GRATIOT - The future of the Gratiot Middle School building hangs in limbo after the Black Hawk school board voted in October to close it at the end of this academic year to help pull the district out of a budget hole almost $436,000 deep.
Gov. Scott Walker's $800 million cut to public education, plus a decades-long decline in enrollment, is forcing Black Hawk to condense its two campuses and move all middle school students to the main campus in South Wayne, said superintendent Willy Chambers.
The closure will cause staff cuts and squeeze some classes. One elementary teacher is losing a job completely, and four high school teachers will have their hours reduced - three by 25 percent, one by 12 percent. Four part-time custodial and kitchen staff will lose their positions.
"It's going to be very difficult for them to deal," Chambers said.
One staff cut isn't resulting in job loss, at least directly: the special-education director is moving to a different district. Black Hawk is also planning to save money in shuttle, trucking, mileage, utilities and insurance costs by condensing middle school students from Gratiot into the South Wayne campus.
The closure is predicted to save the district $333,638, or about 77 percent of this school year's $435,584 deficit.
The school building belongs to the district, but the land belongs the Village of Gratiot, and the two owners will begin negotiations in January on the future of both. The village board is discussing the issue at a public meeting at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 3, at 5840 Main St., near the intersection of Wisconsin 11 and 78. Chambers said the district will hold a special meeting in February to discuss the closure.
Neither Chambers or village president Karlan Johnson have a solid plan yet for the Gratiot property and are waiting for negotiations to play out in January.
The district could use the building for storage, "but it'd be an awful big storage facility for the school to hang onto," said Johnson, who also works as head custodian at Gratiot Middle School and will be moving to the South Wayne campus next year.
The building, built in 1950, is fully handicapped accessible and meets code for the Americans with Disabilities Act, Johnson said, so it might make a good nursing home or housing for the elderly.
Losing the school will hurt the Village of Gratiot, he added. It takes away one of the town's biggest water and sewer clients.
"We kind of run on bare bones, anyway," he said. "We have a sewer plant we still owe ten years of payment to."
Plus, the closure gives people in the area "one less excuse" to stop in Gratiot to fuel up or buy a sandwich.
"It's going to hurt the businesses in town," he said, and that's painful for townspeople who are already smarting from foreclosures and empty houses.
Gratiot and South Wayne merged their school districts in the mid-1960s. Preschool through third grade are located in South Wayne, fourth through eighth grades are in Gratiot, and ninth through 12th grades are in South Wayne.
Enrollment has dropped from 873 K-12 students in 1978 to 401 4K-12 students in 2011, according to Chambers. Despite his frustration with budget cuts, he remains optimistic about the future of the district.
"Overall, the programs are still solid," he said.
Johnson has a lot of memories attached to the building. He attended Gratiot as a seventh- and eighth-grader from 1969 to 1971 and has worked 27 years in the school.
"We sure hate to see it close,' he said. But, he added, "we don't want to see the district go down."
Gov. Scott Walker's $800 million cut to public education, plus a decades-long decline in enrollment, is forcing Black Hawk to condense its two campuses and move all middle school students to the main campus in South Wayne, said superintendent Willy Chambers.
The closure will cause staff cuts and squeeze some classes. One elementary teacher is losing a job completely, and four high school teachers will have their hours reduced - three by 25 percent, one by 12 percent. Four part-time custodial and kitchen staff will lose their positions.
"It's going to be very difficult for them to deal," Chambers said.
One staff cut isn't resulting in job loss, at least directly: the special-education director is moving to a different district. Black Hawk is also planning to save money in shuttle, trucking, mileage, utilities and insurance costs by condensing middle school students from Gratiot into the South Wayne campus.
The closure is predicted to save the district $333,638, or about 77 percent of this school year's $435,584 deficit.
The school building belongs to the district, but the land belongs the Village of Gratiot, and the two owners will begin negotiations in January on the future of both. The village board is discussing the issue at a public meeting at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 3, at 5840 Main St., near the intersection of Wisconsin 11 and 78. Chambers said the district will hold a special meeting in February to discuss the closure.
Neither Chambers or village president Karlan Johnson have a solid plan yet for the Gratiot property and are waiting for negotiations to play out in January.
The district could use the building for storage, "but it'd be an awful big storage facility for the school to hang onto," said Johnson, who also works as head custodian at Gratiot Middle School and will be moving to the South Wayne campus next year.
The building, built in 1950, is fully handicapped accessible and meets code for the Americans with Disabilities Act, Johnson said, so it might make a good nursing home or housing for the elderly.
Losing the school will hurt the Village of Gratiot, he added. It takes away one of the town's biggest water and sewer clients.
"We kind of run on bare bones, anyway," he said. "We have a sewer plant we still owe ten years of payment to."
Plus, the closure gives people in the area "one less excuse" to stop in Gratiot to fuel up or buy a sandwich.
"It's going to hurt the businesses in town," he said, and that's painful for townspeople who are already smarting from foreclosures and empty houses.
Gratiot and South Wayne merged their school districts in the mid-1960s. Preschool through third grade are located in South Wayne, fourth through eighth grades are in Gratiot, and ninth through 12th grades are in South Wayne.
Enrollment has dropped from 873 K-12 students in 1978 to 401 4K-12 students in 2011, according to Chambers. Despite his frustration with budget cuts, he remains optimistic about the future of the district.
"Overall, the programs are still solid," he said.
Johnson has a lot of memories attached to the building. He attended Gratiot as a seventh- and eighth-grader from 1969 to 1971 and has worked 27 years in the school.
"We sure hate to see it close,' he said. But, he added, "we don't want to see the district go down."