Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Saturday, February 02, 2008
Milwaukee schools want to hire 200 teachers By The Associated Pess MILWAUKEE (AP) — Milwaukee Public Schools officials want to hire more than 200 new teachers and spend nearly $17 million to improve high school programs and students' reading and math abilities in an unusual midyear shakeup. The initiatives being launched at the start of the second half of the school year include: $8 million is being added to high school budgets, to be spent on efforts proposed by each school, including arts programs, foreign languages, staff training and reducing class sizes in core subjects such as reading and math. Plans call for hiring 90 more high school teachers and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment and programs. The money is coming from local property taxes and state aid.$5 million is for hiring up to 114 new math teachers. MPS officials say they may end up short of that hiring goal because not enough qualified candidates are available. Superintendent William Andrekopoulos said the total hired might be about 100. The money is coming from local property taxes this year.$3.7 million is to hire 37 new reading teachers to work with about 2,250 students in 16 schools who are behind in reading and to provide the software, hardware and other materials needed for a curriculum called Read 180. The program is central to plans aimed at ending the designation of MPS as ``a district identified for improvement'' under federal education law. The money is from a federal grant.Andrekopoulos said he expected to include money to continue the high school initiative in his budget proposal for the 2008-'09 school year.
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