Construction work is winding down on the Shawano School District’s 2024 referendum, and now officials are looking toward the next big project — Shawano Community Middle School.
When the district was looking at what projects to do first, building a new middle school was briefly considered. Then it was decided to focus on the high school and do renovations at the other three schools; the caveat was that the existing middle school would get the district’s support for seven years through 2031, and then something would need to be done.
Superintendent Kurt Krizan planted the first seeds of what’s being looked at by the district during a Shawano School Board work session Oct. 12. He told the board that three options were currently on the table, but other ideas could come up in the process.
One option is to build a completely new middle school, which Krizan estimated would cost about $50 million presently. Last year, the school district purchased a portion of the Magee Family Farm adjacent to Shawano Community High School and is currently handling the maintenance for it until it’s decided whether to build a new school.
Another option is to keep the existing building at 1050 S. Union St., which is more than 70 years old, and work to modernize it through renovations. Krizan said the price tag for all the needed improvements and upgrades currently stands at $15 million.
Both of those options would require going to the voters for a referendum to get approval.
“We won’t be able to do a referendum this time without raising taxes,” Krizan said.
The third option would be to close the middle school and reconfigure the remaining three schools to accommodate all the grades. Shawano has seen declining enrollment for more than a decade, something most Wisconsin schools are currently experiencing, so it’s possible by the time the target date of 2031 rolls around that the student population will be able to fit in the three buildings.
Krizan is expecting the study on reconfiguration to take about four months, with a plan brought to the school board in early February and a potential vote at the end of that month. He noted that a virtual meeting was held with all staff at the end of September to discuss the options and lay out what the process will be.
“We recorded that session with our staff, because we realized getting ready that some of our support staff wouldn’t be able to see that, so we shared that,” Krizan said. “We also met with some of our district leaders, and some of the conversation in there was that we have a lot of questions that we need to answer. These people will be responsible for getting us those answers.”
One of those questions is what the learning experience will be for students under any of the options, but especially if there’s only going to be three schools. Krizan said he met earlier in the day with the allied arts and career and technical education teachers to tour the new facilities and to ask what needs to be done to improve things that hasn’t happened previously.
“We want to make sure that we look at this and study everything we can to see if this plan will work,” he said.
Board member John Arens expressed concern about the issue being given only four months to find solutions. He was also troubled that the board is not expected to do anything throughout the process, only vote on the plan at the end.
“It’s different if you can see those people, look them in the face versus what we get fed at a board meeting,” Arens said. “This is an extremely truncated timetable. You won’t have any data on our class sizes (voted on earlier in the year), and that could really affect this process. We don’t know yet if we’re going to have to decrease class sizes based upon how this year goes.”
Arens estimated the process should take a full year to make sure that all available data can be considered to come to an educated conclusion. He pointed to the current referendum where continuous delays occurred with little to no communication to the board.
“To be real honest, with our referendum, we thought we had a decent plan, and quite frankly, it’s a mess,” Arens said. “It’s not going well. It’s behind. I don’t want to go into any kind of reconfiguration of buildings, something that’s going to affect our town and our district for years to come, on a truncated timetable.”
Krizan said he doesn’t expect all the questions to be answered in four months, but he believes the timetable will be enough to get something started. If it’s determined that more time is needed, he said extra time will be given. February is a goal — not set in stone, he said.
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
