Board to hold special meeting Jan. 20 to discuss ‘Reduction in Force at the End of the 2024-25 School Year’
Luukas Palm-Leis, Reporter
At the Dec. 12 regular meeting of the River Valley School District Board of Education, the board voted to close the River Valley Early Learning Center, citing declining enrollment and costs as rationale for closure and discussed a future operational referendum.
Closing the ELC, Referendum
The board discussed the closing of the River Valley Early Learning Center, formerly Plain Elementary, based on an initial recommendation from the building and grounds committee and a secondary recommendation from the budget committee.
The ELC currently hosts early childhood, four year old kindergarten and five year old kindergarten for the district.
“We looked at a number of different things, the costs, and concluded with the declining enrollment, we can house all the students on the central campus, and that we would be looking to close the ELC,” Fred Iausley, board member and building and grounds committee member, said. “We made a recommendation to the budget committee for closure of the Early Learning Center after the ’25-’26 school year, and part of that was looking at some time to do some of the remodels we would need on the central campus.”
Based on the recommendations of the building and grounds committee, the budget committee then recommended that the board close the ELC after the current school year, referencing concerns that a proposed operational referendum on the April 1 Spring Election ballot may fail.
According to the district, the proposed referendum, set to be taken up at the board’s Jan. 9 meeting, would allow the district to exceed state revenue limits for three years: $4.15 million in the 2025-2026 school year, $4.75 million in 2026-2027, and $5.2 million in 2027-2028.
“We thought it would be better to take the savings now. If the referendum were to fail, we all thought that it would be accelerating the closing to ‘24-25,” John Bettinger, school board vice president, said. “If that’s in the air, why not make the decision now and take the savings year one and start moving forward with the process.”
Business manager Brian Krey said the district would be saving $300,000 by closing the ELC, and would save another $700,000 by consolidating into three school buildings. According to Krey, the $300,000 savings is specifically from operational costs (e.g., maintaining the building), while the $700,000 comes from efficiencies gained by consolidating staff and resources.
“By closing the ELC we’re talking about a million dollars in savings, which is a lot, as we go to referendum on April 1, just to operate and survive with what we currently have. To go out to our taxpayers and say by making this change we can save a million dollars annually moving forward is a big deal,” Krey said. “We want to minimally impact any programs, any courses or class sizes, we want to keep what we have.”
Krey noted that the upcoming operational referendum is purely for academic courses, programs and classes and not for building maintenance, noting the referendum and closure of the ELC were independent issues for the district.
“The more I look at this, after attending the budget committee meeting, it’s making more and more sense that, going into a referendum, we’re asking taxpayers to come up with money, that we show that we are making every effort we can to reduce our costs,” Iausly said, before motioning to close the ELC.
Board member Kiley Cates added, “It’s not a decision we’re taking lightly, it’s something we have been talking about for a long time, it’s something we’ve talked about in all of our community sessions going into referendum last time for our capital referendum, it’s something that has been on the horizon, and it feels fast for a lot of people, but we take it seriously, we know it effects a lot of the faculty and the students. It’s not an easy decision for a lot of us but it’s the decision we see forward as a community and a district.”
The motion to close the ELC passed with all board members voting in favor.
The board will decide at its Jan. 9 meeting the exact grade configurations after closure, with many students being moved to Spring Green Elementary on the district’s central campus and other grades potentially being moved among the middle school and high school. Further discussions about reconfiguring the district’s existing spaces are set to take place over the summer, Iausly said.
This decision marks the final closure of River Valley’s satellite elementary schools, after Lone Rock Elementary was closed in 2017 and Arena Elementary was closed in 2018.
District Report Card
District administrator Loren Glasbrenner gave a report on the District Report Card from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. District report cards are produced annually by DPI to provide school districts a way to compare themselves to state averages.
The district received an overall score of 74.1 and an “exceeds expectations” rating. Individually, the high school received a score of 65.8 and a “meets expectations” rating, the middle school received a score of 84.7 and a “significantly exceeds expectations” rating and the elementary school received a score of 56.2 and a “meets few expectations” rating.
“That River Valley score of 74.1 is the fourth year in a row that we have seen steady increases,” Glasbrenner said.
The district report card focuses on four areas of assessment: Achievement, Growth, Target Group Outcomes and On-Track to Graduation.
Glasbrenner noted that within the CESA3 region — which largely is comprised of school districts within southwest Wisconsin — the district ranked average for Achievement, ranked first in Growth, ranked in the top five in Target Group Outcomes, and ranked near the bottom in On-Track to Graduation.
“The thing that’s pulling us down a little bit for On-Track to Graduation is specifically third grade reading performance, and that is a targeted area that [elementary principal] Carla [Peterson] and the team and [interventionist] Tracy Frosch and all of us are working on,” Glasbrenner said.
Glasbrenner spoke of how the DPI report cards are a systems evaluation for school districts and are not a direct reflection of student grades and academics.
“We are in line with what we want to be, we are seeing good results from some of the initiatives we are pushing forward and I’m really pleased with how the report card is coming forward and the results we are getting,” Glasbrenner said.
Looking ahead
The River Valley School District Board of Education meets Jan. 9 in the Middle School Library. The board streams meetings to the district’s YouTube channel.
The board also has a special meeting set for Jan. 20 at 6 p.m. in the Middle School Library that includes a closed session for “Considering Employment, Promotion, Compensation, or Performance Evaluations”.
The meeting is set to come back into open session for the purpose of “Consideration & Action on Employees Selected for Reduction in Force at the End of the 2024-25 School Year”.
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