By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
The Burlington Area School District Board of Education battled with one of life’s existential questions Monday night – albeit it in updated form.
Which comes first – the chicken (district facilities) or the egg (figuring out the best use for those facilities)?
After discussing matter for about an hour in the Buildings, Grounds and Transportation Committee, members of the committee agreed to bring in Plunkett Raysich Architects to study the BASD facilities needs and try to create a plan for the future.
Plunkett Raysich, of Milwaukee, is the company BASD worked with in the 1990s to design the high school and Winkler Elementary School.
The firm also designed changes at Karcher Middle School and designed what is now Dyer Intermediate School in the 1960s.
“They’ve done architectural work for us in the meantime for us on various projects,” Superintendent Peter Smet said Tuesday, referring to remodeling projects. “They are a very reputable firm, and we’ll hear what services they have to offer the school district.”
The end result of contacting that firm came after the committee – and the other School Board members in attendance – struggled with where to start with the numerous facilities projects looming in the near future for BASD.
In particular, Karcher Middle School has several repairs that are in the immediate future. That is the oldest of the current school buildings in the district, with portions that date back to the 1930s still in use, explained Buildings and Grounds Supervisor Gary Olsen Monday night.
The problem, Olsen said, is that – with the numerous other renovations already done at Karcher – most of the work there is complex.
So the committee and members of the School Board tried to figure out where to start with a study – one that was outlined in the strategic goals resulting from a three-month process led by a Wisconsin Association of School Boards and involving members of the community, the school district and the school board.
The goal said, simply, the district would find a construction management firm to develop a list of repairs and enhancements, as well as get an idea of the cost involved, by October of this year.
But, as Smet outlined at the start of the committee meeting Monday night, a construction management firm might not be the right choice. As the School Board settled in to discuss the matter, it became clear that no one had a real idea where to start.
“It’s not just what our facilities need anymore,” Board President Jim Bousman said. “We need to know what’s best for the district. What do we want to accomplish, and can we accomplishment it in one step.”
Adding to the indecision is an ongoing study regarding grade configurations at the various schools. With declining enrollment, the district is looking at whether the current grade groupings – K-4 at the elementary schools, 5-6 at Dyer Intermediate, grades 7-8 at Karcher Middle School and then grades 9-12 at the high school – are the best for the future use of the facilities.
Assistant Superintendent Connie Zinnen also said now is probably the time to figure out what else the district should do to make it a “destination district.”
Zinnen named the possibility of creating a virtual school among other items being considered. Other School Board members said that the nature of education was changing as well.
The issue came back to one question, though, for Bousman.
“How do we move the peanut down the road?” he asked.
School Board Member Todd Terry said the district is at a point of “diminishing returns” with Karcher, and that the district needed someone to sort out what would need to be addressed, in what order – and also how to make it all fit together within the district’s enrollment projections.
Smet then suggested going back to Plunkett Raysich.
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