Source: Wall Street Journal
Declining enrollment has contributed to a growing inventory of vacant and half-empty school buildings in cities across the U.S. Private and charter schools often want to purchase or lease space in these facilities. But school districts and union-backed politicians frequently balk. The Milwaukee Public Schools currently have at least 11 vacant school buildings and 41 schools operating below 70% capacity. St. Marcus Lutheran…which ranks in the top 1% statewide among schools with a majority of low-income and minority students, offered $1 million in 2013 to buy Malcolm X Academy, a large public-school campus that had been closed since 2008. The Milwaukee Board of School Directors said no and instead chose to sell the site to…a newly formed corporation registered to a pair of construction-business operators. That deal fell through, and in 2016 the school district opted instead to spend $10 million relocating the struggling middle school and its roughly 400 students to the Malcolm X campus.