Greenwood, Loyal boards receive details on consolidation process

By Valorie Brecht In an effort to get some of their questions answered regarding time frames and how a joint board would operate as the school districts move closer to their goal consolidation date of July 1, 2028, the Greenwood and Loyal school boards met with professional analysts on Monday. Elise Murn of financial services company Baird and Bob Butler of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards presented the boards with some pertinent information related to the legalities and finances of the school consolidation process.

Timeline Butler referenced the timeline the school districts would need to follow. Statutorily, the districts can follow a 12-month, 14-month, or 18-month timeline. The default timeline is 12 months and that is the one Butler referenced, meaning that from the time both districts passed a consolidation order to when they began operating as a consolidated district, it would be 12 months.

There are actually two separate resolutions that each board would need to pass on the road to consolidation. One is a resolution to consider consolidation, and the other is a resolution ordering consolidation. The resolution ordering consolidation has to be passed in the July following the resolution considering consolidation. Following the typical timeline Butler presented, if the resolution considering consolidation were passed on Jan. 1, 2027 (for example purposes), then the resolution ordering consolidation would need to be passed sometime in July 2027.

After a resolution ordering consolidation is passed by both districts, one of the boards or 10% of the electorate of one of the districts can petition for a referendum vote. The petition requesting a referendum vote must be filed by the second Tuesday in September. If a referendum vote were to be required, it would be held in November 2027. The referendum requires the approval of both communities separately to proceed. The vote totals are not added together. So even if Loyal were to say yes and Greenwood were to say no, or vice versa, it would still be a no.

If the referendum passed, or if it was not required in the first place, the districts would go on to consolidate on July 1, 2028.

Consolidation order One key component that Butler brought out was that each district would have to compose and pass an order for consolidation, which would include specific pieces of information, including the name of the new school district, election plan for new school board members, number of school board members, time and date of the first annual meeting, and consolidation effective date.

The order would also include the terms of the

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consolidation. For example, if the districts wanted to keep a certain building open, they could specify that in the order and for how long. Or, if constituents from one of the districts wanted to ensure that a certain program continued under the consolidated district, that could be specified in the order. State statute allows for provisions like that “not to exceed five years.”

Both districts would have to agree on the terms they wanted in their order, but each school board must pass the order separately.

“The orders that you tend to see are relatively short. It’s typically whatever is important to that district,” said Butler. “And it’s up to five years; it doesn’t have to be the full five years.”

Joint interim board vs. consolidated board After the Loyal and Greenwood school boards passed an order for consolidation, they would begin operating as a joint interim school board, which would just be the combining of the existing board members from each district. The joint interim board would act as a unified body, in the sense that they would vote as a collective unit. The same meeting rules would apply; i.e. a quorum would be needed to vote on matters. In this case, a quorum would be seven because there would be a total of 12 (five from Greenwood and seven from Loyal).

As far as a new school board for the consolidated district, it would be up to the joint interim board to decide what that would look like. Typically, school boards have five, seven, or nine members, although seven is the most common. If they went with seven members, they would have to decide if they wanted to have them be all at large; have three from Greenwood, three from Loyal, and one at large; two from Greenwood, two from Loyal, and three at large or some other combination. Regardless of how they split it up, all residents of both districts would be able to vote on all candidates. The location designations would only specify where the candidates had to be from.

If the interim board decided to make it seven at large members, for example, and all 12 people on the interim board decided to run for re-election, their names would all appear on the ballot and voters would be advised to choose no more than seven. The top seven vote getters would get elected. Typically school boards do staggered three-year terms, with two or three board members up for election every year. In this scenario, the top three vote getters would have three years until they were up for election again, the next three voter getters would have two years until up for election, and the vote getters with the sixth- and seventh-most votes would be up for election the quickest, after just one year.

The election for new combined school board would need to take place in April 2028, because statutorily it can be no more than four months before the consolidation effective date (July 1, 2028, in this scenario).

