South Milwaukee Schools Provide Good Example Of Shared Services At Work

The South Shore’s Connects Learning Center — operated out of a building owned by the South Milwaukee School District but located in Cudahy — is being held up as an example of shared services that work.

Check out the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story on the Public Policy Forum study here. From it:

The South Milwaukee School District owns the building that houses Connects Learning Center, but it’s located in Cudahy. And it’s paid for and operated jointly by the South Milwaukee, Cudahy and Oak Creek-Franklin school districts for the benefit of students struggling to make the grade.

A fourth school district, Franklin, pays for the right to seats in the school.

“We needed some place that we could have students that were having a difficult time adjusting to the routine and structure of a regular school day go and do some credit recovery and still stay connected to their high school,” said Jim Heiden, superintendent of the Cudahy School District.

Connects Learning is an example of sharing resources that the Public Policy Forum highlights in a new report that says suburban school districts in Milwaukee County are missing out on many such opportunities to band together to offer some services more efficiently, particularly for such noninstructional support services as nursing, guidance, payroll, accounting, curriculum development and staff training.

“We’re just hoping the report will raise the visibility (of sharing support services) and districts can learn from other districts that have been doing this for a while and have done so successfully, so they’re not having to reinvent the wheel to start a successful agreement,” said Anneliese Dickman, research director of the Public Policy Forum.

Learn more about Connects here.