Architecture firm to study district facilities

ANTIGO — At a meeting Wednesday night at the high school, a community task force accepted a recommendation by Antigo School District representatives to select Blue Design Group, an architecture firm out of Hortonville, Wis., to conduct an analysis of all the district’s facilities.

The task force was formed prior to the summer of 2023 in order to provide feedback to district and school board officials as they consider whether to renovate aging buildings in the district or possibly build another. Its members, made up mostly of community volunteers, originally favored hiring other architecture firms that had made presentations to them along with Blue at a meeting about a month ago. It ultimately commissioned school board and district members, including District Administrator Glenda Oginski and Building and Grounds Supervisor Jake Leiterman, to engage in further research, including tours of other schools around the state the different firms had constructed.

Leiterman said Blue will conduct a thorough analysis of every building in the district.

“They’re going to come in and look at every inch of our buildings and tell us what the projected long-term maintenance costs are going to be, give us budgetary numbers on that, and tell us what the best use of those buildings would be,” Leiterman said. “So, for instance, they’re going to look at the high school and say, ‘Given how everything’s set up, the square footage, all the things that you have, the age of all the equipment and whatnot, it’s going to cost X number of dollars over the next X number of years, and we think this building would be best utilized based on your grade configuration and your enrollment numbers to house grades A-C for a total population of X number of students.’

Then they’ll do the same thing at the middle school so we can get a professional opinion of how to best utilize those buildings for educating our kids.”

Leiterman and Oginski both stressed that despite this exploration of district facilities, a referendum to build a new school is not imminent. Oginski, however, said that this summer, after touring the district’s three elementary schools, all of which were constructed in the 1960s, members of the community task force did express a desire to consolidate them in one new building.

“I think they were rather surprised,” Oginski said of their reaction following the tours. “I don’t think they realized that our schools are bursting at the seams, that there’s no space. A lot of our specialists and interventionists are having to teach in closet areas. Storage is a big problem. Things are stacked up probably higher than they should be. I just don’t think they had an idea of the condition they were in.”

Leiterman said members of the task force, along with anyone who actually spends time in the elementary school buildings, knows they have a laundry list of issues.

“I think a lot of times community members only see the school from the outside,” Leiterman said. “Kids show up and kids go home every day and they end up going on to the next grade next year, so they think it must be working. It’s a much different perspective than when you actually walk into the buildings, see how they’re being utilized, see the environments that the kids are being asked to learn in. Ultimately, that learning environment does impact their ability to get a good education.”

Leiterman encouraged community members to get involved in the task force, saying he and the school board welcome input, which is the original reason they decided to create the task force.

“The school board wanted to gain perspective from the community on what we should do with our facilities,” Letterman said. “They were more concerned about making sure our kids had the best learning environments possible. There was no preconceived opinion of anything. So they wanted the community’s opinion and ultimately support on making them the best possible facilities that we can.”