MONROE — Members of the School District of Monroe Board of Education looked over an updated timeline for the district’s proposed facilities project, presented by District Administrator Rick Waski at their regularly scheduled meeting Nov. 11. 

Currently, the School District of Monroe 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. 

The majority of the timeline takes place from September 2019 to November 2020 and is in preparation for a potential $85.9 million referendum in which voters would authorize and fund the district’s proposal. 

In accordance with that timeline, next month the board plans to finalize a survey to gather opinions on facilities configuration and how much in taxes participants are willing to pay for which improvements.

In January and February 2020, that survey will be distributed by postal and electronic mail to parents, staff and all district residents, as well as the school’s open enrollment families, though the latter will not be able to vote on the referendum. The board would then analyze the results in March.

As a group the board had not yet decided what questions would go on the survey, something that board treasurer Rich Deprez expressed concern about. 

“I just want to make sure that we have consensus,” he said, noting that there would only be one meeting in December for them to all get on board. Waski said there could be a meeting added in December, or it could be discussed at their regular meeting Jan. 13. 

He and Business Administrator Ron Olson will have a conference call with School Perceptions, a company specializing in educational surveys, later in November and he said they’d see a first draft of the survey the last week of the month.

Olson said he didn’t know if School Perceptions had framed the survey questions yet, but that they were aware of the concepts the district was looking at. 

Remaining timeline items would take place beginning with design finalization in Spring 2021. But those are only projected actions that reflect the current facilities plan; they would take place only after a referendum question is approved and passes.

Both Waski and Olson touched on what level of input the board might want to have on those potential projects. Waski said that could range from getting reports on general concepts to selecting carpet shades and paint colors. 

“When these projects work out,” he added, “The board develops a good philosophy of how they want to, not only make decisions, but also how they want to be informed.”

In the proposed timeline, construction around Monroe High School would take place during the 2021-22 school year, and during 2022-23 the high school would move into the new high school wing, leaving the existing space to be remodeled. 

By the summer of 2023 Abraham Lincoln Elementary School would be demolished and construction would be finalized, and the new four-building configuration would be started that fall, though things such as landscaping might still be going on. 

Waski said that most planned improvements to Parkside were already in place, though classroom modifications might need to happen if it becomes a Pre-K through 3 school as proposed, and changes to Northside could be taken care of by focusing long-term maintenance there, something he noted Olson had previously mentioned. Both would involve fixtures and furnishings. He said it would be a similar situation for Monroe Middle School if converted into an intermediate school. 

Olson gave an example of the science labs at MMS; one decision to make would be whether to keep those labs for science break-out sessions, or to turn them into large collaboration spaces. But he said that there wasn’t a large amount of money dedicated to those other buildings. 

“That’s based upon the plan as it sits now,” said Olson. “Obviously, if we get some input and the plan starts to look like something different, then those answers could become different.”

Waski said that’s the one thing they all need to be mindful of; there’s a lot of feedback that needs to occur.

“As that feedback comes in, things change,” he said. “And as things change you have to be responsive to those changes.” But there is a point of no return. 

“Once you form the (referendum) question, there’s no going back,” said Waski. It will be certified with the Department of Public Instruction and will require proper posting and notifications. 

Waski said 10 pages of information on the facilities project would appear in the district’s quarterly newsletter this winter, set to go out the first week of December.

In other matters, the board:

● Introduced five international exchange students who will attend Monroe High School this school year. The students are here from Japan, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Spain and Thailand. 

● Approved a donation of $64,088.81 from Colony Brands Foundation, Inc. to the 2019-20 Elementary Spanish Program.