Oconto Falls' budget passed, middle school sports suspended

School board prepares for the coming year
By: 
Warren Bluhm
News Editor

A little more than a dozen attendees at the Oconto Falls School District annual meeting Monday, Aug. 17, passed a $10.85 million property tax levy for the coming year.

The levy includes $9.628 million to defray the cost of operating and maintaining local public schools and $1.2 million for debt service retirement for the 2019-20 school year.

It was the first face-to-face board meeting since March, when Gov. Tony Evers closed school buildings through June citing concerns about the spread of COVID-19. The session usually held at the District Office meeting room was moved to the much more spacious Falls Area Performing Arts Center at the high school, where every other auditorium seat was wrapped in caution tape and board members were spread across the stage for social distancing.

Superintendent Dean Hess and district accountant Kim Sinclair walked the group through details of the 2020-21 budget. Hess noted that district efforts and larger-than-expected increased in equalized valuation have reduced indebtedness from about $14 million five years ago to just below $5 million, and this year’s budget should bring the balance down to about $2.6 million.

The district is entering the fourth year of a five-year operational referendum; voters gave the district permission to exceed state-imposed revenue limits through the 2021-22 school year, and Hess said the school board expects to ask voters to renew that commitment next spring.

Also on the horizon is a capital referendum. Consulting firm Nexus Solutions has been conducting an audit of district buildings, especially aging Washington Middle School, with an eye toward an extensive upgrade of the existing building or construction of a new middle school.

Although the district has been aiming toward a building referendum in the spring of 2022, Nexus has suggested the board consider holding the vote at the same time as the 2021 question, Hess said.

“There are some potential positives to that,” he said, including low interest rates in the current market for issuing bonds. “We need to do some homework looking at whether 2021 is even an option.”

Administrators may ask the board to hold a special meeting in early September to review the referendum options, he said.

Discussion during much of the annual meeting, and the board’s regular August meeting that followed, was about preparations to operate schools in the face of the ongoing pandemic. Oconto Falls plans to open the school year Sept. 1 with students attending class four days a week, with Wednesdays devoted to virtual learning, teacher professional development, and deep cleaning of school buildings.

Hess has been in regular contact with Deb Konitzer, Oconto County public health officer, to discuss preparations for the seemingly inevitable times when students or staff test positive for COVID-19 — and at what point the number of cases might reach the point where more stringent mitigation is necessary.

“Each situation is going to have to be worked through with the folks from the county health department to identify, is it an adult, is it a student, how many students or how many adults were in close proximity to them … and how that might potentially affect the school district.”

The board accepted an administrative recommendation to suspend middle school fall sports until further notice to reduce the risk of contact outside of school.

“We want our kids in school in person, learning, as long as possible,” said Jon Dunks, Washington Middle School instructional coach.

The recommendation follows the lead of the Shawano Area School District, which is looking at running their fall sports in the spring, Dunks said.

The board also got a briefing from Jerry Moynihan, high school athletic director, who said girls volleyball, cross-country and the dance team successfully held their first practices Monday.

“The kids were very happy,” Moynihan said. “For some it was their first time back in the building since March.”

As of Monday, all of the schools in the North Eastern Conference were still planning to participate in fall sports under the revised Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association guidelines, although some larger schools in the state are taking advantage of a WIAA option to move fall sports to spring, Moynihan said.

The board plans to revisit the situation at their Sept. 14 meeting, when the district will have two weeks of the new academic year under its belt.

wbluhm@newmedia-wi.com