Milwaukee Public Schools does not know how many sexual harassment and sexual assault complaints have been made against MPS employees because it does not keep centralized records of the cases. MPS could not produce the overall number of complaints in response to a Media Milwaukee open records request seeking the numbers since 2014.
According to the MPS website, the district had about 8,000 staff members educating approximately 77,000 students, grades K through 12, at 160 schools in 2017. In that same year, 80 percent of MPS students were economically disadvantaged and 88 percent were minorities.
“It’s incredibly surprising to find that a huge school district doesn’t know the numbers, and more importantly that they don’t want to know,” said Frank LoMonte, senior legal fellow at the Student Press Law Center in Washington D.C.
“They should just go ahead and make the tally,” LoMonte said. “That’s the right thing to do.”
Media Milwaukee filed an open records request in January with MPS seeking the number of sexual assault and/or sexual harassment complaints or reports filed against MPS faculty and staff members from 2014 to present. In addition, the news site asked for outcomes, such as discipline. UW System universities, such as the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, have produced such numbers.
In the case of MPS, though, the school district said it could not produce aggregate numbers and could only fulfill the request by conducting a file-by-file review. Under Wisconsin open records law, public entities are not required to create new records in response to open records requests. However, the district could choose to calculate and provide the numbers, even if it was not legally obligated. Instead, MPS responded that it considered its letter denying the Media Milwaukee open records request for the numbers to be “our final response to your request for the above referenced records.”
Jacqueline Mann, Ph.D, Board Clerk/Director, Office of Board Governance for MPS, wrote Media Milwaukee a letter, explaining, “We have determined that the only way to provide the requested records would be to extract information through a file by file review. A new file would then have to be created to accommodate your request. A custodian need not create a new record in response to a request.” Media Milwaukee’s open records request was addressed to Mann and MPS Superintendent Darienne Driver.
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Jill Kawala, Board Policy and Records Manager for MPS, further wrote Media Milwaukee: “We would have to go, individually, into each investigation file, then conduct an analysis to first determine if it even pertained to sexual harassment or sexual assault, and then compile a report that responded to your request.”
“We do not have a database from which we can simply generate a report of such complaints in order to provide the statistical information that you were interested in,” she wrote. “We would have to go, individually, into each investigation file, then conduct an analysis to first determine if it even pertained to sexual harassment or sexual assault, and then compile a report that responded to your request… we are not required by law to do a file-by-file search of our records or to compile a new record that responds.”
Media Milwaukee has now asked MPS for access to recent years of complaints so the news site can add them up itself. In its most recent open records request, the news site is asking MPS “to review all sexual harassment and/or sexual assault files against MPS employees/staff members (at any level) from Jan. 1, 2015 through Jan. 1, 2018.” The request is pending.
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For the past few months, Media Milwaukee student journalists Talis Shelbourne, Jennifer Rick, Miela Fetaw and others have been investigating sexual harassment and sexual assault at Wisconsin public universities. UW-Milwaukee and other UW System universities provided charts or lists of cases. UWM also provided brief descriptions, staff classification, outcome, and case type. In the past five years, dozens of professors and staff members at UWM have been accused of sexual assault and harassment. (Read the stories here.) UWM has not, however, provided access to actual complaints (Media Milwaukee is seeking 2015 to present), even though the first request for some complaints was filed by the student news site in November 2017. That request is still pending.
At least one parent would like to see the numbers. “I feel comfortable because all of my kids go to the same school and have had the same teachers,” MPS parent Monique Gonzalez said after being told of Media Milwaukee’s findings. “But if the numbers were there, I would want to look at them.”
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MPS has been unable to come up with aggregate numbers regarding open record requests in the past. A 2016 Media Milwaukee investigation into football concussions in Wisconsin found that MPS did not track the overall number. Media Milwaukee never received the data. (Read the story here.)
Earlier this month Media Milwaukee won the 2017-18 Open Records “Scoop of the Year” award from the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council for its investigation into sexual harassment and sexual assault at UWM. In contrast, the Wisconsin Legislature received the No Friend to Openness award. The “Opees” recognize “extraordinary achievement in the arena of open government.” (Read the story here.) The student news site was also honored by The Society of Professional Journalists and the Milwaukee Press Club for its coverage of sexual harassment and assault complaints in the UW System.