St. Augustine Prep rises on south side

This story needs a gallery of Rick Wood's photos. They're under AUGPREP in Merlin.

Gazing north from the large, unfinished windows on the fourth floor of the city's newest K-12 school, the view is all but unobstructed.

There's the Basilica of St. Josaphat. The arching roof of Miller Park. Some high rises along the lakefront.

Little else stands taller — in size or in spirit — than St. Augustine Preparatory Academy, a massive private school and athletics complex taking shape on nearly 12 acres on the city's near south side.

St. Augustine isn't just transforming the neighborhood. It's poised to shake up the city's education scene come fall of 2017 — and perhaps be a model far beyond Milwaukee.

Bankrolled by Waukesha businessman and voucher-school advocate Gus Ramirez, the school will eventually enroll at least 2,500 students — a figure that trumps enrollment at more than three-quarters of school districts in Wisconsin. The complex will include regulation-size indoor and outdoor soccer fields, swimming pools, a large theater, STEM labs, flexible classroom spaces, a health clinic and, some day perhaps, places to take GED and associate's degree classes.

The total cost for the project is likely to top $85 million. Most of that will come from the personal wealth of Ramirez, the executive chairman of Husco International, a Waukesha manufacturer. 

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Ramirez, a longtime champion of school choice, believes he can move the needle on student performance in Milwaukee. And although the gravest need is at the high school level, Ramirez included an elementary and middle school to reach students earlier.

"We believe it will serve as a model not only for Milwaukee and Wisconsin, but the nation as a whole," Ramirez said of the school. "The four pillars (family, faith, academics, athletics) are not available to minority children of need anywhere that I know."

Nearby schools have reason to watch nervously. Under most circumstances, a school as richly adorned as Augustine Prep would be prohibitively expensive for poor families. But Milwaukee's voucher program — in which St. Augustine will participate — allows low- and middle-income families to attend participating private schools with taxpayer-funded tuition subsidies. It's possible families may leave other schools to enroll all their children at the new facility.

But St. Augustine and its new superintendent — Alfonso Carmona — have also been welcomed by leaders of some of the city's most popular charter and voucher schools, such as Ricardo Diaz at United Community Center's Bruce-Guadalupe Community School and Henry Tyson at St. Marcus Lutheran, both K-8 schools.

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Ramirez said there will be an operational deficit of about $3 million in the first year, which will drop to $1.5 million by the third and fourth years. He said he expects to be able to raise $1 million or more through fundraising, and the Ramirez family foundation will fill the gaps as needed.

 Carmona shapes St. Augustine's vision

Like the school he's leading, Carmona is larger than life. He's 6 feet, 6 inches tall and 280 pounds, a former professional basketball player from Colombia who grew up poor in a village outside Cartegana and who somehow got hired to teach bilingual education in Chicago before he could even speak English himself.

 At 48, Carmona has spent the months since June, when he moved to Franklin with his wife and young daughters, trying to understand the city and its education scene.

He wasn't convinced the St. Augustine job was for him until he left an interview at Husco last summer and his wife suggested they stop at the school site. The opportunity to shape this private enterprise and hire people from the community for everything from classroom aides to cafeteria workers felt to him like a way to help a needy community.

"This is why education is so personal to me," Carmona said. "I have that connection to poverty and facing all these obstacles."

Carmona was one of three children born to an single mother and an absent father, and he shared a bed with his brother until he married his first wife, he said. Carmona's mother scraped together the resources to send the boys to a local Catholic school, but she could only afford one uniform for each of them.

He excelled in basketball, and played for a professional Colombian team from 1989 to 1992, while also studying economics in college. He had two daughters with his first wife. They are now 24 and 25 and live in Illinois.

By 1999, Carmona was exploring moving to the U.S. for graduate school, and with his marriage on the rocks, he moved in with a relative in Chicago, who told him that teaching was the easiest way to get a job while he sorted out the rest of his affairs. 

Carmona took the CPS bilingual teacher certification test on a whim; he couldn't speak English and knew he'd fail the interview portion. By chance, the administrator let him speak in Spanish. When his credentials came in the mail, Carmona got a job at Hedges School teaching bilingual students, and then was forced to take over a social studies position — in broken English, with little knowledge of U.S. history.

Carmona stumbled through the year, even coaching basketball. And he took outside courses to learn English as fast as possible. He also switched to teaching math, which he loved, given his economics background. Test scores went up. After teaching at Hedges for six years, where he also met his second wife, Carmona entered the New Leaders for New Schools training program.

He eventually became principal of Robert Healy Elementary School. He moved out dead weight, such as the physical education teacher who slept on the job, and improved the school's overall performance.

He turned down offers in places like Houston and New Orleans. "I always thought there wasn't as much impact in those positions," he said.

When a recruiter contacted him about Augustine Prep, Carmona was unmoved. Plus, he had a toddler, and a baby on the way.

"Can you at least open the email?" she pressed.

 Ultimately, Carmona said he was impressed by the commitment and investment in the school. He's also had input on key features, such as designing classrooms around shared pull-out rooms. He wants to minimize pupils being sent to the office for behavior infractions and maximize collaboration between teachers and aides.

Everyone who graduates from Augustine Prep, he said, is going to be ready for college or some kind of career.

"I'd never build a school that I don't want my own kids to go to," Carmona said.

As he stood on the fourth floor, looking out beyond the immediate surroundings and the worn duplex houses below, he said: "Most kids don't see this view."

It's clear he's not just talking about the buildings.