OSHKOSH (NBC 26) — After 17 community feedback sessions since the end of September, the Oshkosh Area School District Board starts deliberations on a referendum question for the spring ballot.
- OASD is recommending the school board add a $195 million referendum to the spring ballot to fund Phase 2 of their facilities plan.
- Phase 2 is part of a long-term plan, started in 2017, to update and consolidate district buildings.
- Phase 2 would consolidate three west-side middle schools into two, with extensive improvements made to South Park Middle School.
South Park Middle School is a century-old building causing several issues for teachers and staff, according to principal Joe Pitsch.
"When you think of 1904 rooms, it wasn't meant to fit 27 kids or more in there," he says.
According to the school district's Phase 2 presentation, most classes on the west side are 180 square feet smaller than the recommended number of students.
Phase 2 would include a renovation or a rebuild of South Park Middle School, nearly doubling its current enrollment.
Carl Trager Middle School would also be expanded to hold twice as many students, while Tipler Middle School would be repurposed.
The five west side elementary schools would consolidate into three, with a Pre-K center at the site of Shapiro STEM Academy.
Superintendent Bryan Davis says the district would try to sell Roosevelt Elementary to a developer for housing.
"Increase housing, which we know is another issue from a community standpoint," he says.
Davis says students would not be displaced during the renovations, and he does not expect any layoffs. He also says larger schools do not mean more students in each class.
Phase 2 would look to consolidate 20 district buildings into 15, accommodating a decrease in student enrollment, according to Davis.
"Having what we would consider too many buildings for the number of kids that we're serving, just the operation inefficiencies that we would have, I think would start to eat into some of our programming," he says.
Phase 2 would require voters to approve a $195 million referendum this spring. Davis says the referendum would not increase property taxes because the district has been able to prematurely pay off existing debt.
If the referendum does not pass, there would be an opportunity for taxes to decrease.
"What we want to avoid is this roller coaster of taxes going down and then we have a building need and they go up and having that be unpredictable for taxpayers," he says. "What we're trying to do is really create that predictable, stable budget for people."
