The Manitowoc Public School District will move forward with a plan that includes the consolidation of some elementary schools.
The school board voted to approve the recommendations put together by a Facility Advisory Committee (FAC) that consisted of a group of staff and another of community members last night (October 22nd) during a special meeting.
District Owners Representative Mike Hacker told the board that over nine months of work had been done, which challenged members of the FAC about what the district should look like.
Hacker said they looked at three trends, including enrollment, physical campuses, and the learning environment.
“Our process was really frontloaded with some capacity building,” he noted. “So, our first couple of meetings really aimed to lay the groundwork for what…everybody (should) enter this knowing…Everyone comes in with a different background a different amount of knowledge of the district. This was meant to create a level starting point.”
The Facility Advisory Committee learned that enrollment is declining across the district, and it’s estimated that the number of students in the distict could fall by another 900 students in the next ten years.
Committee members then showed how they were connected to MPSD schools before participating in an exercise to build their own school district.
That included deciding what grades go where and what to do with the buildings, since the number of students is continuously declining.
Hacker said there was some tension in the exercise.
“I designed this such that the first move, meaning, when the groups sat down, they to move blocks away from a building,” he described. “I think by design, it was meant to elevate the severity, the significance of the conversation we’re having, and I think we felt that. There was a lot of healthy conversation about what that means, what it means for neighborhoods.”
In the end, after a lot of moving, the committee produced fifty-four unique options, including fourteen district structures and ten grade configurations.
The FAC recommended the district’s grade structure to have elementary grades K-4 and then have fifth and sixth grade at one school, seventh and eighth at another, and then Lincoln High School would stay the same.
Hacker then explained other details from the committee, which include the closure, repurposing, or selling of two elementary schools, and then turning one middle school into the 5-6 grade and the other 7-8.
“Every one of these options had a significant amount of dialogue to develop it as something worth talking about,” he expressed. “(It) really does, I think, reflect a commitment that the board has made to allowing the community to really be a robust part of this process. But props to the community on really exhausting all the different strategies and approaches to tackle this challenge.”
Superintendent Lee Thennes said that he is extremely impressed with the hard work the committee did to try to make the facilities in the district the best they can be.
The superintendent said, “In order for us to maintain the high level of opportunities and programs that we offer kids at every one of our levels in this very comprehensive district, we have to look ahead. And in order to do that, we have to right-size ourselves so we can maintain those programs for our kids, and high-quality staff.”
Board Members Keith Shaw and Chris Able also thanked members of the committee who showed up for the meeting.
The school board will have its full board meeting on November 11th, along with a special meeting on November 25th, to hopefully have a more in-depth plan to vote on.
So far, the district has not announced any schools that will close.
The full presentation can be found on the Manitowoc Public School District’s YouTube page.
