The Shawano School District held a listening session July 18 to get feedback on the revisions to its capital projects, which total $52.9 million, about $1.6 million less than what the district pushed for in the April referendum.
One participant said it wasn’t clear which projects were “needs” versus “wants,” something that some people indicated was a reason they voted no in April. The person acknowledged that maintenance fixes were clear needs, but new fields for football and track at Shawano Community High School seemed more to be wants.
Superintendent Kurt Krizan noted that both the football and track field plans were needs, because the area at Shawano Community Middle School used for track is past its useful life, and the football field is estimated to need work within the next few years.
One participant asked when projects would start being done if voters were to pass the referendum in November, noting that his son would be going to the high school as a freshman in the fall. His particular interest was in the athletic fields being proposed, including the new turf field.
Krizan said the design and planning phase would take place shortly after the November election. It’s likely that the field work would start in the spring after the conclusion of the soccer season. With the turf field, the school would be able to use it almost right away, while replacing grass on the field would make it unusable for two seasons, a statistic that session participants questioned.
Another participant suggested that, if the middle school is getting too old to maintain, then the district should move the middle school to where the high school is and build a new high school instead, and then voters might get on board with a new school.
Krizan said that the current high school building is too large for a middle school, and in the present state of declining enrollment, the district would likely have to move the third through fifth grade from Olga Brener Intermediate School as well and shut down that building.
“We had parents who were concerned about us building a (grades) 3-8 building,” Krizan said, adding that the existing high school “would also have an auditorium, pool and shops” that wouldn’t be used.
When the participant suggesting the change asked about demolishing both Olga Brener and the middle school and building a new high school there, it was pointed out that the current SCHS sits on 70 acres, while the acreage for the two schools combined was only 44.
Another participant suggested that the district should put more priority on the classes that teach skills and making sure there are adequate facilities there, noting that finding available home builders is difficult.
One suggestion was to cut the costs back to a bare minimum, strictly to address the maintenance needs for the next 10 years, which are estimated to total $59 million.
Jody Anders, a consultant with Hoffman Planning and Design, which is working with Shawano School District on the referendum, noted that the reason additional projects beyond simple maintenance are there harkens back to when SCHS was first built in 1997.
“I wasn’t there, so I don’t know for sure, but I’ve heard that when the high school was done, there were cuts, and there were things that they had to sacrifice there,” Anders said. “That’s a tough thing to have to deal with many, many years later — people talking about ‘It was supposed to be this’ or ‘It was supposed to have that.’ We don’t want to sell ourselves short here.”
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
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