After a long and frustrating search, Beth Wisniewski felt like she found a haven for her son in Penfield Montessori Academy — a Near West Side Milwaukee charter school that serves children with and without disabilities.
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Student art hangs on the wall of Penfield Montessori Academy, a Milwaukee-based charter school that serves children with and without disabilities. School officials announced plans to close at the end of the 2022-2023 school year, but parents are hoping to save the school. Photo taken on April 19, 2023.
The New Jersey-based Educational Law Center, a nonprofit that advocates for equal educational opportunity and education justice, produced this map to accompany its October 2022 report titled: “Wisconsin’s special education funding crunch: How state underfunding disproportionately harms students in high-poverty districts.”
Parents of Penfield Montessori Academy students respond during an April 19, 2023 meeting at the Milwaukee-based charter school after it announced plans to close at the end of the school year. Leaders from Adeline Montessori, a similar charter school in Oconomowoc, Wis., later announced they were exploring a plan to fold Penfield into their school, operating it as a satellite campus. Parents have launched a plan to raise money for the effort but must grapple with the possibility of losing the school, which was centered on serving children with disabilities.
Amy (left) and Martice Scales (right) speak during an April 19, 2023 meeting at Penfield Montessori Academy after the Milwaukee-based charter school announced plans to close at the end of the school year. The school serves many students with disabilities, and the announcement of the closure unleashed chaos at the Scales home, where their overwhelmed children — Penfield students — cried and threw toys. “It’s heartbreaking,” Martice says. “As a parent it makes you feel like you’ve failed them.”
During a round table discussion at Siouxland Christian, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott says he’d like to see education savings accounts and other “school choice” programs grow. Scott’s in the midst of his first campaign tour through Iowa since declaring his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election.
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