GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – After months of meetings, a community committee tasked with changing Green Bay school boundary lines has a final recommendation.
More school closures and boundary changes at the elementary level are among the ideas that will be pitched to the school board in two weeks.
“Our enrollment is declining, and we’re projected to continue declining the next 10 years at least, so we have to do something,” said Vicki Bayer, the interim superintendent for the district, who also notes the district is projected to have a budget deficit between $6 million and $11 million within two years.
We already know Wequiock, Tank, and Keller elementary schools will close after classes are done at the end of next week after the school board took previous consolidation votes over the previous year.
Based on the finalized recommendation from the district’s boundary adjustment advisory committee, Elmore, Langlade, and MacArthur elementary schools would eventually close as well.
A new 600-student elementary school would also be built on the site where Kennedy Elementary currently sits.
“We have single-track schools that are more expensive than other schools, so consolidating classes, consolidating services is financially beneficial to the district,” said Bayer.
The plan, referred to as Scenario C, is one that is drastically scaled back compared to the first two scenarios the committee explored.
Scenarios A and B included converting schools to 4K-8th grade models. Surveys showed those two scenarios only had about a quarter of the community’s support. Scenario C had about 45% community support.
“There was a lot of opposition to the 4K-8th options that were being proposed at that time,” said Justin Rich, a district-hired consultant for Woolpert, Inc.
Scenarios A and B also included much more drastic changes to school boundary lines and school feeder patterns.
The lack of support for the scenarios with 4K- 8th grade models contrasts with a March 2023 community survey which found 57.4% support for adding the format where possible in the east side of the district.
Rich says the support for 4K-8th grade models was also clear in the open comment part of the survey for Scenario C.
“There was many respondents that were disappointed they didn’t see K-8s, so we didn’t really hear from those folks the first time,” said Rich.
“I don’t think we should be done exploring K-8s,” said Bayer. “I think the board still needs to talk about that for future decisions, but we didn’t feel like we had the support at this time to go to the model that we feel is appropriate.”
Now, the board must decide whether to go with the committee recommendation, which will necessitate community approval of a referendum this fall to build the new west side elementary school and improve the schools taking on students from the closing schools.
“The community has a decision,” said Bayer. “Do we consolidate these schools without making improvements at the receiving school? Is the community ok with that? Or do we approve the referendum to make the necessary changes to improve educational adequacy for our students?”
The board will hear the recommendation June 10th. The public will then have two weeks to provide feedback before the board takes a vote.
Under Scenario C, students from Keller, Kennedy, and MacArthur would attend the new west side elementary school. Some MacArthur students would attend King.
Elmore students would split between Lincoln and Chappell.
Most of Langlade’s students would go to Doty, with some going to Webster.
Other boundary changes include some Tank students going to Beaumont, some Sullivan students heading to Nicolet, and a portion of Danz’s district changing to Martin.
The goal would be to have all changes take effect for the ’26-’27 school year, according to Bayer.
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