Wausau School Board Votes to Instruct Administration to Begin Drafting Plans to Consolidate the District's 13 Elementary Schools

Tuesday, November 15th, 2022 -- 9:00 AM

(Mike Leischner, WSAU) The Wausau School Board has voted to instruct Administration to begin drafting plans to consolidate the district's 13 elementary schools and restructure secondary levels.

According to Mike Leischner of WSAU, Board President Jim Bouche says if their goal is to provide as many opportunities to students as possible, this is a discussion worth having.

"My focus has always been on the students. Taking a look at the triple a student, the academics, arts, athletics. I've been at the secondary level all of my professional career. The bottom line is we want to give them as many opportunities as possible."

Board Member Karen VandenBerg, who spent time this summer with the work groups that studied the issue, says right now students are missing out on opportunities to partner with local businesses because of the current two senior high school setup.

"And to hear that from employers to say, 'this is why we haven't been able to move forward with some really exciting that Wausau should be able to certainly provide.' That, to me, that benefits everyone."

Board Member John Cresher says this is a discussion that's been looming because of declining enrollment, so the time to have it is now. "It's a function of people not having as many kids as they use to and people not flocking to Wausau for various reasons. So, that's a hard trend that's going to be seen for the foreseeable future."

Board member John Cresher says he doesn't see this discussion as a negative for the community, especially if it opens more doors for students and helps improve workplace morale among the education staff by streamlining their jobs.

"It will bring class sizes to a more equitable size across the district. There's a lot of great things that can happen here through this restructuring and consolidation that we're talking about."

Board member Pat McKee says Monday's vote was the easy part, now comes creating a plan that they can sell to the community including specifics on things like financial impacts, class sizes, and other benefits the district could offer.

"So bringing that level of specifity to all of those benefits, whatever they're going to be, and to make sure that we, collectively, are signning off on that and that's what we're going to execute against, that's going to be the hard stuff. I think that will determine, ultimately, whether or not this thing is going to fly."

Monday's vote only authorizes Administration to begin drawing up plans for consolidation and restructuring. District leaders will hold a public input session on the issue this Wednesday evening at Wausau West, another will be held at East in early December.

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.