ANTIGO — Following a meeting at East Elementary School Tuesday night, a community task force seems likely to recommend building a new, consolidated elementary school to the Antigo School Board. For the past few months, that task force has been discussing how best to use the district’s facilities after being formed for that purpose.
During an informal ballot vote near the end of the meeting, 18 of 20 members voted to build a new elementary school rather than renovate and add on to the three that already exist.
If the task force does end up recommending building a new elementary school — which is not guaranteed, as the task force’s official recommendation will not come until this summer — a referendum would result in November.
Antigo School District Building and Grounds Supervisor Jake Leiterman said at the meeting’s outset that the decision about whether or not to build a new elementary school could have long-term ramifications.
“When you talk about what our vision is…right now, we’re kind of in a unique spot that most communities aren’t: we have not invested in our schools in 30 years,” Leiterman said. “We have an opportunity to shape what this community’s going to look like. Every decision that we make is going to have a long-lasting effect on this community long after we’re gone.”
The informal vote was held Tuesday night following a presentation led by Steve Romatz from the Hortonville-based architectural firm Blue Design Group which has been assessing the school district’s facilities. Romatz said a new school would be heated and cooled by a geothermal heat pump, a system which would allow for substantial savings in comparison to the hybrid system of unit ventilators and heating and cooling coils. The existing system would continue to be employed if the three existing schools were only added on to and renovated.
“There’s a little more cost on the front end, but the payback is actually fairly short and there’s an awful lot of federal incentive money to help pay that system off very, very quickly,” Romatz said. “We’re talking about a pretty significant difference there between renovating and adding on to each of your buildings at $190,000 or $191,000 a year [for heating and cooling systems] versus $107,000 for a new building.”
Romatz said the cost of building a whole new school is also projected to be slightly lower than adding on to and renovating the three old buildings. He said actual figures will likely be available and discussed at a task force meeting next month.
Leiterman said it is clear that task force members do not consider simple renovations to the three buildings to be an option. Instead, constructing additions to them or building one new, consolidated elementary school are on the table.
“Through the analysis of the space needed for education, it was determined that the existing buildings do not provide adequate square footage for the number of students that they house. I think it’s very clear that the task force wants that option off the table,” Leiterman said. “But that recommendation will go to the full school board and ultimately, it’s their decision.”
During one portion of the meeting, District Administrator Glenda Oginski explained how she believed a new school would increase learning and test scores.
“If you can have all of your teachers under one roof together, working together, talking about learning, practicing the same skills, teaching the same concepts, then you don’t have a silo and a silo and a silo, but you have all three buildings working together, which means all students are getting a high quality education,” Oginski said.
In a brief speech toward the meeting’s conclusion, Mayor Terry Brand alluded to the building that partially collapsed on 5th Ave. last week when explaining the importance of the decision, suggesting, as other community leaders have recently, that if the school district does not improve, Antigo’s hopes for growth seem dim.
“We do not want to be in that position with any of our school buildings ever. But it takes an investment,” Brand said. “I know with the city, we’re going to try to keep taxes down so that some of that money can be deferred to the school district and we can invest.
“If we don’t do that, we might as well close the city down. It’s just a matter of time until everybody will find their way someplace else. This is the important thing. The city could build a new city hall or fire station, but it’s not going to have the effect that the school system would have. So we’ve been tasked with helping the community and the school board make that decision.”
The next facilities task force meeting will be held at 6 p.m. May 6 at West Elementary.
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