The past and present foretell the future – at least that’s the case when it comes to the forecast by Milwaukee Public Schools officials for enrollment for next year.

Look for another down year for the main roster of MPS schools and for more city kids to attend school in the suburbs and charter schools not staffed by MPS teachers, Superintendent William Andrekopoulos says in a new report to the School Board.

A third of all Milwaukee children receiving publicly funded education are doing so outside of the main roster of Milwaukee Public Schools, a fact that sheds important light on the educational landscape of the city. I looked at the current figures for this year in my weekly column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Sunday.

That figure is likely to go up a notch — maybe from 33 to 34 percent, maybe a bit higher — next year. 

The forecast from Andrekopoulos’ team says the traditional MPS system — all those primary, middle and high schools you see around the city — will enroll 75,154 students next year, down 3.4 percent from 77,767 this year. Last year was the first time in perhaps decades that the total fell below 80,000, and it was not so long ago when it was over 90,000.

The report foresees an increase of 9.5 percent next year in the number of city kids using the state’s “open enrollment” law to attend suburban schools. That would raise the total from 5,193 this year to 5,684 next year.

Open enrollment has become a way for some suburban schools and school districts to maintain financial health – their enrollment would be falling substantially without it. It has also become a vehicle, frankly, for a form of white flight from schools in the city. This year, twelve percent of students in MPS are white and 58 percent of city students using open enrollment to go to suburban schools are white.

The MPS forecast also predicts an 11.9 percent jump in the number of students attending ”non-instrumentality” charter schools authorized to operate by the School Board but not staffed by MPS employees. That would raise the total from 2,195 to 2,456.

The MPS administrators’ projections do not cover enrollment in private schools using publicly-funded vouchers (more than 20,000 this year) or enrollment in charter schools authorized by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee or Milwaukee city government (5,900 this year). The totals for those sets of schools are expected to increase next year.

Declining enrollment means less state aid, which means one or more of a few unpleasant things: More pressure to raise property taxes in the city, more pressure to make cuts in staff and services, or more pressure to close schools, to mention three. And the basic amount of state aid, not counting the effect of declining enrollment, is expected to be generally flat next year under terms of the state budget approved in June.

Andrekopoulos submitted the report with the forecasts as the start of the annual cycle of the budget process for MPS. School Board members are scheduled to meet Tuesday night to discuss the report, with the goal of giving administrators direction in how to shape the budget.

It’s not likely to be a pretty budget picture. Which may make leaving all the easier for Andrekopoulos – he is scheduled to retire in June.

The School Board has a meeting set for Thursday to discuss how the process of selecting a new superintendent is going. It is ready to trim the field of applicants to a list of semi-finalists that will not be made public, with the goal of cutting that in coming weeks to several finalists, whose names will be public, and picking a new chief for the system by February. That is, unless something happens and the state Legislature authorizes Mayor Tom Barrett to take control of the system and pick a superintendent himself. That is a prospect that appears increasingly unlikely.