MONROE — A five-year planning process is about to meet its fate. Since 2017, the School District of Monroe has been planning a major referendum to address the dire needs of the high school and Abraham Lincoln Elementary. In just a few weeks, a plan to update Abraham Lincoln and to build a new high school on a new property will come to a public vote at the Nov. 8 election.
“We did a facilities study (in 2017) to look at all of our facilities across the district. The high school quickly rose to the top as our biggest concern that we had to address,” Ron Olson, the district’s business administrator, said during a community presentation Oct. 11 at the high school, the second of such forums, which included a tour of the aging facility.
The new referendum will ask for a maximum of $88 million through taxes, with a 21-year window for repayment. Should it pass, the district would have a year to work with contractors, engineers and architects to decide on the layout of the structure, as well as run an engineering survey on the proposed site. Construction is initially expected to be concluded by either the Fall of 2025 or early 2026. The $88 million cost includes the new facility, land moving, easements, lift station, utility buildings and other possible hiccups along the way, plus about $3.8 million to upgrade Abraham Lincoln, and the possible tear down and removal of the current high school into a green space or other use.
Simply put, the district has aging buildings on its hands. The newest building is Parkside Elementary, which was built in 1986. The middle school was originally built in 1939 to serve as the high school, until the current high school was built in 1958. The last major referendum passed about 25 years ago, and in 2000, the middle school doubled in size with a new adjoining addition built to the south. The high school also had additions made, like a science wing, auxiliary gymnasium and performing arts center.
“All of our buildings are aging. We need a solid base to grow from. We need at least one building to be current, designed for today’s education and structurally sound,” Olson said. “If we simply try to update and repair the building to extend its life another 20 years, all of our buildings will be 50-100 years old. The community simply could not afford to address all buildings at the same time.”
“The site we’re looking at is 77 acres. We’re looking at a campus that can serve the City of Monroe — the area of Monroe — basically forever and serve many, many generations,” said Rodney Figueroa, district superintendent since July 1, 2022.
A timeline of how we got here
In 2017, the School District of Monroe had its first facilities study, identifying issues that needed to be resolved across the district. While all facilities showed wear and various maintenance issues, the high school was quickly identified as the location that needed major improvement — and fast. A citizen-led committee with a mix of school officials and community members held several tours and brainstorming sessions.
● Parkside and Northside needed HVAC upgrades, among other updates.
● Abraham Lincoln needed ADA compliance upgrades, and discussions arose with whether to keep the school open altogether.
● The high school had water infiltration issues, exterior walls and floors separating from the main structure, as well as a host of HVAC issues.
A referendum passed in 2018 to upgrade Parkside, but a potential November 2020 major referendum to address issues at the high school was held back six months early due to the uncertainty brought on amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
The district sent out surveys during that time looking for community feedback. One of the two options included closing Abraham Lincoln and reconfiguring the other four schools — namely, adding a new two-story high school wing and renovating the older portion of the high school for a seventh and eighth grade section. The two portions of the school would share commons area for lunch, gymnasium and music use. The current middle school would then have become an intermediate school with grades 4-6 across the district coming into one building. Northside and Parkside would have housed kindergarten through third grade. That option was estimated to run the district $86 million, but survey results showed it likely wouldn’t pass in an election.
A second option, for approximately $81 million, would keep Lincoln open, but renovate it and reconfigure the rest of the schools. That option had very little support.
In the spring of 2021, a small referendum addressing the issues at Northside was put to taxpayers and passed. In the meantime, the debt from the last major referendum in the late 1990s was clearing, bringing the tax burden down to the lowest rate for the district in decades.
A January 2022 public survey conducted by School Perceptions, an independent Wisconsin-based firm, was sent out and to all homes in the district via the United States Post Office. In the paper copy was an access code to complete the survey online. There were 1,322 respondents, with about 53% having children in district schools. Of the various options on the survey, 63% supported a new school at a new location for a cost of about $88 million. A second option would have expanded on the current structure, creating a new wing for high school education, and then renovating the old section to house grades 7-8 for a total cost of about $86 million.
Administrators took this information and decided that a new high school in a new location was the choice — especially considering it would only cost an extra $2 million to add a new facility on nearly 3-times as much acreage as the current high school (77 acres to 26 acres).
