This week the Herald-Independent covers last Wednesday's school board meeting and features our discussion on Maywood. Craig has asked that the board resolve the issue of the Maywood/Winnequah consolidation before we get too far into next year's budget process. This will allow the budget process to proceed on a better informed basis and allow the issue to be considered without conflation with our budget woes.
The plan calls for more information at our November meeting, a public listening session and a decision in December.
Consolidating Maywood and Winnequah would save approximately $140,000 the first year and $250,000 in subsequent years. Students currently in Maywood would move into Winnequah, where up to $80-90K could be spent on preparing facilities for the younger students. Winnequah would then be populated with about 400 students vs. a capacity of 575.
There are no plans to dispose of the Maywood. If we were to consolidate these students in Winnequah this board member believes that the property should be retained indefinitely by the district for potential future use, either as a school if elementary enrollment significantly increases, or for other district uses, such as housing the administration and alternative programs if Nichols is sold for redevelopment.
P.S. Congratulations to the MG Silver Eagles Football team on another undefeated season!
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27 comments:
agree
ditto.
It is a sad thing, but not nearly so sad as what we will face in the next couple of years unless we are willing to vote ourselves a property tax increase.
I sincerely hope the list of options the board considers shows alternatives to closing Maywood that save money. The board should also see the results of the census to get an accurate picture of projections, so timing be damned if you don't have census information to review that is current. The board should support the sale of Nichols and put Maywood off the table for good.
"The board should support the sale of Nichols and put Maywood off the table for good."
Why? Why should the board support keeping open a school for fewer than 10 percent of the district's students, when:
1) There is a sound alternative next door at Winnequah?
2) Keeping Maywood open costs money that could be spent on keeping teachers and programs around for all students?
3)No student's education will be harmed by moving them to Winnequah?
I think the school district would sell Nichols in a minute of there was a buyer at an acceptable price. Read the district report on Nichols -- selling that building won't be easy, especially now that banks aren't throwing around money to developers anymore.
Here's hoping the board does right by ALL students in the district and consolidates Maywood with Winnequah.
There is limited room for community growth at Winnequah (read: crowded school from day one), and the district offices can fill the empty space. Would you move your family to a community with one crowded school and two closed, very visible buildings?
Look at CG...their enrollment is dropping as their schools are peaked. Next it will be 5th graders shipped off to GD, because Winnequah is too crowded, to fill the gap there before they would consider reopening Maywood. Oh well, that's a future board, we are not responsible for their actions and we can't make promises for the future that we won't send more grades out of Monona. We've heard this before...
Um, no. Winnequah will not be crowded; it has a capacity of well over 500 students, and its current 3-5 grade population plus Maywood students will easily fit into that building (@ 400 students). There is PLENTY of room for those students in one school building.
This notion that people won't move into Monona because of school shuffling is simply not supported by facts. Elementary-age school population in Monona went up in the face of the middle school moving to Cottage Grove.
1st grade is quite large, but that group likely was either born and lived in Monona before the referendum for the most part or had moved into the community before the referendum. After the GD referendum, K and 4K enrollments have dropped quite a bit, kids born during or after the referendum. Hmmm. Chew on that for a moment.
Why don't you spend some time at the high school (that would be the Monona Grove HS located in MONONA), and its classes of 30+ students, and see the impact of keeping open a school whose children would easily and successfully be educated at Winnequah.
Oh, that's right, Maywood IS the MG school district, from your point of view...
How come I never see anything about athletics on the chopping block? I LOVE sports but they should be giving also.
Peter, why do we count the savings from Maywood every year but not the other cuts? Using they Maywood logic, once we reach $1 million in cuts one year we would be done because we could count that million this year, next year, the year after, etc.
Regardless of whether or not Maywood should close, it doesn't seem right to distort the savings by suggesting that future years would only see cuts of $750K if Maywood closes. That isn't how I understand the situation, and it appears to be an effort to convince people that Maywood is the crux of the entire budget problem.
Once Maywood is gone, that money is off the budget and can't be cut again. Saying it saves $250K a year for the next five years is a bit misleading. Cutting 4th grade strings then would save $22K every year, but no one says that. They only make the "every year" argument for Maywood.
Close the school if you must, but please be honest about the savings it truly represents. Please don't twist the numbers to make it appear as though closing Maywood is the cornerstone of Monona Grove's fiscal recovery. The community will be much more likely to accept the outcome if it isn't reached via propaganda and funny math. Your arguments about other cuts are not presented in the same way, and it really rubs salt in these wounds. Close Maywood, but don't inflate the savings to bolster your position. $250 or $140 or whatever the number is is still a big number, and the arguments are there to move the kids to Winnequah. Rest on those, please, and stop trying to divide the community over the Maywood issue.
