Milwaukee Academy of Science will open a second campus, at the former
Penfield Montessori School at 2433 W. Cherry St. in Milwaukee this fall, school officials announced Thursday.
Shuttered by Penfield at the close of the 2022-23 school year, the building served pre-kindergarten through 6
th grades for roughly seven years. Before becoming a Montessori school, it was the longtime home of St. Michael’s Roman Catholic School, which constructed the building in 1923 and expanded it in 1956.
Speaking about the project this week,
Milwaukee Academy of Science CEO Anthony McHenry said MAS plans to use the school to provide space for up to 600 new students in grades K4 through 8
th, while at the same time providing an option for families of elementary and middle school students who live closer to the Cherry Street building, which MAS is calling its 24
th Street campus, to transfer their students there.
“Families deserve a high-quality education for their children, and today represents a significant opportunity for us to answer that call,” McHenry said. “In addition, these students will eventually transition to our high school, which we believe will enhance Milwaukee’s workforce. Our students will graduate to pursue postsecondary education and then select careers in high--demand STEM fields.”
MAS board chairman Bill Reitman said he was “more energized than ever” for what is on the horizon for MAS.
Located in Milwaukee’s Midtown neighborhood, the new building is only about a mile north of MAS’s existing campus at 2000 W. Kilbourn Ave. in the city's Avenues West neighborhood.
The plan, said McHenry, is to start the school year at the 24th Street campus with 312 students in grades K4 through 5
th, adding about 100 students and an additional grade over the subsequent three years. MAS currently serves about 1,400 students, and has a waiting list of roughly 1,600, he said.
Need for more space
An affiliate of the 22-year-old charter school
purchased the former Penfield building last month for $2.475 million, according to state records. The school has plans to put another $1 million in upgrades into the, 55,868-square-foot structure before the start of the fall school year in August. Unlike the school’s current campus, which was opened in 2000 in a building that once housed the Milwaukee Hospital and Sinai Samaritan Medical Center, the 24th Street structure already has most of the building amenities one would expect at a school.
While MAS could technically expand at its current building, which has 11 floors, McHenry said the space on the higher floors is not really conducive to a school environment, especially one serving younger children as well as teens. MAS currently occupies the first three floors of the former hospital building. It expanded the footprint of the building in 2021 to add a larger high school wing, which allowed it to add 250 students.
That expansion ate up most of the space around the Kilbourn Avenue building, McHenry said, making building out even further fairly impossible. That’s especially true given the fact that school doesn’t have staggered start and stop times for students in different grades.
Trying to make room for 1,400 students to get picked up and dropped off is already tricky at the campus, he said, so adding more students to the mix would be extremely difficult.
“We also have 18 school buses, so there is not any more space to safely get the kids dropped off and picked up,” he said.
Renovations to the 24
th Street campus will include some façade improvements, McHenry said, as well interior renovations that will incorporate MAS’s approach to learning, parent engagement strategy, curriculum, culture, and overall design.
Serving 31 Milwaukee ZIP codes, MAS has met or exceeded expectations on state report cards, and for the past nine years the school has had 100% senior graduation and college acceptance rates for its students. In 2023 in graduated 72 students, its largest class to date.
Per-pupil funding boost
In a statement about its decision to close the school, Penfield Montessori Academy attributed its funding challenges to the disparity in state funding compared to traditional public schools, the large number of special needs students that the school served and unexpected additional building maintenance costs.
Under a deal reached earlier this year between the state Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers, private charter schools will receive approximately $2,000 in additional state funding per year. Penfield Montessori Academy said it received about $5,000 to $7,000 in state funding per student per year less than traditional public schools.
Asked whether the boost in state funding played a role in Milwaukee Academy of Science's decision to expand, McHenry said “yes,” but added that the school’s board of directors had long been planning an expansion.
“We certainly want to respond to the needs of the community, but this is also a business decision and a way to continue to serve our kids with the additional support and increased per-pupil,” he said.
Hiring
[caption id="attachment_582388" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Anthony McHenry[/caption]
With teacher shortages affecting communities across the country, the early planning is also expected to help as the school prepares to add 68 new staff members over the next three years – 38 alone by fall of 2024.
“One of the benefits of being able to purchase the building when we did, is that we have been working towards this. We have already built up the infrastructure and we can now get a head start by starting the hiring process,” McHenry said.
Another thing they have going for them, he said, is that new campuses and schools can create a lot of excitement from teachers eager to be a part of shaping the culture and community of a school
“When new campuses open that creates some real enthusiasm,” McHenry said. “People want to be part of a founding.”
