Many school districts in northern Wisconsin are dealing with steadily declining enrollments, but Wittenberg-Birnamwood School District is dealing with the opposite dilemma as its student population is continuing to trend positively.
There’s some breathing room at two of the district’s three schools, but Wittenberg Elementary-Middle School is looking at having every available classroom space filled to almost overflowing, which is leading the district to look at converting the school’s small gym into three classrooms on the first floor and multiuse space on the second floor. At the June 24 Wittenberg-Birnamwood School Board meeting, the discussion was broached, but a proposal from Hoffman Planning and Design to head up the project was tabled.
Regardless of who takes charge of designing the classrooms and getting them built, the additional classrooms are needed, according to Nick Firari, the school’s principal, and Garrett Rogowski, the district’s superintendent. According to Firari, the school is going to need three classrooms each for kindergarten, first grade and third grade when, in previous years, two classrooms were sufficient.
Student count for elementary classrooms is preferred to be around 15-17, according to Rogowski. However, some classes this past year had 25 students in them, prompting the need to hire additional teachers, but to hire the teachers in the future, sufficient space will need to be available for classrooms.
“Our average classroom size over the last three or four years has begun to rise from anywhere from 17-20 here at Wittenberg Elementary-Middle School to one or two or three grades being 25 or 26 (students),” Rogowski said, with Firari noting that the second grade started the 2023-24 school year with 27 students in one class and 26 in the other.
Rogowski predicted that in the next three to four years, there will likely be five classrooms for every grade from 4-year-old kindergarten to fifth grade between the Wittenberg and Birnamwood elementary-middle schools. Rogowski noted that population growth on the south end of the school district is one cause for the increase in students. However, the district is also seeing more students coming into the district through the state’s open enrollment system, which allows families to enroll their children at certain times of the year in other school districts if they don’t like the one they’re in.
“Those together have created increased class sizes, moreso down on the south end of the district,” Rogowski said. “There is just not much space districtwide for additional classroom expansion. When we look at Wittenberg Elementary-Middle School, Nick has pretty much got every classroom this coming year being used in some capacity.”
Firari added that, if suddenly the second grade got 10 more students for the next school year, he’d be hard-pressed to find some place to put them.
Rogowski said converting the small gym into classroom and multiuse space would be much cheaper than trying to add on additional exterior classrooms at Wittenberg.
“The small gym has benefited us with auxiliary space,” Rogowski said. “We use it for extracurriculars in the evening. Taking that up with classrooms is going to create a domino effect for a little bit, but still, we can get creative. If we can get three classrooms on the bottom story and keep the second level auxiliary or something of that nature. They’ll have the same square footage they’ve always had only a lower ceiling.”
Firari noted the small gym has been utilized for indoor recess on rainy, snowy, or subzero days. It’s also used as a sensory room, he said, for students who need to get out of the class and return to a normal state of mind.
Birnamwood is also seeing growth, according to Rogowski, but with that school having fewer students than Wittenberg, the space is there to accept more students without adding classrooms. Residents north of state Highway 29 go to Birnamwood, while residents south of the highway go to Wittenberg.
More growth could be seen with the village of Wittenberg moving forward on additional apartments, which would bring in more families and have potential additional homes for teachers wanting to relocate to the district.
Firari said there are a lot of good things happening in the district, and the word is getting out.
“Our (employee) applicant pools are saying they’re hearing about some of the things we’re doing districtwide and about the support we’re receiving from the community from the board, the new administration,” Firari said. “We’ve gotten a lot of interest from people wanting to come here and apply for jobs and also families reaching out. In the two years I’ve been here, I’ve given six or seven tours for people just looking and saying, ‘We’re on the outskirts, but we’re thinking about enrolling.’ Some of them have worked out; some of them haven’t.”
Rogowski added that the district is seeing more of its graduates coming back home after college or other adventures to call the Wittenberg area home.
“Those things are happening a little bit more than what we’ve seen in the past,” Rogowski said.
Once the additional classrooms get final approval, the district expects that work will begin on the small gym area next spring, with the classrooms opening in fall 2025.
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
Wittenberg elementary school seeing continuous growth
