The former Centro del Nino Head Start building at 500 E. Center St. Credit. Credit: City of Milwaukee

By of the

Moved by the threat of a lawsuit, the Milwaukee Common Council agreed Tuesday to sell a vacant public school building in the Riverwest neighborhood to a military-style voucher school for $223,000.

Council members voted 9-6 to approve the sale of the former Centro del Nino Head Start building at 500 E. Center St. to Right Step Inc., saying they had no choice under a new state law aimed at forcing the city to sell vacant and underused Milwaukee Public Schools buildings to competing school operators.

Right Step is proposing to open a boys-only campus for as many as 150 students in the building at N. Holton and W. Center streets. But the decision about whether it will actually get to occupy the building now goes to the city's Board of Zoning Appeals.

Critics, including some nearby residents and members of the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association, had raised concerns about the school and the proposed location, saying it was not a good fit for the students or the neighbors — complaints the city could not consider under the new law in deciding whether to approve the sale.

CJ Szafir of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, the conservative public interest law firm representing Right Step, said he was pleased the council "followed state law," but that he knows the sale is not final.

"The city and the teachers union will continue to play political games with us," he said.

WILL had accused the city of dragging its feet on the sale and had threatened to sue if it did not comply with the law.

The sale, if it goes through, would be the first under the new law passed by Republicans in an effort to expedite the sale of MPS buildings.

Right Step needs a special use permit to occupy the building, which was built as a bank and is zoned for business. As part of that process, the Board of Zoning Appeals can consider several issues the council could not, such as public health and safety, traffic and pedestrian safety, and consistency with the city's comprehensive plan for the area.

Right Step operates a school at 8684 N. 76th Place that last year served about 154 students in grades five through 12. All but a few were enrolled through the taxpayer-funded Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which brought the school more than $1 million in taxpayer-funded vouchers for the 2015-'16 school year.

The school is being sued by a group of students' parents who allege abusive practices. The lawsuit contends students were punched, kicked, slapped and forced to endure humiliating acts, such as lying in their own vomit or drinking from a cup filled with an instructor's spit during a 2014 boot camp.

Right Step's attorney, Patrick C. Brennan, called the allegations "unfounded and unsubstantiated."