MONROE — At the Monroe School District Board of Education meeting on Oct. 28, District Administrator Rick Waski and Business Administrator Ron Olson shared staff feedback on the district’s planned facilities project, collected during visits at the five Monroe schools and district office.
Those meetings, conducted over September and October, represent part of the “focus group” phase of the proposed plan that’s been in progress since September, a stage Waski later said was set to last through March 2020.
This phase will also include a community survey that will go out after the holiday break, said Waski. Students in grades 6 to 9 will also be surveyed and face-to-face focus groups would be held with some students.
“We will also be meeting with coaches, some business groups, some community leaders, and other groups,” Waski said. Feedback from the various groups will be shared at future board meetings.
Staff feedback on consolidation was primarily in the form of questions, and the most common and widespread question, said Waski, was people wondering if they’d have a job if the district went from five to four buildings.
“If you’re in good standing, you’re going to have a job,” Waski said. He noted that they couldn’t guarantee that it would be the same job, or where it would be.
“We intend to make sure that people have input,” he said.
Waski cited an example from his time at Adams-Friendship in central Wisconsin, when three schools were consolidated to two. He said it worked out for the vast majority of people, later estimating that 80 to 90% of staff ended up exactly where they wanted to be.
But for Monroe, it will still be a while before anyone knows where they’ll end up. Olson said that even if the proposed referendum passes next November, the soonest they would move to four buildings would be Fall 2023.
“The reality is a lot of things change in four years,” Waski said.
The approach he recommended was developing a staffing plan in 2021, not with names of who goes where, but with positions needed, based on factors like enrollment trends and facilities. The board would make decisions about certain variables, and staff would be reached the following year for input.
Other questions, such as specifics about space and layout, couldn’t be answered yet, since the facility still has to be approved and designed, but the board did see possibilities at schools it visited in the Brown Deer and Port Washington districts in October.
Port Washington saw an enrollment increase of 50 following its new building, and while board president Dan Bartholf didn’t think it would be that much, he could see a positive effect for Monroe.
Waski said that a projected timeline updated through 2023 would be completed by Monday, Nov. 11.
The conversation is all part of the lead-up to a possible November 2020 referendum where the district will ask voters to approve $85.9 million in funding for school improvements and repairs. Approval would also bring major changes to the structure of the district.
Currently, MSD is composed of three elementary schools that go through fifth grade, one middle school housing sixth through eighth grade and a high school of ninth through 12th grade. The proposed plan would eliminate Abraham Lincoln Elementary School and change both Parkside and Northside Elementary Schools to PreK-3, while Monroe Middle School would become an intermediate school for all fourth- through sixth-graders and the high school would take on seventh and eighth grades.