Problems at the high school
The original structure at Monroe High School was built in 1958 and is now 64 years old. In the mid 1990s, a referendum came before voters asking to build a new high school, which ultimately failed. Not long later, a different referendum took place, which built additions onto Northside, the middle school and the high school. While the middle school has held strong, the addition to the high school has seen multitudes of problems, with water infiltration the No. 1 culprit.
Drainage under the building has been lackluster at best, and any significant rainfall sees water seeping in through the floors throughout the building. In the M-Room outside the gym and PAC, water and sand come up through the cracks, and the fill underneath has shifted the floor in parts.
“The downspouts from the roof system exit the wall and that’s where they stop,” former Monroe High School maintenance and custodial supervisor John Witt told the Times. “There are no kickouts and they are not tied to a storm drain system. The water hits the lawn, which in numerous locations is poorly graded even negatively graded, and runs back towards the school — under the building and into the building.
“The high school has probably a couple thousand feet of service tunnels on the old structure. Some portions of the tunnels have had 3 feet or more filled with water. This has been going on for 55-plus years. That is the reason there are black drain tiles out in front of the building by the arch to try and alleviate some of the rain water and direct it to storm sewer drains.”
To help mitigate the leaking water, drainage tubes have been set up on the north side of the building to help the water reach the sewer, though during heavy storms, the student parking lot floods. In fact, not long ago a sinkhole opened up in the center of the lot that could have swallowed a car if school had been in session. It wasn’t, and the location has since been fixed.
“In our M-Room, which is our Commons area, there is a portion of the floor where the fill underneath has settled so it’s basically a suspended floor. In the summer of 2018, I found sand on a good portion of the M-Room floor and part of it led into the Performing Arts Center. Trying to figure out where the sand came from, I started popping off the silver plates on the floor. That’s when I found a stormwater inspection pipe with no cap on it,” Witt said. “So when we had heavy rains and the storm sewer system got backed up, that water would bubble over the top of that pipe and then water infiltrated underneath the floor and, overtime, settled the rock and gravel underneath the concrete floor. That particular rainfall was so intense that it forced sand up through the cracks of the floor.”
The leaking into the building isn’t just under some flooring, either. The boiler room has water running down the walls or seeping in from the floor during rains. Live electrical outlets have had water running out of the outlet covers and onto the floor. Barn fans circulate air around the school, and more than 45 dehumidifiers run constantly throughout the building, removing 80-100 gallons of water from the air each day.
“There are numerous locations in the building where the fill underneath the floor has settled; this includes the new structure from 2000 and obviously parts of the original build out. One of the floors of the new structure in room R16 settled within a year or two of the build out from 2000; it really has not moved since then but was never repaired either,” Witt said.
From the water that does get in, mold is a major concern. While there haven’t been large-scale amounts of black mold that would threaten the health of the students and staff, other water damage is affecting the district in other ways. Water has made art rooms and hallways slippery, books on shelves or in storage have been damaged, as has electronic equipment.
“We have some pretty serious efficiency issues,” Figueroa said. “There’s quite a bit of ongoing expenses with running the building with those types of things (barn fans, dehumidifiers) on.” A new school would have a new system with much higher energy efficiency.
Figueroa said he couldn’t estimate the total savings of new HVAC and lighting systems. At his former district, Pittsville, they estimated 20% savings of costs after their referendum passed. It ended up being nearly 40%. However, with Monroe’s school growing by large square footage, it could be as much as a wash in total cost, Olson said.
In the new science wing of the building, thanks to water movement, a portion of the exterior wall has begun sliding off the foundation, leaving a large crack and separation from the floor that students still attend. That separation was first noticed about a decade ago. Across the hall in the agriculture rooms, the exterior wall is tilting and slipping away from the building as well.
Ventilation in the tech ed rooms — the welding, metal and wood shops — are limited, as is lighting in the rooms. The building also does not have a sprinkler system, and the security of the current facility is limited, with an aging camera system. Some doors stick due to humidity or frost in the wintertime. While there are sensors to alert staff of a door not closed, all too often the alert is going off.
