People get ready, there's a train a comin'
You don't need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith, to hear the diesels hummin'
Don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord
                                     –"People Get Ready" by Curtis Mayfield, 1965

The Milwaukee high-speed development train has left the station and is rocketing down the track, but not everyone has a ticket to get aboard. In fact, this train might as well have a "Whites Only" sign.

It seems that hardly a week goes by that we don’t get some kind of "great news" about Milwaukee.

It’s a new big building Downtown, apartment/retail developments Downtown and dotted in some of the nicer neighborhoods in the city, streetcars and festivals and relocation of headquarters and new businesses opening up.

We have this group of food trucks that provide both interesting food and color during our summer months. We had the Rolling Stones, for god’s sake. We are getting a Nordstrom’s.

We are going to have a new arena and huge entertainment district Downtown, right on the streetcar line, and a big public plaza where we can gather and party.

We have an almost collective orgasm of joy whenever some national publication mentions how good our bars are or how innovative our restaurants are or much fun you can have in Milwaukee.

"Holy cow. They love us!!!"

Nobody can deny that Milwaukee is on a fast track to becoming the "Portland of the Midwest," as some observers have predicted. I love all of this even though I’m a little breathless over the pace of this train so many people are on.

The one thing that bothers me about this train is that there doesn’t seem enough room for everyone to ride along. Simply put, black people are being left behind by this train.

Here are some, but not all, of the numbers.

• Four out of every five black children in Milwaukee live in poor households.
• Fewer than one in 10 black eighth graders is proficient in math.
• Wisconsin ranks last in the country as far as the well-being of black children.
• Almost half the black people living in the city are below the poverty level.
• Last year almost 85% of the children in Milwaukee Public Schools qualified for free or reduced price meals (the district's percentage of poor kids is so high that all students are eligible for subsidized meals). 

Milwaukee's central city is populated by people who are hungry, poor, disaffected, discouraged and desperate. 

People who think that Milwaukee is going to continue to be a wonderful place to live and do business are kidding themselves if they think we can continue to ignore this problem. There are costs to poverty: both fiscal and moral.  It is shameful for any city to have so many people who are desperately poor without doing something about it.

For decades there have been sporadic, and largely unsuccessful, attempts to create a healthier environment in the central city. Never have the public and private sectors tried any kind of imaginative and sustained program to alleviate the crushing burden of this impoverished core of our apple.

There have been  lot of well-intentioned discussion groups and meetings and conferences and task forces. All you have to do is pull your head out of the sand or the clouds to see that nothing has really worked.

I’m not going to pretend that I have the answer. I don’t even believe that there is a single answer to this issue. It is a problem vexing in its complexity and intractability. But if forced to choose between all the stuff we have tried, I do think there is one thing that would make a difference, perhaps not tomorrow, but something that would make the future much better.

I think it’s time that Milwaukee begin to look at providing free, high-quality, mandatory pre-school for every child in the city.

A study by the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, is one of the seminal research papers on the value of pre-school education.  There were many findings but one conclusion stands out.

"Increasing public investment in effective preschool education programs for all children can produce substantial educational, social, and economic benefits. State and local pre-K programs with high standards have been the most effective, and such programs need not be provided by public schools. Public schools, Head Start and private child care programs have produced similar results when operating with the same resources and standards as part of the same state pre-K program."

I recognize that there are myriad questions about this idea, but it’s beyond high time that we actually take this step.

At some point we are going to have to say that we are not going to let another generation of black people live lives of desperation and poverty. We, as a community, are going to intervene early and we are going to do all that needs to be done to ensure that our children don’t face these same issues.

High quality, free pre-K schools for everyone. Start when kids are 2. Make it mandatory and issue municipal citations to parents who don't enroll their kids.

Everybody I have talked to about this has asked the same question. How are you going to pay for it? The answer is simple.

Taxes.

We spend so much money on wasteful stuff it’s time to spend on a program that will have a long lasting and transformative results. I'm all for the boosters who keep shouting that we are such a great place to live and work. There are lots of people who buy into the idea of making Milwaukee the "Portland of the Midwest." Portland has 76 percent of a population that is white, while only 6% of the residents are black. 

Instead of pretending to be Portland we should quake with fear that we may well become Detroit. 

Shakespeare said it best when he said "all that glitters is not gold." We have a glittering future being built in Milwaukee. But it's being built by and for just some of us. 

Everybody deserves to take a ride on this train.