Loyal,
from p. 1
can’t do this tomorrow. I know it’s been said as short as 12 months or up to 18 months. I think it needs to go five or six years. There’s no need to push this. We’re fine. This school district is just fine right now. Greenwood is shorter on kids than we are. We’re a little bit stronger. I think — and nothing against Greenwood, I got a lot of friends over there — we have the upper hand. Don’t bow down to anybody. I know you want to partner, but how bad do you want to partner? You’ve got to stay strong.
“If we lose this school, your town’s drying up. I’m thinking of possibly buying a business on Main Street; if it gets consolidated I’m probably not going to buy that business. I’m going to stay out. Because that’s what’s going to happen; you’re going to start losing businesses. It’s guaranteed.”
He also said he would like to know what the mill rate would be under a consolidated district. The Baird study did not cover that.
“The biggest thing is, this needs to go to referendum. And it needs to be a question of, if we consolidate, would you say yes or no if it was in Loyal? Yes or no if it was in Greenwood? It needs to be specific. The question you had this last spring was, would you support consolidation? Well, everyone’s going to say, ‘Yes, we want to consolidate,’ but where’s the school going to be? If you would have had in there that the school’s going to be in Greenwood or Loyal, you would have had a whole different outcome. So I just urge you to take your time. Don’t rush this. It doesn’t need to happen a year or two years from now. Slow down.”
School board member Matt Kubista agreed that consolidation should be placed on the ballot for taxpayers to weigh in.
“I’d rather have it be on the ballot. I’d rather have 600 people making the decision than seven of us,” he said.
He also felt the district needed to make sure the public was being kept in the loop on what was being discussed between the two boards, and having public meetings on the topic would be beneficial. He said the public needed to be aware that even under a consolidated district, an operational referendum would need to be passed to keep the district from running a deficit.
Timelines Wis. Stat. 117.08 dictates the timelines school districts have to follow when they decide to consolidate. The 12or 18-month timeframes Froeba referenced are allowable per state statute. There is also a 14-month timeframe. One of those timeframes would take effect once both boards authorized a resolution ordering consolidation. From the date of the resolution, the districts would have, at most, 18 months to consolidate.
If the districts plan to bring an advisory referendum before the voters, they have to consider when elections are held. In odd numbered years, there is no November election, so the question would have to run on the April ballot. Lindner said he and Green had talked about an 18month timeline with a start date of December 2025. In that case, the advisory referendum would appear on this coming April’s ballot, the boards would pass a resolution ordering consolidation in December 2025, the districts would consolidate on July 1, 2027, and the first year as a consolidated district would be the 2027-2028 school year.
Another scenario would be both boards passing a resolution ordering consolidation in December 2026, the districts would consolidate on July 1, 2028, and the first year as a consolidated district would be the 2028-2029 school year. Roehl said he didn’t want to go any later than that timeline, because the districts would run out of referendum money after 2028.
Lindner said he was still waiting on some clarification from DPI (the Department of Public Instruction) on exact timelines.
“If you have an advisory vote and it says, ‘Yes, move forward,’ does that count as our starting date? We asked DPI and they have not gotten back to us,” said Lindner. “The difference would be if it’s just an advisory or regular, full-fledged referendum vote to move forward on consolidation.”
He planned to notify the board once he received clarification.
Facilities and staffing Board member Derek Weyer brought the conversation back to the Baird study, which he felt was inadequate because it didn’t give a true picture of what the consolidated district would look like, taking into account all the variables.
“One of the questions I did get after — and we talked about this with Greenwood in the closed session — is the scenario that was run is leaving all three schools that are currently open open, and all current staff on. I think we all know that’s probably not realistic. So did we actually even run a scenario that we can show the public? You know what I’m saying?” said Weyer. “Because we know it is going to either be one school here, one school there, or just one school, and there is going to be staff reductions. What percent we don’t know yet. But until we actually know those numbers, the numbers we actually showed are skewed and they’re not realistic, because we would never do that, right?”
“Well, I don’t see us firing anyone. I think you keep your staff and you let attrition take its course. Every year you lose some,” Roehl said.
He said he envisioned not immediately hiring someone to replace the person who retired, but seeing if staff could be moved around to cover the gap, thus saving the district money.
“But to your point though, then when you model that scenario, it should show a 10-percent reduction in staff based on retirement. You don’t say everyone is still employed, because there is going to be retirements. Some people you won’t bring back,” said Weyer.
He said the study was good as far as it went, but more information was needed. He agreed with Froeba that the issue should go to a referendum vote, and that other scenarios should be run, such as with two school buildings and a 10% staff reduction, or one school building and a 20% staff reduction.
Clintsman agreed that running additional scenarios would be helpful.
“We need more information, because when you look at the number of buildings, three buildings is not realistic,” said board member Dave Clintsman Jr.
“And we also talked about having three buildings for a year or two, then transitioning into it,” said Lindner.
“Well, that doesn’t make sense. If you’re trying to save money, it’s pointless to have three buildings,” Clintsman replied.
Please see Loyal, page 17
