WAUSAU – The citizen task force charged with developing options for reconfiguring Wausau School District’s elementary education facilities met for the second time Wednesday where they heard about enrollment concerns for the district as well as underutilized space in the district's elementary schools and needed upgrades and repairs in those buildings.
This comes as the Wausau School Board also struggles with how to address a projected $3.5 million budget deficit for the 2024-25 school year.
Nick Johnson of MDRoffers Consulting presented housing and student population projections for the areas within Wausau School District including the city of Wausau, village of Rib Mountain and towns of Stettin, Maine, Texas, Hewitt and Wausau. The firm’s model is based largely on current conditions and birth rate trends. Johnson explained population projections beyond five years rely on assumptions that few unexpected population-change influencing events, such as the 2008 housing crisis or the COVID-19 pandemic, occur.
MDRoffers’ analysis projects significant enrollment decreases in the Wausau School District by 2040. Student population from early childhood learning through high school is expected to decrease by 659 students. This would leave roughly 3,100 empty seats in the district’s 17 instructional buildings.
The elementary schools’ population, specifically, is expected to decrease by 272 students by 2040, according to MDRoffers’ analysis. This would leave about 1,400 empty seats in the district’s 13 elementary school buildings. The buildings have about 1,100 empty seats in 2024.
MDRoffers’ analysis says six of the current elementary school buildings will operate at less than 70% of their functional capacity by 2027.
Ryan Urmanski, district buildings and grounds director, spoke about the current conditions of each building. This included the year each was built along with additions, building size, lot size, building capacity and rough estimates of building repair and upgrade needs identified in a 2014 report by Nexus, a consulting firm. The needed expenditures identified in that report ranged between roughly $500,000 for Stettin Elementary to $4.5 million for John Marshall.
Kara Rakowski, district 4K principal and early childhood coordinator, spoke about the importance of 4-year-old kindergarten and options for how it may be offered in the district. Currently, the program operates out of four elementary school buildings − G.D. Jones, Hawthorn Hills, Riverview and Thomas Jefferson − and four “community sites” − St. Michael’s Catholic Church, Mountain View Montessori, Wausau Child Care and Woodson YMCA. There were 289 early childhood students in the elementary school buildings as of May 28 and 115 students in the community sites.
Rakowski said early childhood learning builds a foundation for lifelong learning, occurs during critical cognitive, emotional and social developmental stages and that quality early childhood programs have proven results in reducing achievement gaps.
This was the second of nine planned meetings of the citizen task force. It is made up of 45 citizens with varying backgrounds that fit broadly in three categories: parents with children in the district schools, district residents without children in the district schools and elementary educators and support staff. A large majority of the 33 task force members in attendance Wednesday evening raised their hands when asked if they “ever” had children in district schools.
Task force member Kathy Rubino told a Wausau Daily Herald reporter the task force is still in the beginning stages of its work and the information provided in the presentations was valuable.
“It’s a way of informing people in the community of some of the issue the school district faces,” Rubino said of the task force. She said there had been “dissatisfaction” within the community in the last year and the task force “is a step in the right direction.”
Task force member Craig Hoffman told a Wausau Daily Herald reporter he thinks the task force is “a good cross-section” of the community and the task force members have a shared goal of doing what is best for the district.
“I think the people that are on the committee, I think they’re very interested in trying to solve the elementary school issues,” Hoffman said. “The thing that I think that we’re all working through is everybody has an interest in neighborhood schools. They don’t want to lose them.”
The task force is scheduled to meet next from 5:30-8 p.m. Aug. 21 in the Nicholson Boardroom of the district's Longfellow Administration Center at 415 Seymour St. in Wausau. The meeting is open to the public.
The task force is expected to receive further information on the topics of educational policy and programming, district finances and transportation services within the district. The task force will also begin working with criteria for evaluating potential facility options and nominating potential options. Task force meetings in September and October will apply the chosen criteria to the facility options generated through the task force’s work.
“(District leaders are) giving us a lot of latitude in trying to help them solve an issue,” Hoffman said about the task force process.
Information about the task force and materials from its meetings are available to view on the district's website.
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Erik Pfantz covers local government and education in central Wisconsin for USA-TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin and values his background as a rural Wisconsinite. Contact him at epfantz@gannett.com.
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