MILWAUKEE (WSAU-Wheeler News) The near-elimination of collective bargaining has left Milwaukee area schools with fewer and less experienced teachers. The area’s Public Policy Forum says 53 school districts in the four-county metro area lost a net of 700 teachers in the five years ending in the summer of 2014. Milwaukee schools had a net loss of 730 teachers for its 80,000-plus students — and in a city where minorities are the majority, 71-percent of instructors are white.
Public Policy Forum president Rob Henken calls the new data a “valuable pre-Act-10 and post-Act-10 snapshot.” Act-10 is the 2011 law which almost eliminated bargaining for most public employee unions in Wisconsin. Supporters said Act-10 allowed more teachers to move to other districts for more money. But in the Milwaukee region, only seven percent of teachers moved to different districts in the five-year study period.