“It’s a constant fight to stay on top of this stuff,” Figueroa said, adding that his current staff keeps up with fixing new problems and broken equipment every day, but never really has the time to do regular maintenance.
The temperature variations in the building are a concern for the district, and there is no air conditioning in either gymnasium. During the summertime, the auxiliary gym sometimes cannot hold summer league games because of the condensation buildup on the floor, and in winter, the frost from the outside not only covers the door, but parts of the flooring and walls near the exterior doors.
Large maintenance needs include issues with the roof, outdated and small bathrooms, the boys locker room is not ADA compliant, as well as having limited ventilation and the same 1950s design and fixtures, like gang showers and not individual, private booths. Opposing sports teams use the small and also outdated girls locker room, far smaller and older than nearly all opposing schools that enter the doors.
Mill rate for local school taxes lowest in 30-plus years
While multiple smaller referendums have passed in the district since the late 1990s, the tax burden on homes in the district is at a significant low. In 2017, that rate was $11.75 per $1,000 of property value. That number was already trending down from the two decades prior. By 2018, the mill rate dipped below $10 per $1,000, and this year it is at $9.20 — a full 60 cents lower than any time in more than 30 years.
If nothing happens, retiring debt will bring the tax rate down to just over $6 per $1,000 beginning in 2024. However, should the referendum pass, the estimated rate for 2023 — currently projected at just under $8 per $1,000 — would jump back up to about $9.79 per $1,000, then staying at that level for the foreseeable future. There is also additional state aid anticipated to arrive this school year.
Simply put, the estimated annual increase per household from base rate would be less than $200 a year for a property of $100,000; or about $50 more than the current rate. That means the burden of total tax rate would be less than $400 a year at $200,000 ($100 from current rate) and under $600 a year ($150 current rate) at $300,000.
“We’ve had a significant drop in our levee rate the last five years. We’ve talked about the state aid that’s additionally coming in. We also talked about the other debts being retired and so all of those offset. I would say that our levee rate would go up less than 50 cents from where it is this year,” Olson said.
Figueroa added that the increased cost could be as low as 35 cents more per $1,000, which would mean only an added $70 per year on a home valued at $200,000. “These numbers are estimated, but very conservative. We wanted to present the numbers on the high end, not the lower end. They could end up being less.”
“That’s really critical, because that’s not being understood correctly,” said Board of Education member Nikki Austin at the Oct. 10 school board meeting.
“This is really great news,” said Teresa Keehn, another board member at the BOE meeting. “We could build a new school and only increase taxes $70 on a $200,000 house — and, even at that level, it’s less than it was two years ago. The fact that we could provide that opportunity to our families and our kids is really exciting.”
Interest rates have been rising in recent months, a consequence of global inflation. Olson said that a prospective 4% rate is still pretty low historically. While rates were recently as low as 2%, in years past rates had been around 6% for school districts.
“Our current debt is expiring. We are nearly debt-free. We have two years left to pay on the Northside updates,” Figueroa said. “As that debt expires, it helps offset the tax impacts of a new debt for a new high school.”
The new location
Many citizens around the district wanted to know the location of a potential new high school before deciding how to vote. Of those, many more had concerns about the location that was ultimately picked, which is east of 31st Avenue on the city’s far east side. The 77-acre lot has a few valleys and a ravine, but 70-75% of the land has less than 20 feet of elevation change that would need earth moving, and has easy access to be attached to water, sewer and technology utilities already set up on 31st Avenue.
“We heard people saying, ‘We need to know where this is going to be before we know whether or not we can support this or not.’ So, Mr. Figueroa had to work very hard to try and identify a site and talk to all the owners very quickly so that we could do that,” Olson said. “Anytime you don’t have a site, you have people who say, ‘We can’t support this because we don’t know where the site is.’ And then anytime you identify the site, you have some people who go, ‘We don’t like where the site is.’”
In all, four locations in the nearby vicinity of the city limits were identified as possible locations. One location also had approximately 75% of the property needing 20-feet or less of earth movement, but would cost about four times as much. Another location was less costly for the land, but was located on a hill where much more fill and earth would need to be moved. Other locations were discussed as well, but some landowners were unwilling to sell.
