When The Glidden Enterprise is gone — and that day is coming soon — owner Barbara Hart Kempf says she worries about all of her subscribers, but especially those who have been gone a long time.

Kempf moved back to Glidden after many years on the road with her husband to take over the 121-year-old family business because she knew what it meant to the larger community.

Birth notices on the front page and the obituaries inside. Board meeting agendas, the weekly senior citizens meal menu and the latest pool league standings. And the bracket columns, Pat Toomey’s “Glidden, Our Town” and the weekly look back, “Glidden’s Days of Yore.”

Enrollment in schools run by Milwaukee Public Schools district is now down to 59,200 — a dramatic and larger decline than is often acknowledged in a district that is asking its voters for $252 million more a year in funding in an April 2 referendum.

That’s a 42% drop, one of more than 42,000 students, since the peak in 1997-98, when the district had 101,300 students enrolled.

Supporters of the district often allude to a different, higher, “membership” figure in the district: 68,000 – down from a peak of about 105,000 “members” in 1997-98.

Membership figures can be misleading, though, because they include students in charter schools that are authorized by MPS but not controlled by it.

Ridership on Milwaukee’s $128 million fare-free streetcar improved in 2023, when the annual number was 30% higher than 2022.

But the monthly average number of riders over the last 12 months, 41,700, is still about 34% below the pre-pandemic average.

The Badger Institute, formerly known as the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI), has long been at the forefront of the fight for school choice, right to work, welfare reform, tax restructuring, limited government, civil society and so much more. If you appreciate the Institute’s legacy and want to support free markets, opportunity and prosperity, please consider donating today. Your support will help the Institute continue to advocate for conservative principles now and in generations to come.

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