‘Everyone’s got to be in the ship together’: MPS faces questions on future of school closures, upgrades

At age 60, William Johnson has watched his north central Milwaukee neighborhood change through the decades, from the consequences of lost manufacturing jobs to a rising number of vacant, boarded-up houses.

Milwaukee Public Schools recently released a list of 13 schools that could potentially close or merge, all of which are concentrated across four ZIP codes in Milwaukee’s northcentral region. It’s where Johnson went to school as a kid and where he still finds a tight-knit community.