Students at Oconto Falls Middle School walked through the doors of a new building in the fall, while the community bid its farewell to the former Washington Middle School that was later demolished.
In January, the Washington Middle School English Language Arts Department announced it was making plans for the community to say goodbye to the old school as the school district prepared to open the new Oconto Falls Middle School.
A special event was planned for May 22.
As students and staff at Washington Middle School packed up and prepared for the big move to the new school, they kept finding artifacts of the old building’s century of history.
Boxes sorted by decade in Ashley Maederer’s classroom contained such relics as light fixtures dating to the 1920s and 1930s, a jar of iron filings used to demonstrate magnetism in 1940s science classes, and newspapers marking the beginning and end of U.S. involvement in World War II.
Many of the artifacts were on display during the special “Farewell WMS” community open house at the school, 102 S. Washington St.
Students and their parents got their first look at the new Oconto Falls Middle School on Aug. 4.
With asbestos abatement complete, demolition and salvage work on Washington Middle School began in September.
After a successful referendum, a new Oconto Falls Middle School was built on County Road I across from the high school. Voters in November 2022 approved a $37.6 million referendum that enabled the new school along with security upgrades and roof replacements at Oconto Falls High School and Oconto Falls and Abrams elementary schools.
New district leadership
As if completing budding projects from a successful referendum wasn’t enough, the Oconto Falls School District also saw a change in leadership in 2025.
As far as Dean Hess was concerned, a decision to join the Oconto Falls School District as its superintendent a decade ago paid off for his family and the district.
Hess retired at the end of the school year after a 31-year career in education that also included stops in Plainfield and Wausau.
He spent much of his time leading up to his retirement helping the district transition to its new superintendent, Stuart Russ, then-principal at Oconto Falls High School.
Hess, originally from Elcho, came to Oconto Falls after 17 years as an assistant principal and principal at two middle schools in Wausau.
“You are trying to find a good fit,” he said. “More than anything, I felt that Oconto Falls was a good fit for my wife and me. I had done the schooling and was taking a look at some different options. When I came here to Oconto Falls, the first thing that caught my attention was all the really positive things that were happening in the district.”
Finalists to replace Hess were announced in February, with two of the three having local connections.
The finalists were Benjamin Heninger, superintendent of the Pardeeville School District; Ben Pytleski, superintendent for the Lena School District; and Russ.
The two local candidates advanced to another round of interviews before Russ was selected in March.
Russ started his teaching career in the Luxemburg-Casco School District, moving to the Rosendale-Brandon School District and then entering administration as an assistant principal at Shawano Community High School. He was principal of Wittenberg-Birnamwood High School before taking the post at OFHS in 2023.
New school principals
With Russ getting a promotion in the Oconto Falls School District, the school board had to fill the newly created vacancy of high school principal.
Steven Linssen graduated from OFHS in 1998 and was hired to fill that role.
“This is definitely a homecoming type of event for me,” Linssen said. “The educators, which were here at that time, had a huge impact on my decision to begin a career in education.”
After graduating high school, Linssen attended UW-Green Bay where he majored in political science and minored in secondary education. Linssen then attended Marian University and earned a master’s degree in educational leadership.
Linssen’s career began in the Shawano School District, where he taught social studies at Shawano Community Middle School for nine years.
In other change in leadership, a Seymour principal with 25 years of experience was named the new principal of Gillett Elementary School.
Amy McKeefry succeeded Curt Angeli, who retired after 35 years in the Gillett School District — the last 11 as elementary principal.
McKeefry’s experience in education includes roles as a first-grade teacher, learning support teacher and elementary and intermediate school principal. Most recently, she served as principal of Rock Ledge Intermediate School in Seymour.
Suring police chief retires
Suring Police Chief Kevin Schneider signed off for the last time Jan. 17. He enters retirement after 33 years in law enforcement.
After a tour of duty as a U.S. Marine, Schneider spent much of his career as a Wisconsin state trooper before becoming a police officer for the city of Algoma and Gillett police chief before coming to Suring in 2021.
The village hired Mason Wagner, formerly an officer with the Luxemburg Police Department, to serve as its new police chief.
Embezzlement charges
Oconto County Judge Michael Judge paused May 5 as he reached the moment when he would hand down a sentence for Christopher E. Thomson, the former fire chief who stole from the Lakewood Fire Department Association hundreds of times over four years.
“Let me say this,” Judge said after several moments. “This is a prison case. This is a prison case. This man should go to prison. If I send him to prison, there’s no acceptance of accountability or responsibility to at least begin some payments to the association.”
As a result, Judge “reluctantly” accepted a joint recommendation and imposed, then stayed, a four-year prison sentence followed by six years of extended supervision. Instead, he placed Thomson on six years probation with conditions including one year in the county jail and payment of $128,339.49 in restitution.
Thomson, 42, Lakewood, pleaded no contest March 5 to three counts of identity theft to obtain money, two counts of uttering a forgery and single counts of theft in a business setting and committing fraud against a financial institution.
In his role as treasurer of the association and later as fire chief, Thomson wrote at least 187 fraudulent checks between 2020 and 2024 to pay personal bills and expenses, Oconto County District Attorney Hannah Schuchart said. The nonprofit organization seeks donations and holds fundraisers for the fire department.
