MONROE — The School District of Monroe Board of Education held its regular meeting Aug. 28, the final one before the new school year begins. 

During the meeting, the board discussed current staffing issues and were updated on the project to build the new high school. 

The 70-acre property poised to be the location of the new high school campus had its certified survey map completed and approved by the Town of Monroe. Up next are a couple more signatures for annexation into the city of Monroe, a traffic study that could take up to 12 weeks to be completed, and secured a wetland delineator for the work and mapping of the easement from County KK to the campus. There is not a start date for that yet; however, it should happen during the month of September. 

Core samples are also planned to be taken, somewhere between 25-30, according to Project Manager Jesse Duff of Fehr Graham, civil engineer. 

Steve Kieckhafer, principal architect and educational planner for Plunkett Raysich Architects (PRA), joined Duff at the meeting and introduced the board to the project teams from PRA, Fehr Graham and CG Schmidt. 

Kieckhafer gave a rundown of the entire project, including project terms like core group and user group. The core group is the main project leaders, who will meet every week. User groups will include high school and district staff. At least one, but possibly multiple meetings involving local community members were discussed and could be planned in the near future, likely between mid-October and Thanksgiving.

Kieckhafer presented an updated timeline of the project, which caught the attention of some in the room. Breaking ground and the start of construction are still slated to being in the spring of 2024, with all bids getting finalized by the end of the summer. However, a previous estimated time length of construction had the project aiming to be completed between the fall 2025 and winter 2025-26. It is now scheduled for fall 2026.

Kieckhafer said it was the time schedule he and his associates were “most certain about.” If there are ways to accelerate the project, they would work toward that goal, Kieckhafer clarified.

“At this stage right now, we are going as fast as possible to get plans out for the most favorable timeline for bidding to allow construction to start in the spring,” Kieckhafer said.

“We want to do everything right, so if that’s how long it takes, then that’s how long it takes,” said Rich Deprez, board president.

The board also choose to interview three of five qualified applicants for the owner’s representative position for the project. An owner’s representative is a third party person or company that will be able to oversee the project, verify the quality of work, and be in the discussions on a day-to-day basis representing the district.

“When we interview and we talk to them, it should be based on the needs of the district,” board member Mike Froseth, Jr. said. “They need to be our representative. They work for us and kind of represent that advocate for us with the architect, the civil engineer, with the contractor.”

The three picked for interviews next week are Chicago-based LM Consultants, Greg Lehn; Madison-based Huffman Keel, Mike Huffman; and Milwaukee-based Cadence Consulting, Mike Hacker.

Lehn worked with both CG Schmidt and PRA during the Wisconsin Dells High School project, which came under budget. Huffman’s recent experience includes Verona, Madison and Neenah projects. Hacker has 30 years experience and has worked on 15 school projects. 

‘Fully staffed’ thanks to creativity

In a staffing update, the board was told that all positions are filled. 

“We did have some late exits here in August that we’ve had to get creative with,” said Todd Paradis, Director of Curriculum and Instruction. 

Some of the new hires do not have all of the certifications needed, and the district put in for emergency licensing.

“But they are filled (and) we are prepared for the new school year fully staffed,” Paradis said. 

There are 1- and 3-year pathway for licensing. Typically, the Wisconsin Department of Instruction requires those staff to enroll in a program and earn a set amount of credits that would go toward a program in order to receive certification later.

“I think this is going to be a common challenge that we face moving forward,” Paradis said. “It’s around us — it’s everywhere. There’s many districts that are just going with unfilled positions. To sit here and say we have every position filled going into the school year is a positive.”

Perhaps the department hit hardest was math. Teachers from the middle and high school stepped up to fill the gaps, even though some of the teachers filling in for this school year do not have a prepared syllabus.

“I give a lot of credit to our staff. I know with our math position at the high school, they had to move some pieces around and made it work without hiring that position,” Paradis said. “We’re ... meeting with departments and figuring out creative ways to cover some of these gaps and holes for classes that we are offering.”

Late openings are simply hard to fill, administrators said. 

Joe Monroe, Director of Pupil Services, said that the number of applicants for various positions has been trending downward. 

“There’s been a number of positions that we haven’t had a single qualified applicant,” Monroe said. “That forces us to be creative, and I think that we’ve done a good job up to this point.”

Monroe also talked bluntly about what the district might need to do in order to retain staff in the future.

“Things are a little bit different. We’ve got to not only be creative, but we have to think about staff satisfaction and how do we keep the great people that we do have here. And that’s easier said than done,” Monroe said. “We’re working our best to make sure that they feel they are included, that they know they are valued, and that we communicate with them so we don’t have any surprises down the road.”