teach at MPS may not be the best that there can be, which is a double-whammy for a student population that often has the highest needs (especially with school choice and voucher schools allowing other districts to be less likely to have special education students and students whose parents don't care vs. MPS). Part of the way to make up for this is to offer more money or benefits to teach at MPS, but then it leads to the suburban complaint about the comparatively high amounts of tax money that goes to MPS.

The City of Milwaukee's paper approaches the issue the wrong way. In it, they point out that there is no shortage of city resident applicants for jobs and that city workers live in houses that are higher than the average home value, keeping the quality of life high. But the paper doesn't mention the applicants that choose NOT TO CONSIDER THE JOB OR APPLY due to the residency requirement, and the number may not be insignificant. The concern about a mass exodus of workers out of the city is also less-than-founded. Sure, some people may choose to leave, but I have a hard time believing it will dry up into a Detroit-level ghost town, as the people leaving still have good jobs, and with the improved services, may make the city a more desirable place to live. To me, fearing the loss of 2,000 or so city workers and their families out of town is a loser's mentality, and the mark of a city that doesn't think it's good enough to survive without these fake barriers in place. In Milwaukee's case, I don't buy it at all and would argue that the city is the only place in the metro area worth living in.

In addition, there is a practical need to be close to your job if you are a police officer or fire fighter, as you will need to be drawn into duty at a moment's notice, and the advantage of being nearby will often outdo any drawbacks of living in the city. Without residency, there will not be the need for the pay premium that the residency requirement pulls for MPS teachers and city workers, which may allow for taxes to stay reasonably low, which can encourage people to stay around or even migrate back to the city (a common right-wing talking point bitches about Milwaukee's high property taxes).

Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to become a Sykesist cheerleader on this issue, because I also don't believe the suburb boys and girls backing this bill give 2 shits about better results at MPS or City of Milwaukee government. These folks wouldn't care if it fell in the lake, as long as they could claim their mediocre suburban life was better. And they especially show their corrupt diregard in an awful bill that would allow politically-appointed hacks to oversee all of the state's charter schools with an unelected board in Madison. That is a disgusting pay-for-play move set up by Scooter Jensen and other school choice advocates who traded their contributions to the (must-be recalled) Alberta Darling, Luther Olsen, and Dan Kapanke to sponsor this vile piece of unaccountable legislation. Same goes for the WisGOP's dream of lifting the voucher school cap in Milwaukee, which is nothing more than union-busting and diverting taxpayer funds to corporations that will likely not care about the results of the community's education as much as a taxpayer-accountable board of education will.

But despite my misgivings about the motives of the WisGOPper's, if I was in the Legislature I'd approve of lifting the residency requirement. It needs to be a results-oriented world, and to me, you should be trying to get the best RESULTS for kids in MPS and residents of Milwaukee. One of the ways you do that is by opening up the borders to all who want to work there. Putting up artificial barriers such as residency requirements thins the pool of potential applicants, which can lower the quality of services given, which increases the negative impression people have of urban schools and services, and makes others less likely to want to locate in these communities to turn the negative cycle around. In a results world, and Milwaukee needs to do what it takes to raise the outcomes of its schools and quality of life, even if it ends decades of precedent.

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