Frederica Freyberg:
First, name your headline and the mayor of Milwaukee was part of it this week, school reform and expected presidential visit next week and of course, the governor's race. The new Wisconsin Public Radio St. Norbert survey shows Tom Barrett with the second highest favorable rating of any candidate either mentioned or currently running at 29 percent. Another Tom, who has not entered the race, former governor Tommy Thompson, shows a 57 percent favorable rating. Announced candidate Scott Walker shows a 26 percent favorable.  Mark Neumann comes in with 20 percent favorable. I spoke with Mayor Barrett midweek. He began with the topic of the governor's race.

Frederica Freyberg:
Mayor Barrett, thanks very much for joining us.

Tom Barrett:
It's my pleasure.

Frederica Freyberg:
Well, here's what the state wants to know. Are you running for governor?

Tom Barrett:
That's a good question. You're not going to get an answer today, Frederica, just so you know.

Frederica Freyberg:
No better place, though, Mayor to announce than on statewide TV, and we are recording this midweek, so I don't want to make this old news. Do you know when you expect to make this announcement?

Tom Barrett:
I would say in the near future. And I don't have a set date. But I think time is of the essence at this point, both for myself and other potential Democrats.

Frederica Freyberg:
What is going into your decision?

Tom Barrett:
I know the job. I know the challenges and the opportunities that we face as a state. And so I'm measuring that. I'm measuring the impact on my family, quite honestly. The fact — and some of this — and I know that this seat opened up with the governor's announcement in August. For a good month and a half after that, I actually was not able physically to even consider it, to be frank with you. But in the last couple of weeks I've begun much more serious thought about it. And I think you've seen with the twists and turns that have already occurred, particularly on the Democratic side, that maybe it's not so bad to take a little time and to think it through. Because I've traveled the state. I know, again, I know the challenges and the opportunities. The way I describe my experience in 2002 is I loved every minute of it except for the last 15 minutes, when the final results came in. So I certainly viewed that as a positive experience. So there's just a lot of factors that come into play.

Frederica Freyberg:
Do you want to be governor?

Tom Barrett:
I love public service, and I love state issues. I love being mayor, quite honestly. And would I love being governor? My guess is I would love being governor. And, again, I love being mayor. So this is not a situation where you're talking to an unhappy person who's looking to get away from what he's doing. In fact, one of the things that I've said is after I ran in 2002, I put it behind me in the sense that I ran for mayor and have loved this job and didn't really anticipate that there would be another opportunity to run. So I really hadn't even thought about it. I know that may surprise some people. But my view was that Gov. Doyle would be there certainly for two terms and if he were to leave early, my thought was that he would leave for an appointment and that would allow Lt. Gov. Lawton to be in his place and that that never really presented a scenario where you would have an intra-party primary. So, again, I just put it behind me and moved on. So the chain of events that's led us to where we are today has been a surprise to me, just as it's been to surprise I think to many other people.

Frederica Freyberg:
What was your reaction, speaking of surprises, when Barbara Lawton decided to pull out?

Tom Barrett:
I was very surprised. I had talked to her as recently as Friday, and she was kind enough to tell me she was coming into Milwaukee and was going to make an appearance related to the school issue that we'll be talking about. So I did not anticipate that at all. And Barbara and I have always had a very good relationship. And so I was surprised by that.

Frederica Freyberg:
Have you talked to her since she made that decision?

Tom Barrett:
I have not, no.

Frederica Freyberg:
There's been a lot of buzz about how President Obama or his people are urging your run for governor. Respond to that.  

Tom Barrett:
I have had conversations with people in Washington. As you know, I served there for 10 years, both on the congressional delegation and with others, and had various people encouraging me to run. So I do have friends certainly in the Obama administration. And I've got a very good relationship with them.

Frederica Freyberg:
The president is coming, as you well know, to Wisconsin next week, continuing the buzz about how that is basically a stump appearance for you. Is that accurate?