“In all, it was as close to being in the city as we could get from all the properties we looked at,” Figueroa said. “We looked at all possible pieces around the city, and this was one that didn’t cross any major roads. It would allow space to bring the busses on campus, separate parking, alleviate some of the parking congestion issues we currently have, and allows us to set the school back, and it gives the city an opportunity to grow.”
Many citizens at the Oct. 11 meeting took issue with the chosen location. Some local contractors with decades of experience voiced their concern about needing to fill some of the land in order to house a two-story, 265,000 square foot building, as well as a new sports complex that would consist of two baseball fields, two softball fields, a new football stadium with a track, tennis courts and practice fields.
Other attendees from the nearby neighborhood voiced concern on the extra traffic that would come to the east end of town, instead of the south side where it currently resides.
“I’m not going to kid you and say there’s not traffic around the high school. Traffic will be an issue wherever a new high school goes,” Olson said.
The City of Monroe has plans to rework 31st Avenue, including possibly widening it. There is a 100-meter gap the district owns that could have an entrance and exit directly onto 31st Avenue. There is a 33-foot easement to the property near Northside School that could be redone for a second entrance, as well as another location from County KK, giving three possible entrances in all.
Another citizen brought up the nearby location of the former city dump, which was closed off more than a half century ago but still is about 200-300 feet to the south of the property boundary, while another neighbor with an adjacent property brough up concerns of potential flooding due to certain areas on the property that slope.
The new location, though under contract, will have to pass an engineering study of at least seven contingencies in order to be used. If a contingency or two fails, it will have to be determined by the contractors and architects if those failures could be remedied. If not, the district could turn its focus to another location.
New high school
As time has passed, the way schools teach its children has changed. Long gone are the days of rows of desks, with a teacher drawing on a chalk board or using a slide projector. Modern classrooms utilize smart boards, collaborative engagement and open floor plan concepts.
Members of the school board and district administrators recently had a tour of Baraboo and Wisconsin Dells high schools. Baraboo, a slightly larger district than Monroe, recently renovated its building, while Wisconsin Dells, a smaller district, built brand new — and then saw its enrollment increase by nearly 200 students in just two years. Both districts used CG Schmidt, which also has done work in Monroe at Parkside and Northside, as well as at SSM’s Monroe Hospital and Clinic location.
Along with utilizing space in both the classroom, commons and hallways, a new facility would have updated HVAC systems, larger facilities for tech ed, art, food/culinary, agriculture, lunch commons and library. Among other new facilities used as a guideline for what’s possible includes Brown Deer, Oak Creek, Ripon and Beaver Dam.
The new school would likely be a two-story building, which has shown to be the best cost-effective size. The school will be built to accommodate approximately 750 students, which is about 30 more than the high school currently has, said Jeriamy Jackson, high school principal. He added that the district enrollment has been trending down, and it’s estimated to have 50-100 fewer students over the next 5-10 years, though those numbers could reverse and the district could grow, similar to what happened in Wisconsin Dells. Some of those increases could be new families living in the district, while others could open enroll. Jackson said this is the first year Monroe has had a net-positive for open enroll students.
Upgrading facilities like tech ed and the food/culinary department would allow Monroe to collaborate with Blackhawk Technical College even more than it already has been. Jackson said Wisconsin Dells has 18 welding stations, while Monroe has just five. Increasing some of that space could better suit students that are looking at the trades now more than ever.
Jackson said Monroe students are taking advantage of the SOAR and LAUNCH programs that have been developed in recent years, preparing themselves to gain certifications for certain careers and for trade school — and not just a four-year university, as had been the fad of the past.
“The increase in the numbers in students has been impressive. Cara Carper has been a great addition to the program. She’s been working really hard,” Jackson said. Carper is the SOAR director. “One change she has been pushing is to make every internship a youth apprenticeship, because it’s higher level, higher skills, higher documentation. … The youth apprenticeship (numbers) have blown up exponentially.”
Jackson said there are 60 kids in the programs this year, including 37 in the youth apprenticeships, up from 12 a year ago. There are 26 different businesses in the community partnering with the programs.