Cyberattack at Cellcom
A cyberattack on Cellcom in May left thousands of customers with compromised service for nearly a week in the middle of May.
Customers lost the ability to make voice calls and text messages.
“We experienced a cyber incident,” said Brighid Riordan, Cellcom CEO. “While this is unfortunate, it’s not something we were unprepared for. We have protocols and plans in place for exactly this kind of situation. From the start, we’ve followed those plans — including engaging outside cybersecurity experts, notifying the FBI and Wisconsin officials, and working around the clock to bring systems safely back online.”
There is no evidence that personal information related to customers, their names, their addresses or their financial information was impacted by this event.
The incident was concentrated on an area of the network separate from where customers’ sensitive information is stored, Riordan said.
Services were gradually restored, and Cellcom provided credits to customers for the downtime.
Tornadoes touch down
A storm ripped through northeast Wisconsin creating at least three tornadoes on July 23, in the process damaging trees, bringing down power lines, and causing major damage to at least one business in the Town of Gillett.
The National Weather Service confirmed that tornadoes touched down in Keshena, Gillett and Oconto.
A metal building operated by Telford Equipment Consulting Co., a company that sells emergency power generators, was completely destroyed. A neighboring building had major damage to the roof, which was covered up with a blue tarp as news crews descended on the scene the morning of July 24. Debris was scattered all over the business and nearby buildings.
According to Jon Spice, Oconto County emergency management director, Gillett and the Town of Underhill had suffered a lot of damage from the storm, with many people still without power the morning after.
“We had a lot of trees go down in the Underhill area, and a lot of power lines over there,” Spice said. “It concentrated more in this area (near Gillett) and was sporadic and went on a straight line toward the city of Oconto.”
There were no injuries reported from the storm initially, according to Spice.
Measles cases reported
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services and Oconto County Public Health confirmed nine cases of measles in Oconto County on Aug. 2. All of the cases were exposed to a common source during out-of-state travel.
The number of measles cases in the county reached 23 as of Aug. 29. There were two hospitalizations reported. By then, all of the reported cases are confirmed cases.
Confirmed measles cases are cases that meet clinical criteria for measles and have been laboratory confirmed or have a direct link to a laboratory-confirmed case by location and time.
Probable cases meet the clinical description of measles, but have not been laboratory confirmed or linked to a laboratory-confirmed case.
Measles is a highly contagious disease that can be spread from person to person through the air and can stay in the air for two hours after a sick person coughs or sneezes. It is so contagious that if one person gets it, up to 90% of the people around them may also become infected.
$1 million for Gillett project
Gov. Tony Evers celebrated with city of Gillett officials Aug. 28 about receiving a $1 million Community Development Block Grant from the federal government.
The grant is expected to help the city make improvements to Zippel Park, including a new playground to replace equipment that has sat there for decades, with even the elderly in the community recalling using the equipment.
Bids are expected to be approved in January or February, with work beginning in spring with the hopes that it will be done by fall 2026.
According to Art Bahr with MSA Professional Services, the firm overseeing the park project, the city is looking to make Zippel a destination area for Gillett.
The park will be all-inclusive, with a rubberized surface so that people who use wheelchairs or have mobility limits will be able to access the facilities. There will be some lighting so that the park can also be used at night, and the city will be putting asphalt paths 8 feet wide to get from the parking area to the playground, Bahr said.
Proposed solar farm, battery facility
A proposed 100-megawatt solar farm and 50-megawatt battery facility is on schedule to be built in the Town of Morgan, and townspeople are worried.
According to documents provided by the state Public Service Commission, the proposed site would consist of 648.9 acres near CCC Road and County Road C.
David Behrend, an Oconto County supervisor who represents the Town of Morgan, has concerns about the personal safety of neighbors near the proposed solar farm, and if neighboring landowners would bear financial burdens in a crisis.
“I encourage people to ask two questions,” Behrend said. “Will my home insurance company cover damages and evacuation costs if an emergency happens at the proposed solar farm? And would I face point-of-pollution liabilities and cleanup costs if contaminants from the proposed solar farm entered my property?”
Nikki Coopman, whose home and business would be surrounded by the proposed solar farm, said she knows the answer to those questions.
“My insurance company would offer absolutely zero help if those giant lithium batteries started on fire and we had to flee the toxic smoke,” Coopman said. “And if my property burned to the ground from a fire started by the proposed solar farm, my insurance would cover nothing. I checked. I asked them, and they said, ‘No.’ If contaminants from the proposed solar farm ended up on my property, I would be responsible to pay for cleanup; if particulates from a toxic smoke plume landed on my soil, it would be my responsible to pay for it.”
The Morgan Town Hall was standing room only Oct. 7 for a special meeting about the Fox Solar Project, the proposal of Florida-based developer NextEra Energy.
Representatives of NextEra hosted two informal meetings the previous day in Oconto Falls but declined to attend the town hall meeting.
State law prohibits local governments from restricting solar energy systems unless the restriction “serves to preserve or protect the public health or safety,” “does not significantly increase the cost of the system or significantly decrease its efficiency” or “allows for an alternative system of comparable cost and efficiency.”
The town is currently negotiating with NextEra terms on a joint development agreement, which allows for the town to seek concessions.