1) Since the 2006 referendum the enrollment decline in Monona has stopped and we are now seem to be on an increasing trend.
2) Winnequah will not be crowded - it has a capacity of 575 but only about 400 K-5 students.
3)I don't see evidence that CG enrollment has "peaked", I expect also anticipate more growth in CG as the economy improves.
4) The activities budget, which includes athletics, was cut last year (5% I think). The activities budget in total is about $500K, so there aren't a lot of savings to be had without drastic reduction of these services that serve a lot of kids.
5) Consolidating Winnequah and Maywood saves $140,000 in the first year and $250,000 each year thereafter, for a total of $890K over 5 years. There is no other honest way of looking at this. All reductions of staff and programming have similar results: cutting strings (or whatever) reduces the budget the first year and every year the cut remains in place.
re: fuzzy math
Remember that the district is really dealing with a $15 million deficit over the next 5 years. They could have cut $3 million last year, and not have to cut any more. They could cut nothing for 4years and then cut $15 million in year 5. They've chosen to cut $1 million each year for 5 years. The cuts each year are cumulative.
Other items do add up in the same way. A $22 thousand cut to strings in year 2 is $88 thousand toward that $15 million total. But nothing on the list adds up to as much of savings as Maywood does. Most of the items are $15K-$40K which even after 4 years add up to about one year of Maywood. And many of these cuts have a more significant effect on the educational experience (strings, art, music, bigger classes, no librarians).
Plus Maywood is the only thing on the list that saves more money from the second year onward. The board has to find other things to cover the $110 thousand that first year, and it's going to be those $15K-$40K educationally significant items that they have to use. They are trying to show that if Maywood needs to get cut at some time in that 5 year window, it makes the most sense to cut it early, because the full savings come after the remodeling expenses are paid.
Is the Winnequah capacity based on a reasonable class size or the sardine can version? Does that mean all possible space is converted to classroom and the other non-classroom functions get crammed or squeezed out? Just because a building is "rated" to hold 575 people doesn't mean it's good or the right thing to do. Show us the facts on this. Where do 575 students, staff and facutly fit? How long is the lunch period? Will some children have to eat lunch at 10:30 and others at 1:30 when it's at 575?
To hop on the last comment, there was a map of Winnequah that showed basically all classrooms used for grades 4K-5. If the number goes from 400 students to 575 as more families come to Monona and more children are born here, where exactly will you put the 7-8 extra classrooms to keep class size within distsrict target guidelines? I don't get it. There does not appear to be room for 7-8 more classrooms when you look at the Winnequah floor plan. Peter, you just said enrollment appears to be increasing in Monona. Where will the additional classrooms go if that is the case?
575 does not seem to be the correct number for the capacity if 400 students use nearly all the classroom space. I don't think you or the district have researched this. Don't acccept a number without looking at how they actually fit.
3 years ago, Winnequah had a 750 student capacity, and some of the rooms were not used by all students (foreign language, FACE).
I would guess that the 575 number is the "sardine can" estimate, but the elementary sardine can is much smaller then the middle school. The students per classroom would be the same in either Maywood or Winnequah.
Has anyone commenting here concerned about students fitting into Winnequah actually been in that school?
-- The entire bottom floor (old 6th grade wing) is vacant;
-- Large rooms used for middle school programming (FACE, Tech Ed, Orchestra) won't be needed in a 4K-5 building;
-- Numerous rooms on the 3rd, 4th and 5th grade wings are used for book storage, equipment storage, and teacher lounges.
It is, bluntly, an incredibly wasteful use of school space. Maybe some folks cocooned in Monona ought to head out to Cottage Grove School to really see what jamming a bunch of students into an elementary school looks like.
"It is, bluntly, an incredibly wasteful use of school space. Maybe some folks cocooned in Monona ought to head out to Cottage Grove School to really see what jamming a bunch of students into an elementary school looks like."
I agree
Monona no voter
Cottage Grove's student enrollment is on the decline according to the superintendent and Monona's is on the rise according to Peter. In a few years there will be empty space in CG and crowding in Monona. I agree with the earlier post about showing how growth can be handled at Winnequah- that the board should have a someone who knows codes and classrooms do a real study of Winnequah.
Where is the long range plan? What referendum do you favor, Mr. Sobol and when- after your crusade is over on Maywood? The singular myopic focus on closing Maywood misses the larger picture and trends, and completely ignores the community development objectives of your home town. They are interlinked with school issues, you can't ignore them.
