Wauwatosa School Board Freezes Chapter 220 Enrollment for Next Year

The Wauwatosa School District will not accept additional Chapter 220 students  next school year.

The policy was announced during Monday’s School Board meeting by Therese Kwiatkowski, district director of student services. She said the decision was because Wauwatosa has reached the point where minority students make up 30 percent of total enrollment, which makes the district ineligible to participate in the program.

There are currently 162 Chapter 220 students attending Tosa schools. The program was put in place in 1976 to racially integrate suburban schools by giving minority student the opportunity to attend schools in predominately non-minority communities.

Wauwatosa schools will also limit the number of spaces available to Open Enrollment students to a maximum class size formula. Those maximums are 18 students in K4 and K5; 20 students in first through fifth grades; and 23 students in core academic subjects at the middle and high school level.

Kwiatkowski said the size of the open enrollment program has held steady over the last two years and the system of class size maximums has been in effect for a number of years.

She projected that Wauwatosa would have about 1,085 Open Enrollment students next year, about 15 percent of the district’s total enrollment.

There were no comments concerning the report and the board accepted her recommendations without discussion.