SB 318

Under current law, the city of Milwaukee (city) owns the school buildings and

school grounds of the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) District. Generally,

city-owned property used for school purposes may be sold only upon the written

request of the MPS board and if the Milwaukee Common Council adopts a resolution

approving the sale. However, if the common council finds that city-owned property

used for school purposes has been unused or underutilized for at least 12 consecutive

months, or if the MPS board has determined by resolution prior to January 1, 2011,

that any city-owned property used for school purposes is surplus to the needs of the

district, the common council may sell or lease that property if it adopts a resolution

to do so. If the city sells or leases property identified as underutilized or surplus, the

net proceeds must be deposited into the school operations fund, which is used to pay

the principal, fees, and premiums due on bonds issued for school facilities.

This bill creates an additional mechanism for the sale of certain eligible,

city-owned school buildings. The bill defines an eligible school building as an MPS

school building that has been either 1) designated as surplus, underutilized, or

vacant on any resolution adopted by the MPS board within the previous five years,

provided the board is unable to demonstrate that the school building is no longer

surplus, underutilized, or vacant; or 2) unused or satisfies any condition qualifying

the building as underutilized for 12 consecutive months. The bill defines an

underutilized school building as a school building that satisfies any of the following:

a) less than 40 percent of the square footage of the school is used for the instruction

of pupils on a daily, school day basis; b) with limited exceptions, the school is not

staffed on a full-time basis by a principal and instructional staff assigned exclusively

to the school; or c) the number of hours of pupil instruction offered in the school

building in the previous school year was less than 80 percent of the number of hours

of pupil instruction required to be offered by MPS. The bill requires the MPS board

to annually prepare a detailed inventory of all school buildings in MPS and submit

that inventory to the city clerk, the Department of Public Instruction, and the Joint

Committee on Finance. The inventory must include the size and capacity of each

school building and whether the building has ever been designated as surplus. The

city clerk must publish information about eligible school buildings on the city's Web

page.

Under the bill, once a school building has qualified as an eligible school

building, only an education operator, with certain exceptions, may submit a letter of

interest to the common council to purchase the building. The bill defines an

education operator as any of the following: 1) the operator of a charter school

established by the common council of the city, the chancellor of the University of

Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, or

the Milwaukee Area Technical College district board; 2) the operator of a private

school; 3) the operator of a charter school that is not an instrumentality of MPS; 4)