When Tumbleweed Southwest Grill built on South 27th Street, it got a covenant on the neighboring property barring it from being sold to a Mexican restaurant. So when Chili’s was built next door, Tumbleweed sued because Chili’s sold a lot of Mexican food. Eventually Tumbleweed went out of business. Whether the Chili’s operation had anything to do with Tumbleweed’s closing is questionable since Tumbleweed closed a number of restaurants about the same time. Ultimately, Tumbleweed got one million dollars in an out of court settlement on the violation of its covenant.
The Tumbleweed-Chili’s settlement appeared in the same edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (December 31, 2010) where the front page story was the refusal of Milwaukee Public Schools to sell its empty buildings to competitors such as private choice schools or schools chartered by the city or UWM.
“The biggest barrier to expansion in Milwaukee [for a choice or charter school] is a facility,” said Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, in the paper’s article.
Choice schools cost the Milwaukee taxpayers more than do MPS schools because of the way in which schools are funded. In addition, MPS must provide some services for children in choice schools even though MPS receives no additional state aid for those children.
MPS could sell those buildings to choice or charter programs, but given the present property market, it is doubtful that MPS would get much money for those buildings. And immediately, MPS would have to start providing services for those children in the new choice schools taking away any profits MPS made on the sale of those buildings.
Sheehy and MMAC keep telling MPS that it should run its schools like a business. In this case, that is exactly what MPS is doing. It is not about to sell property to its competitors who may drive them out of business. Don’t make the argument that MPS should sell the building for the good of the children, because there is no evidence that expansion of the choice or charter programs would advance education in this community.
When the choice program was first put in place, the argument was that choice schools would force MPS to improve. Choice has actually made MPS worse. So now the argument for choice is based upon how poorly MPS is doing. The deck is stacked against MPS. Choice schools take few special education students; meanwhile MPS special education students now account for nearly 20% of its student body. Choice schools regularly expel students they are having trouble teaching and send them back to MPS.
For every excellent choice or charter school out there such as Milwaukee College Prep or St Marcus there is another choice or charter school that is considerably worse than any MPS school. Often students returning to MPS come with no grades or transcripts and are often academically behind their peers even in MPS.
So forcing MPS to sell or even give their buildings away to other schools will not improve education. Such sales will actually cost Milwaukee taxpayers even more money. No responsible business would approve such sales.