SOAR stands for Student Occupation and Academic Readiness, and the program aims to provide experience and knowledge about local, well-paying careers that fit student’s strengths and interests. It is offered to juniors and seniors, who receive a wage working at a business and receiving hands-on training. Students work 10 hours per week at a local business, with the internship lasting the entire school year. Similarly, youth apprenticeships are available, where students work a minimum of 450 hours.
The LAUNCH program is a new and collaborative classroom experience for juniors and seniors that features project-based learning to solve real-world problems here in the local community. Teams of 3-5 students will work with project coaches from local businesses and nonprofits and their teachers to solve a different problem each trimester. This year’s topics include business analytics, with Colony Brands partnering, and media solutions, where students work on multiple courses to learn about multimedia, marketing and social media.
“This is, in my mind, where education is heading — giving opportunities to our students that is very real, very relevant, very useful to them and allowing them to learn what they like and what they don’t like,” Jackson said. “I really see our high school transforming to meet that model as much as possible. We obviously still have to push towards being college ready and college bound, but also having students understand what they want to do and what they don’t want to do. That includes careers, and that also includes college. Some kids get to college and don’t know what they want to do — this gives our kids some experience already.”
The new school would also come with new facilities for extracurriculars. A new performing arts center would replace the now 22-year-old facility at the current high school. While still a well-above average facility, updates and repairs are needed, like a new sound system and lighting fixtures. Some of the specific lights are no longer produced, and a new sound system in the old PAC would cost more than $300,000 by itself.
A four-court gymnasium would be built, as would outdoor facilities for football, baseball, softball, tennis and soccer. A quick growing trend in the state is upgrading any new stadium with field turf instead of grass, which needs constant maintenance, paint and upkeep. Monroe would likely get turf fields as well.
Many citizens at the Oct. 11 meeting were concerned with a repeat of the water infiltration and fill being damaged early, leading to a building failure again after less than two decades. The district said there will be a third-party engineer to monitor the building site each day, advocating for the district that proper materials and layout are being used.
The question was also asked: Will local contractors — even those not unionized — be hired?
“We’re going to hire as many local people as we can,” Figueroa said.
Dan Chovanec, general manager of CG Schmidt’s western region in Madison, said that his group would take the bids, then show the offers to the school board, which would ultimately make the decision.
“We’re going to reach out to all contractors, union or non-union. If there is a non-union contractor that’s the apparent low bidder and the district wants to use them, they can hold that contract and they can hire them,” Chovanec said. “We’ve done it with other districts. We did it at Wisconsin Dells. They held around three contracts. It was a local contractor that was non-union who the district wanted to use. … The way we do (business) is we get all the bids, apples to apples, we show them all with a side-by-side comparison, and we give it to the district to let them pick who they want to use. We don’t select who we want to use — the district has the final say.”
The location, at 77 acres, also sets the district up for any future improvement needs. Should the district decide in 20 years to replace another aging school, consolidate schools, or even expand onto the high school, the scale of the complex will allow for such expansion and upgrades.
As far as what will happen to the old high school? The district will have three years to decide what to do with the current school. The cost of tearing down the old structure is within the $88 million price tag — however, that is not the only option.
“At a minimum, the demolition of this site and restoration to a green space. If it gets returned to a green site, basically there’s a couple of options out there,” Olson said. “Part or all of the property could be parceled out in return to the tax roll, sold off as lots for homes.”
The building and/or land could be sold to a private person or company, or parts of the building could stay intact and be rented out to local community groups, like the gymnasiums and PAC. The land could even be held onto, in case years down the road, as the property could be used to address another new facility, be it a new middle or elementary school.
What if it fails?
While it’s possible another referendum could come in front of citizens during the Spring 2023 election, the likelihood is the entire process would have to be analyzed and adjusted, including additional surveys to see what went wrong.
“Obviously the board would have to reevaluate all the options. The needs don’t go away,” Olson said. “We’d have to figure out why potentially this didn’t pass. They’d have to reengage the community and see what the community is saying. There could be an alternate solution out there that people want.”
Voters are voting on the entirety of the project, not just the location. Costs for materials and labor are unlikely to go down over the next 5-10 years, and issues at the high school and Lincoln will still be there.
“Costs will only continue to increase. Although current inflation and construction costs are high, there is hope that they are cooling and will be in a more reasonable place in the next 12-18 months when the project would bid,” Olson said.