Families, students and staff at Milwaukee French Immersion School picketed outside Milwaukee Public Schools' central office on Monday, demanding the district reverse staffing cuts they say will ripple through several classrooms. The protest capped weeks of organizing after word spread that Alexandre Sablonniere, a native French speaker who has taught third grade at the school for four years, could lose his job there under a district-ordered class consolidation. The third K4 teacher is slated to move to third grade to take his place.
MPS told the school to hire two teachers in the spring, but actual enrollment came in 12 students below its projection. The dispute centers in part on the possible loss of a teacher who supports the immersion program and is a native French speaker. Before stepping into the classroom, Sablonniere worked as a paraprofessional at the school for several years, according to Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.
Low K4 Counts Triggered the Consolidation
District officials say the specific reduction traces back to low enrollment in the school's K4 classrooms, which averaged just 14 students across three sections this fall. MPS is consolidating those sections into two classrooms averaging 20 students each and reassigning the third K4 teacher to third grade, per the same outlet's reporting. District guidelines call for roughly 20 students per teacher and paraprofessional in K4 classrooms, the formula that triggered the automatic staffing adjustment.
The school's overall numbers tell a different story than the K4 shortfall alone suggests. Milwaukee French Immersion School recorded 384 students in its third Friday count for the 2026–27 school year, just 12 students short of its projected target of 396. School funding in Milwaukee Public Schools depends on those official third Friday counts rather than earlier projections, the news service notes.
A Districtwide Enrollment Drop
The French Immersion School's situation sits inside a larger districtwide trend. Preliminary figures from this year's third Friday count show total MPS enrollment landed near 58,333 students, nearly 1,800 short of the district's original budget projection of 60,277 for 2026–27, according to Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service. MPS spokesperson Kevin O'Connor confirmed that the district is reassigning roughly 55 teachers from lower-enrollment classrooms across the city to fill existing vacancies elsewhere in the system rather than add new payroll.
Parents and students had already begun pushing back before Monday's picket. Families, students and staff gathered outside the MPS central office, and a petition calls for reinstatement and a staffing commitment.
Why the Immersion Program Is Especially Vulnerable
Milwaukee French Immersion School holds LabelFrancÉducation accreditation from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to French Immersion Schools in Wisconsin. The school runs K4 through fifth grade before feeding into Milwaukee School of Languages for grades 6-12. Students there sit for the official Diplôme d'Études en Langue Française exam in second and fourth grades, earning internationally recognized French certifications issued by the French Ministry of National Education, per Milwaukee Public Schools.
That specialized structure is exactly what makes general staffing formulas a risky fit. Because the program depends on native French speakers and dual-language educators, reassigning staff based strictly on class-size ratios threatens the specialized curriculum that earned the school its international accreditation in the first place.
Budget Pressure Across the District
The staffing fight at Milwaukee French Immersion School follows months of fiscal strain across Milwaukee Public Schools. In May, the Milwaukee Board of School Directors adopted a revised $1.6 billion budget meant to close an estimated $46 million deficit, cutting non-classroom roles while trying to preserve teaching positions — a strategy Hoodline previously reported included eliminating more than 200 non-classroom jobs in the spring. That spring round of reductions also drew public protest, as detailed in Hoodline's earlier coverage of teachers hitting the streets over Milwaukee school cuts.
Superintendent Dr. Brenda Cassellius, who took over Milwaukee Public Schools in March 2025 after previously leading Boston Public Schools, is named by Milwaukee Public Schools. On its most recent Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction state report card, Milwaukee French Immersion School earned an overall score of 69.0, rated Meets Expectations, serving a student body that is 60.1% Black and 68.1% economically disadvantaged.
For now, families say they intend to keep showing up — at picket lines, at chalked sidewalks, and at the district's budget meetings — to press MPS for targeted exemptions that would protect specialized programs like theirs from formulas built for general classrooms.
