Proposed referendum would keep tax rate flat

The Clintonville School District will ask voters in November to approve a $37 million referendum to upgrade its schools, shuffle them around and potentially save some money in the future.

The district is seeking to build a wing onto Clintonville High School that would house middle school students. The current Clintonville Middle School would become the elementary school and would need extensive renovations to make the classrooms suitable for younger children. That move would allow the district to sell the existing Rexford-Longfellow Elementary School, which is more than a century old and on the National Register of Historic Places.

“We’re setting up the district for our future success,” said David Dyb, district superintendent. “We wanted to say, ‘Let’s look at a northside campus and move away from the elementary school. What would it look like?’ Everyone said, ‘We need to move away from Rexford-Longfellow.’”

Improvements for the middle school building include adding safety features, setting up climate-controlled rooms, turning the current parking lot into some green space and creating new parking and play areas, according to Dyb.

At the high school building, in addition to creating the middle school wing, the district will be able to build a modernized agriculture science space with the amenities in one location. Currently, there is a tiny greenhouse in one corner of the school, ag classrooms in another area and then a science lab elsewhere is used for ag education.

“We want to have an aquaponics area. We want to have a greenhouse. We want to have a hen house,” Dyb said. “We want the whole nine yards.”

The referendum will also provide larger art classrooms at the high school, along with a small addition to the school’s fitness center. The referendum also includes plans to create a secondary egress for the high school north of the building near the football fields to County Road D.

The district’s last attempt to pass a referendum took place in 2017, when the school board sought $25 million for an elementary school, and voters turned it down. However, this referendum comes with a promise not to raise taxes. Clintonville’s school tax rate is $10.74 per $1,000 of equalized valuation, which means the owner of a $100,000 home is paying $1,074 per year to help fund the schools.

Dyb noted that the last of its debt from a referendum that built the existing high school that opened in 2003 will be paid off in 2021, so the future debt payments would be filling the hole left once the high school is paid off, which is a little over $2 of the $10.74 rate.

When the 2017 referendum failed, the board opted to let the dust settle for a bit and then go back to the drawing board to see what community members would approve of that would also improve education, according to Dyb. In December 2018, the district began a series of community meetings, and for the next 18 months, the current referendum began to form, he said.

“What we determined was that we needed to focus on needs versus wants,” Dyb said. “We wanted to be responsible with the community’s money, and we heard very loudly and clearly: No increased taxes.”

Initially, folks at the community meetings latched onto the old idea of building a new elementary school, but when the experts pointed out there was no way to do that without ignoring the people demanding no hike in the taxes, it was decided to utilize the current middle school as an elementary school.

“Everyone would love a new elementary school, but the cost to do that and to keep within the taxing request of the community, we wouldn’t have been able to do the things we needed to do with this building (the middle school) and the high school to keep them on pace for the next 20 years,” Dyb said.

The middle school building was originally built in 1957, so it is in need of modernization, according to Dyb. Even the high school, which is about as old as some of its current students, will need some system improvements to bring it in line with the other renovations, he said.

Currently, middle school students are having to cross over to the high school to learn about specialty trades because the middle school does not have the facilities, which is a safety issue. Also, there is currently unused space at the high school that could accommodate middle school students for core classes like English and math, according to Dyb.

As for Rexford-Longfellow, Dyb said Clintonville is hoping to take a page from the Shawano School District, which sold its Lincoln School property to be turned into apartments. He noted that the apartments kept the historical integrity of the building.

“If we grow, we have room to grow here (in the north part of Clintonville) rather than downtown,” Dyb said.

Dyb said that, since he came aboard as superintendent, he has kept the tax rate on an even keel for four years by making more payments on the existing debt that has saved taxpayers $50,000 to $60,000. He is confident the rate would stay at $10.74 for at least the next two years and within a few cents of the current rate in the years after.

“This is a once-in-a-generation financial opportunity for this school district,” Dyb said.

If the referendum passes, the middle school and high school renovations would be completed by August 2022, according to Dyb. Work on the current middle school to make it an elementary school would be finished by August 2023.

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com