What if you had been struggling for years to improve how effectively your children learn? Then suddenly, you were provided with an almost-unlimited amount of money? But you only had a few years to spend it. What would you do?

This is exactly the challenge being faced right now by school districts across the U.S., and they must decide how to spend millions of dollars in federal Covid-19 ESSER relief funds. You could of course easily compile a list of many items that would benefit your kids. But would you also use this as a one-time opportunity to bring about a major transformation in how effectively your kids learn?

Here’s a letter to the editor I wrote that was in the print edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Sunday, July 25.

An Opportunity for MPS

Milwaukee Public Schools will receive more than $500 million in federal stimulus funds. (“MPS making plans for more than $500 million in federal stimulus,” July 21).

The district is now making plans on how to spend this money over the next three years. MPS recently held listening sessions and has developed a list of ideas. Items on the list include tutoring for students and training for teachers. And these are worthy ideas.

But I believe there is one best use of these funds. This is to fund an effort across the district to transform how students learn, with the goal to greatly increase student achievement. One likely emphasis in the transformation would be on the use of personalized learning and the enabling technology. Another would be more movement to the community schools concept.

This won’t be easy. Many similar efforts here and in other cities have failed. But what’s different now is the availability of this funding, along with a forced time window.

And coming off our pandemic experience, do we now also have a motivation that is more intense than in the past? Or are we content to have our children continue to fail to learn? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. We can’t pass it up.