Milwaukee Public Schools board moves to consider closed session on personnel and School Resource Officer matter

The Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) Board of Directors moved to retire into closed session to consider employment-related matters and a School Resource Officer matter, according to the meeting record and statements on the meeting broadcast.

The board cited Wisconsin statutory authority for closed sessions to discuss “employment, promotion, compensation, or performance evaluation data” about identifiable public employees. Two board members and staff discussed the legal basis for holding the discussion out of the public view and the board’s customary practice that public testimony would not be taken at that meeting.

Scribe said the meeting would be broadcast and that public testimony would not be taken, noting online and radio streams were available. The board referenced the Central Services Building as the meeting location.

Meeting remarks identified the scope of the closed-session topics as: consideration of employment agreements and performance-evaluation materials for public employees and a related School Resource Officer matter. Participants used language referencing competitive bargaining and personnel privacy as reasons for a closed session; the transcript records a motion to retire into closed session but does not record a formal vote in the provided text.

The board’s stated legal justification invoked Wisconsin statutes governing closed sessions for personnel matters; the transcript includes references to those statutes but does not specify a clear section number in the provided record. The board also noted as customary that the public would not be allowed to comment during that portion of the meeting.

Less-critical procedural notes in the record state that meeting materials and agenda items were available on the MPS website and that the meeting was being broadcast (including on MPS’s website and YouTube stream and by local radio), so members of the public could follow the proceedings remotely. The transcript does not record any final public action related to the personnel or School Resource Officer matters in the excerpts provided.

The board identified no additional agenda items in the provided transcript excerpt; the discussion in the record focused on the legal rationale for a closed session and the scope of topics to be covered there.