Tom Barrett:
I learned about it in the newspaper, so we have not had any conversations with the White House up to this point about the visit.

Frederica Freyberg:
The president says or his press office says that he's coming to discuss strengthening America's education system. As we know, you are in the midst of a so-called “mayoral takeover” of the Milwaukee schools and the governor and some Milwaukee legislators this week have just introduced a bill to allow that. What is the time line on that legislation and subsequent mayoral takeover?

Tom Barrett:
Well, earlier this week a number of Milwaukee legislators appeared with Gov. Doyle and announced their plans to introduce legislation which would include the mayoral reform of mayoral governance. It would allow the mayor to appoint the superintendent. It would retain the elected school board but with different powers. It's my understanding that there's still a potential that this could be done in the current floor period, but more likely I think it would be done in a special session in early December. I think that the governor, who is the person responsible for submitting the Race to the Top applications, would like to include this reform along with several other reforms that require legislative action to the United States department of education in order to be competitive for those Race to the Top dollars.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now, would you be locked into being mayor if you are taking over the schools, so to speak?

Tom Barrett:
No. One of the things that I have said even before this debate began, that what we're talking about here is a public policy change, and I think the worst thing in the world to do on public policy is to gear it around a specific individual. I’ve said that to the governor. I've said that to the opponents and proponents of this type of reform, that to the extent that I support this — and I do support this — it is based on my belief that there's more accountability when you have the mayor involved in the education system. So I've always said this isn't about Tom Barrett. This is about what is the best way for us to improve the education for the children in the Milwaukee Public Schools.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now, the mayor would be appointing the superintendent. What would you be looking for in a superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools?  

Tom Barrett:
Well, clearly I'd want to have someone who's proactive when it comes to education and understands that we're in a world economy and that we have to move aggressively to close the racial achievement gap, to raise our reading scores, our math scores, to reduce our dropout and truancy rates. I want someone who's proactive, who's going to come in and hit the ground running. I also need someone who understands the nuances of a multiracial, multi-economic city. We’ve got a lot of kids who are living in poverty in this city, which means there's a lot of mobility, a lot of one-parent families. So I need a person who would understand that as well. I also want to have someone who can garner the respect both of the teachers and the other individuals who work for the school system. So those are the three criteria I'm looking for. I think it's also important to have someone with strong managerial skills, because this is a budget that's well over $1 billion. That means it's a complex system, and they have to have the background to understand that. Which leads me to another point and that is that I don't necessarily buy into the notion that it has to be an individual who has followed a career exclusively in education. I would be open to people outside of education. That does not foreclose people who have been in education for their career. But it certainly I think would give us a wider pool to choose from. So I'm looking for the best person, because I see lots of challenges, but I also see lots of opportunities here.

Frederica Freyberg:
What names are on your short list for that position?

Tom Barrett:
I do not have a single name on that list.

Frederica Freyberg:
Under the bill, an elected school board would be maintained but with modified duties. What does that mean?

Tom Barrett:
Well, I haven't seen the language yet. The devil is always in the details. I think both for the current school board members and the people who are supportive of that sort of governance and those of us who want to see a different sort of governance, I think that will be where a lot of the hashing out will occur as to what powers the school board would have. I think that the legislators who have introduced this feel strongly that the mayor has to play a much stronger role, but we're reluctant to abandon the elected school board role.

Frederica Freyberg:
If accountability is on the mayor's shoulders, isn't that a lot of work for the mayor of a major city, especially Milwaukee?

