ADVOCATES FOR STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

Thanks for your interest in Advocates for Student Achievement, Milwaukee (ASA-MKE). ASA-MKE’s mission was to identify, recruit and support outstanding candidates for the Milwaukee Public Schools board of directors in anticipation of the April 2009 school board elections.

As the school system that shapes most of our community’s children…as the primary feeder system for our local work force…as the driving factor in thousands of home purchase and sale decisions each year…MPS plays a decisive role in the future of Milwaukee and all of Southeastern Wisconsin. ASA-MKE was formed in the belief that we cannot build a thriving community on a sick public school system. And a healthy school system is built on strong leadership…starting at the top.

Our goal was to significantly improve the academic achievement of our students by recruiting school board candidates with the talent, focus and experience required to make our urban schools among the best in the nation.

Most Milwaukee residents who fit this bill never consider running for the school board. And if they were to consider it, most would be intimidated by the prospect of running a campaign. ASA-MKE spread as wide a net as possible to seek out such individuals and to provide them with the information and support they needed to make wise decisions.

The first step in this process was to encourage possible candidates to step forward. To that end, we:

• spoke to more than 200 people who are active in their neighborhoods or the community at large.
• held six breakfast briefing sessions, which yielded dozens of names of well qualified potential candidates and declarations of interest from several.
• garnered the support of the Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors, which has hosted two meetings for us, where two potential candidates stepped forward.
• made our pitch at the annual meeting of the Washington Heights Neighborhood Association, where another potential candidate declared his interest.
• met with a group of prominent African-American ministers who were interested in helping ASA identify potential candidates.
• received support from the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, which hosted a successful fundraiser for ASA aimed at the business community.
• held many one-on-one meetings with individuals who were in a position to be excellent candidate referral sources.

As possible candidates were identified, we tried to help them think through what it took to be an effective school board members and the requirements for running. We worked with nine seriously interested potential candidates. (Five of these succeeded in collecting sufficient signatures to get on the ballot.) To help these candidates better understand what they were facing, we:

• held three candidate orientation sessions – on what it takes to run and serve, on key issues facing the board, and on best practices in campaigning and governance.  These were open to anyone with any interest in running. These seminars stressed the characteristics that make for an effective member, including personal integrity, a strong work ethic, the ability to work well with others, successful experience in complex decision-making, a sense of vision, good communication skills, a pragmatic approach to problem-solving, the ability to manage conflict, and a disciplined focus on improving student achievement..
• provided these individuals with a questionnaire covering issues of likely interest to voters that they should be prepared to address.
• held “practice sessions” in which a panel of questioners probed the positions of the would-be candidates to help them further clarify their thoughts.
• commissioned a series of background papers on the most important and challenging issues facing the school board (the MPS budget, student achievement, transportation and facilities, and the education marketplace). It should be stressed that ASA-MKE did not try to tell the potential candidates what they should think about these issues. In fact, ASA-MKE believes that a diversity of views on a school board is healthy so long as members have the personal qualities that allow them to work together to solve problems.
• commissioned a "Landscape poll" of 400 voters in three school board districts to better understand what Milwaukee voters thought about various educational issues.

ASA-MKE did not apply any ideological or issues filter to candidates and its processes and information were available to any potential candidate with an interest in taking advantage of them. Those predicting that the new school board members who chose to participate will vote a certain way are likely to be disappointed.