School grants village easement

The Marathon Board of Education voted unanimously last Wednesday to approve the village of Marathon City’s request for an easement on the Marathon Area Elementary School/Marathon Venture Academy property to install utilities for a new daycare center and ball fields east of CTH NN.

Andy Kurtz, Village of Marathon City administrator, told the school board the project to build a new baseball/softball field complex along CTH N is still being pursued. Kurtz said water, sewer and gas utilities can be installed to the west of CTH N on the Marathon Area Elementary School/Marathon Venture Academy property for the construction project on the other side of the highway.

“Now that we have your approval, we can move forward with getting pipes into the ground so the daycare center will have water and sewer when it opens in November,” Kurtz told the school board. “Wisconsin Public Service will use the easement on the school property to install gas lines.”

In the future, the village and school district will further discuss where the pedestrian sidewalk should be constructed to take Marathon Fun Days attendees through a tunnel underneath CTH NN west on school property to the Marathon Elementary School/Marathon Venture Academy’s south parking lot.

Rick Parks, Marathon schools superintendent, said he wants the village to construct the sidewalk on school property in a way that it doesn’t eat up so much of the green space in the field used for middle school football. He said he prefers the new sidewalk from the tunnel to begin going north from the tunnel and then head northwest of the Marathon Elementary School/Marathon Venture Academy building to access Spring Valley Drive.

Kurtz said the engineering firm who is designing the pedestrian walk told him it will also be a bicycle path, so that a large turning radius is needed to be constructed in the sidewalk. Kurtz said this means the best area for the sidewalk is to go from the tunnel straight west, or directly south of the Marathon Elementary School/Marathon Venture Academy playground fence to butt up with the current sidewalk to the parking lot. Parks said he is concerned about Marathon Fun Days attendees drinking alcohol on school grounds. Kurtz responded the village could erect an alcohol is prohibited sign on the sidewalk west of the tunnel. Kurtz said the Marathon Boy Scouts clean up the Marathon Fun Days grounds each morning, and they could also clean up any garbage left by Fun Days attendees on the sidewalk and parking lot located on school property. He said security cameras would also be installed along the sidewalk.

Kurtz outlined how responsibilities between the village and school district would be handled for taking care of the new sidewalk to be constructed on school property. He asked the school district to remove snow on the sidewalk during winter, while the village would maintain the sidewalk by filing in any cracks or totaling replacing it when needed in the future. Kurtz told Parks the village would pay the electric bill for lighting the sidewalk on school property.

Kurtz also assured Parks the village would improve water drainage along the west side of CTH NN so it would flow underneath CTH NN to the Marathon Spirituality Center and then to the Rib River. This way the school district will only have dry grass to mow, instead of water standing in tall grass on its property along CTH NN.

“Our goal would be to improve this area of this project by grading it a little differently and then reseeding it so you can mow the grass, and that should address some of the issues with drainage out there while also allowing us to run required utilities,” Kurtz said.

Jodi DeBroux, Marathon school board president, asked Kurtz to give an update on the status of the new ball fields project.

“We are at a 90 percent design completion standpoint and we continue to raise funds for the project,” Kurtz said. “The total cost of the project is estimated at $3.8 million and we have $3 million of that secured already. I have three outstanding grant applications that we are anticipating getting notice from within the next 30 days, and that would get us to probably at $3.5 or $3.6 million of the total project. There are a couple other grants that just became awarded through the USDA that we ware going to apply for too.

“In terms of the project, we are continuing to move forward with it and we anticipate construction will start in spring of 2022, and get approved later this fall as part of the village’s 2022 budget, which is predicated on our ability to fully raise funds for it.”

Kurtz said the village is attempting to have the Wisconsin Army National Guard do the excavation work for the ballfi elds project. He said the Wisconsin Army National Guard has construction battalions in Wausau, Ashland and Platteville that will help municipalities with projects during the summer.

“The Wisconsin Army National Guard is interested but it just needs to go through its command chain,” Kurtz said. “Having it do the excavation work would reduce the cost of the project and our gap of money we still need in grant dollars.”

In other news:

_ Marathon School District resident Mike Dodson asked the school board whether the school district’s teaching staff will incorportate Critical Race Theory into its instruction this fall. School board president DeBroux responded she didn’t know what Ccritical Race Theory was.

Education Week states the core idea of Critical Race Theory is that race is a social construct, and racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies. Education Week is an independent news organization that has covered K-12 education since 1981.

Mike Dodson asked schools superintendent Parks if school district residents could see teachers’ daily lesson plans before they are taught to students. Parks told Dodson it would be difficult for teachers to post their lessons plans in time for the public to see them before they are taught to students.

Dodson and his group of family and friends in attendance were pleased to hear the school district would ensure all scheduled school board meetings will be posted on the school district’s website in the future, so school district residents remain abreast of when the meetings are taking place.

_ Marathon High School student Laila Smith gave a presentation to the school board, requesting it change the grade point average from a 4.0 to a 5.0 scale for students who take AP, college and dual-credit courses. Smith said these students who take these classes are being penalized, because their grade point averages can drop one whole grade which counts against them in becoming class valedictorian and thus receiving the valedictorian college scholarship.

School board member Lia Klumpyan said students who take the advanced classes are already receiving the benefi t of not having to pay for college tuition. The school board failed to make a motion to act on Smith’s proposal.

Jodi DeBroux