It is utterly ludicrous that anyone would assert Monona's 4K-5 population will fill Winnequah to overflowing capacity in the foreseeable future. Anyone who thinks this must be so young as to never had a middle school child in that building.
Besides, nobody is talking about selling Maywood. If we start putting fertility drugs in the Monona water supply, we can always reopen it.
As far as community development in Monona, what will tank this district is letting our academic program decay. Somebody who is considering Monona is not going to say "Hmm. They have all their elementary kids in one school. I think I won't move there." But they might say, "Hmm. Their class sizes are big, their ACT scores are ho hum, there is no elementary strings program and they offer no AP Science classes."
Could we possibly keep our eye on the ball?
The 4-k8 study committee summarized building space/capacity:
Maywood
Capacity: 250 Sq.Ft: 39000
sq.Ft/Student= 156
Winnequah
Capacity: 576 Sq.Ft: 94000
sq.Ft/Student= 163
At CAPACITY, Winnequah would still have 5% more space per student than Maywood does today.
http://www.mononagrove.org/cms_files/resources/Monona%20Grove%20School%20District%20Facilities%20Capacity.pdf
Go Silver Eagles!
"The singular myopic focus on closing Maywood misses the larger picture and trends, and completely ignores the community development objectives of your home town."
The upward trend in Monona is great, it's in the right direction and it gradual. People in general don't have as many kids as the baby boom generation, and Monona is no exception.
I thought the UW population estimates last year reported that Monona's 4K-5th grade enrollment would peak around 440 kids (I couldn't find it on the MGSD website, so if someone knows where it is, please post a link). Yes, they're just estimates, but they'd have to be off by a factor of 4 for the school to be crowded, and the past estimates have been pretty close. Even if that happens (which would be great), the district would have Maywood and extra state money for the increased enrollment.
I think the main community development objective is to have good schools, not two schools. It's dumb that the state's mistakes are harming our district's budget, but if the board has that limit, they should use the money to maintain staff and programs (which will attract families) not a building.
1) My singular myopic focus is on student achievement. Period.
2) MY long range facilities plan is this: Provide facilities that support desired programming in the most efficient manner possible. Buildings follow the needs of students.
Specifics: I think the best way to manage our resources is this: 1) Scrupulously continue essential maintenance and capital improvements to avoid digging ourselves a deferred maintenance hole. 2) Consolidate Maywood/Winnequah. 3) Sell Nichols - move the admin and alternative programs into Maywood. Retain Maywood in the event of future Monona enrollment growth. 4) Plan for an additional elementary school or expansion in Cottage Grove to meet elementary growth there in 8-10 years if/as necessary.
Thanks for specifics, Peter. Can you get me the cost of remodeling Maywood for DO/Alt. versus remodeling Winnequah for the same? I am in favor of consolidating schools, but I heard a 1 million dollar remodel price for Maywood as DO and that might change my vote.
If you're going to have year-round professional offices in Maywood, you probably (almost certainly) have to air condition those offices. AC is a huge expense -- most schools built before, say, 1990, go without because they only are open late August-early June. The HS and Glacial Drumlin have it, as new buildings (and the HS is used alot in the summer).
That's not to say moving everything into Maywood isn't a bad idea; maybe it's a good one. But the AC costs, and renovating classrooms into offices, is a big up-front expense -- $500,000 at a minimum?
I don't have hard numbers for a remodel of Maywood for DO offices - but it is likely to be several hundred thousand. As noted above the biggest expense will probably be the installation of air conditioning for year round use. However I think this is offset in the long run by eliminating the ongoing costs of operating the larger Nichols building.
My inclination would be not to move the DO until we sell Nichols which would provide some cash to cover the costs of upgrading Maywood. Then when we need Maywood again for a school it will have air conditioning.
Whatever happens, I won't support it unless I'm convinced is the most cost effective course in the long term.
as for the "remodel" of maywood, i have also heard the price tag is around $1 million. as for ac installed, if our district is in a true economic "pickle" wouldn't it make sense to not spend the money on air conditioning? i mean, our kids/staff currently do not have ac at maywood, and is not a priority now. it seems though it is now a priority when we move the kids out and administrators in. also, i see nothing wrong with the building that would warrant a million in upgrades/remodeling, just move the desks and equipment from nichols to maywood. the classrooms are large enough to fit 2-3 people in there with ample room for work spaces. i feel like if we remodel this school into an office building, in 5-10 years when we need classroom space, we will again have to remodel it, for an even larger price tag. but, again, this is MGSD, so, let's shoot ourselves in the foot like we always seem to do.....
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