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If the quest to expand charter schools in Wisconsin were a World War I battle, the husband-and-wife team of Michael Ostermeyer and Cindy Zautcke would not merely be fighting in the trenches. They would be the ones actually digging the trenches in which the war would be won or lost.
Ostermeyer, 39, a partner at the Milwaukee law firm Quarles & Brady, and Zautcke, assistant director of Marquette University's Institute for the Transformation of Learning, are dedicated to improving the education of Milwaukee's impoverished central city children.
Zautcke, 38, got involved in alternative education shortly after graduating from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, in the mid-1980s. Her first teaching job was in a poor Nashville neighborhood while earning a master's degree at Vanderbilt University. Ostermeyer was attending Vanderbilt Law School at the time.
When the couple moved to Milwaukee in 1990, Zautcke turned down chances to teach English at more prestigious suburban schools in favor of alternative schools on Milwaukee's near south side that housed atrisk teenagers.
Zautcke taught at Grand Alternative High School in Milwaukee from 1990 through 1996. She also was one of the founders of El Puente High School...