Upon July 1, 2028, the Loyal School District and the Greenwood School District would each cease to exist. It would be a “clean slate,” so to speak, said Butler. Thus, even if school board members on the Loyal or Greenwood boards had one or two years remaining in their term, it wouldn’t matter because the two individual boards would cease to exist at that time.

Because the new board for the consolidated district would not be elected until April 2028, the body that would really be responsible for making a lot of the decisions associated with consolidation would be the joint interim board.

“The joint interim board is making a lot of the decisions, right?” asked Loyal board member Crystal Rueth.

“Yes. The new board is inheriting decisions; they’re not the ones making decisions,” said Butler.

Finances and facilities Loyal School Board member Matt Kubista brought up the issue of running a deficit. If the districts were to consolidate and not pass an operational referendum, after five years they would be running a deficit of over $10 million dollars. However, if they were on their own, the combined deficit without an operational referendum would be around $17.5 million after five years, so it would be around $5 million to $7 million in savings by consolidating, said Greenwood District Administrator Joe Green.

But, Kubista said, the districts ought to take action sooner than later to prevent them from running a deficit and it would be wise to have a plan to reduce the number of buildings or reduce staffing.

“My concern is, if we don’t get rid of a building, if we don’t possibly look at our staffing, what happens right after we make a resolution and then we could lose the referendum. We would end up being $11 million short according to that fiscal study. If we don’t have a plan in place of how many schools and what it’s going to look like — I mentioned in one of our meetings that we have half the students we had in 1996 and the same, if not more staff members today. So how can plan beforehand? And that’s why I’m interested in the finances of a building study,” he said.

“Sure. And when we had that five-year forecast, you kind of look at that fifth year, right? A lot of districts that are going to referendum, they always look at that fifth year. That’s just natural for the human eye and thinking, ‘We’re going to be in the hole 10 million dollars? How could this possibly work?’ But the truth is, prior to that fifth year, you would likely need to address some of those. You would address it on the expense side; .you would address it on the revenue side likely with an operating referendum, to kind of make sure that 10 million, 11 million-dollar figure doesn’t materialize,” said Murn.

“So it’s a question of the chicken and the egg, right? In a way,” Murn continued. “If we go to two buildings, does it save enough to prevent us from going to referendum? Then we need to have those hard conversations now. Or, do we — because 2028-29 is two biennial budgets away from now, not suggesting that that will solve anything but that figure, you know, still changes… But, by the time we consolidate, we exist as a consolidated entity, are there savings we realize after being married? Or, you know, after kind of living in this situation saying, OK, now that we’ve lived it for a year, this is untenable. Structurally, it doesn’t make sense. Bussing, it doesn’t make sense. Programmatically it doesn’t. Or what have you.

“I do understand what you’re saying though. What way is the best way? Facilities study first, which kind of dictates the additional savings, or live together first, and help that inform what that next move looks like?”

Rueth asked Butler, in his professional opinion, when he would recommend having a facilities study done. Butler said he couldn’t really say because he didn’t know the communities like the boards did. He said he had seen examples where it made sense to close down one building because there was such a low enrollment in that particular building. But, he said, in general, the driving factors for consolidation in the school districts he had seen combine were cost savings through shared staff and offering more opportunities to students. He said ultimately Greenwood and Loyal had to decide what was best for them.

“It depends; you know how tied your population is to your buildings. You’re going to know better the age and status of your buildings. You guys are the ones being married, so I can’t come in and tell you how exactly what it should look like,” said Butler.

“Yeah, but sometimes you need a marriage counselor,” said Greenwood School Board member Luke Smith, eliciting a laugh from those in attendance. The boards did not set a date for their next joint meeting, but one potential action step was the district administrators of both districts looking at orders for consolidation from other consolidated districts to see whattheyhaddone.Potential districts to reach out to include the Hartford Union High School District or Herman Neosho Rubicon School District, which each consolidated in the last nine years; or the Chetek WeyerhaeuserSchoolDistrict, which consolidated in the last 15 years.