Tom Barrett:
Absolutely, but I think that the future of the city of Milwaukee is inextricably intertwined with the future of Milwaukee Public Schools. And ironically, if you had a textbook on being a mayor that went back 40 or 50 years, there probably would have been a chapter on schools and the message would have been ‘Stay as far away from public schools as you can.’ I think that was the mindset of mayors in the 1960s and 1970s. Here in Milwaukee in the ‘80s and ‘90s, my predecessor John Norquist took a different tact. That was to be a proponent of the choice school program. I am taking a third tact and that is we have to be involved and engaged and proactive in improving the performance of the kids coming out of the Milwaukee public schools because we simply do not have enough transitional, entry level jobs in this community for people who don't have the skills. In other words, there was a study that was recently done by UWM and talked about these entry level transitional jobs and said in essence that we have 25 people for each one of these jobs. That is a crisis waiting to happen. If you move up the educational scale, once you get a couple years in college or technical school, it starts changing rather dramatically, and we actually start having more jobs available than we have workers for those jobs. So that's a dynamic that has to change if this city is going to prosper.

Frederica Freyberg:
The bill would eliminate tenure for principals and administrators. Why is that a good idea?

Tom Barrett:
That's something legislators decided to put in there, and I'm sure that will be debated as well. That is more of a managerial position, upper echelon, if you will, in the hierarchy of the schools. And I will say talking to teachers in particular, they believe very, very strongly that the most important person in a school's success is actually the principal, that the principal sets the tone, is clearly the authority figure, is clearly the guiding force into how a school's culture and its expectations for students are created. And so if we're asking more of students, if we're asking more of teachers, I think the belief is that you would also ask more for those administrators as well.

Frederica Freyberg:
It sounds as though what it would allow for is the mayor or the people in power running the schools would be able to fire the principals, administrators. Is that something you would like to be able to do?

Tom Barrett:
Again, I haven't seen the language, so I don't know exactly what it means, whether it means they would be terminated or go back to a previous position and I think that's still — as far as I know, that still is being worked out. So I don't know the answer to that question.

Frederica Freyberg:
How do you feel about it?

Tom Barrett:
I'd want to see exactly what it is. I think for some individuals, I think moving from the teaching to the administrative ranks is a huge success, and they’re very good at it. For others you might have people who were great teachers who then decide to become administrators and find out that it really isn't their cup of tea. I don't think it's a bad thing necessarily to allow them to return to something they were very good at rather than terminating them altogether.

Frederica Freyberg:
Also in this bill is something called the Milwaukee Children's Zone. Is that something that you are a part of?

Tom Barrett:
Well, that's based on the Harlem's Children's Zone, which has been a successful experiment if you will in Harlem where you really try to bring kids in very, very early in their lifetime and get them on what they call the “conveyor belt” of opportunities, very, very young education, preschool. Follow the kids so that you don't have any fall-out. One of the things I think people have seen over the years and I'll use Head Start as an example. Kids that have had Head Start and later on lose the advantages they had at Head Start. To make sure that you don’t have gaps between a Head Start program and a preschool program. So that you have much more continuity. So I like the idea. I've actually read some of the work concerning the Harlem's Children's Zone. I think it is certainly worth having us work on here. And actually we've begun to have more of that type of focus in Milwaukee already in our public housing authority. We've got an individual dealing with one in particular housing authority site who is focused on the kids who live there and the schools, both the public and private schools they've attended, to make sure they stay in those schools and we've had a lot of success in retention and graduation rates for kids who live in this public housing authority complex and that's a place where I think people would instinctively say, ‘you're going to have dropouts.’ To the contrary, to have a person who is engaged and focused has allowed us to raise the graduation rates for those kids.

Frederica Freyberg:
Lastly, mayor, I notice as you gesture that you still have some bandaging on your hand. How is your hand?

Tom Barrett:
Well, my paw is still here. I started out with 10 pins in it. I'm down to seven. I'm hoping by the time this airs, I'll be down to four pins in this. It’s been about 11 weeks, I anticipate it will be another five or six weeks, and then there will be more surgery and more occupational therapy after that as well. I'm not going to be throwing out anybody from center field in the near future.

Frederica Freyberg:
Well, we await your announcement on whether or not you're running for governor, but thank you very much for joining us about this educational business.

Tom Barrett:
Thank you very much. Thank you.