The Appleton Area School District Board of Education met 01/24/2022. AASD Chief Financial Officer Greg Hartjes gave them an update on the referendum focus group meetings that had taken place on Tuesday January 18th and Thursday January 20th.
The focus group attendees had been asked to provide feedback on several specific topics.
Topic 1: STEM staffing and the vision that had been created by a STEM work group.
[This was to create dedicated STEM spaces and add STEM specific paraprofessionals and teachers at the elementary and middle school level. (https://allthingsappleton.com/2021/12/29/board-of-education-discusses-in-greater-detail-the-details-and-timing-of-a-referendum/)
They told the focus groups that they would be looking at having a recurring operational referendum question for the elementary and middle school level, and they shared with the focus groups the vision they had, the outcomes they were looking for, and the experiences the students would have in the new STEM facilities. It received very positive feedback both evenings.
Topic 2: Moving 6th graders from the elementary level to the middle school level.
They shared the positives and negatives of such a move and what the additions to the four middle schools would have to look like to accommodate moving the 6th graders to the middle level. The feedback they received was very positive both evenings.
Topic 3: The possibly of moving Houdini students from Einstein to Wilson for middle school.
That received mixed interest and feedback. The Tuesday night group felt more positive about it, but the Thursday night group was more negative.
Topic 4: Moving charter schools out of leased space into district-owned space.
If spaced is freed up by moving students around and consolidating schools that would mean spaced could be freed up which could then possibly be used to move some of the charter schools out of leased space and into district owned facilities. “The challenge is if we’re going to go to referendum, we want to be able to impact every student and every facility, but we can’t necessarily do that when we lease some of our facilities.” He said the idea of moving the charters into district owned spaces received very positive feedback.
Topic 5: Moving Foster elementary students from Madison to Kaleidoscope for middle school.
If they moved 6th graders to the middle level, Einstein, Kaleidoscope, and Wilson would all have right around 700 students. Madison, however, is the only school for the east side of town and would have approximately 900, possibly as many as 950, students in the fall of 2024, though that would be less by the fall of 2027. The only feasible way to remedy that was to move students from Madison to a different middle school. Moving Foster students elsewhere as not favorably received by the focus group, to such a degree that they would most likely not bring that suggestion forward any longer.
Topic 6: The potential consolidation of Columbus and Edison Elementary schools into one school.
Columbus’ enrollment is only at 127 students right now, and Edison’s enrollment has gown down over the last several years, so consolidation is a good possibility. He said that all of the possible changes (Houdini students moving to Wilson, the Columbus/Edison consolidations, and charter school moves) would impact populations, so they would be reaching out to those affected populations and make sure that they talked to staff members and families before any decision was made. They wanted to look at these ideas and get them out into the public, so that the community knew that AASD was considering these things, “But certainly we’re a long way from making any decisions on these areas.”
He finished up by saying that they are done with their focus groups, and next they would be working on putting together a community survey. They hoped to have a draft for the Board to see at the 02/28/2022 Board of Education meeting. That survey would ultimately go out to the 44,000 households in the Appleton Area School District.
He then opened things up for questions.
Board member Jim Bowman asked what kind of turnout they had for those two focus groups.
Greg answered that 23 people showed up for the Tuesday night session and 14-15 on Thursday night. [They had been hoping for 60-70] It was a little bit smaller that we would have liked, but “the feedback was very positive overall, and we got consensus from all the groups.”
He explained that they split each night into tables, and, rather than getting feedback from individuals, they asked for consensus from the tables. There was very clear consensus across all the tables on Tuesday and Thursday regarding STEM staffing, 6th graders moving to the middle level, and consolidating Columbus and Edison. The only piece that was mixed was moving Houdini students to Wilson. Moving Foster students to Kaleidoscope had very negative feedback. Even though the groups weren’t as large as they would have liked, they did feel like it was valuable feedback.
[I would think asking for consensus from tables could potentially result in artificially inflating the amount of support or opposition to an idea. If you have 23 people spread out across two groups of 8 and one group of 7, and 16 of those people tend toward one view while 7 tend toward another, its possible that those 7 people would be spread out across those 3 groups in such a way (2 in one group, 2 in another, and 3 in a third) that their opinions would effectively end up being erased even though they made up around 1/3 of overall group.]
Jim Bowman asked if reducing the class sizes for grades 1 and 2 and had been talked about.
I don’t want to misrepresent Greg’s answer by trying to summarize his words because, to me, his answer didn’t seem like it actually spoke to Jim’s question, so I’m just going to transcribe it.
Greg said, “Yes it was, quite a bit. In fact, what we did is we projected out what the enrollments would be at our middle schools in 3 years, so using our current 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders, and then we also looked at it in 6 years when our current kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade students would be at the middle level. And so, we primarily were focusing on the middle level this last week, and it actually—it helps us in terms of moving 6th grade to the middle level. You can imagine having less students 6 years from now means less of an addition that we’ll have to put on each of our four middle schools. So, it actually—it’s a positive when you look at it from a facility needs standpoints.”
Board president Kay Eggert asked if the board would have more work prior to the survey going out.
Greg answered, yes. The core planning group would be meeting and putting together a to-do list of all the actions they would need to take over the next month so that they would be able to bring the survey to the Board. They needed to spend time with all of the school sites that would be affected by changes. They also had a lot of work to do with Hoffman Planning, Design, and Construction in terms of looking at facilities and the costs of the facilities. [Hoffman is the company they contract with to perform a capacity study and guide them through the referendum process.]
Beyond that, they needed to spend time with the Board of Education to consider some of the input/feedback they had received from the focus groups. He had presented them two very information reports [the one he had just given and the one regarding the focus groups held at the beginning of January] but the leadership team did want the Board to have the opportunity to dig into the feedback in greater depth.
Board member James Bacon asked if the idea for the Columbus/Edison consolidation was that all students from both campuses would fit into one of those campuses, totally freeing up the other campus?
Greg said that was correct. Edison is over 150 students below it’s capacity, and Columbus only has 127 students. He said they were also looking at some irregularities in the Columbus neighborhood boundaries that could result in the student population being decreased more. Even without that, the entire current enrollment of Columbus would fit onto the Edison campus.
James Bacon wanted to know what they would then do with the freed-up Columbus site.
Greg said they already had groups vying for the building. One possibility was to use it as a 4k site because it’s very central in the city and the Appleton Area School District boundaries.
Another possibility was to use that space for students with mental health issues whose needs neighborhood schools were struggling to meet. The idea would be to set up a site where they could transition students who have significant mental health needs and work with community providers in one location. Right now, AASD is bringing those community providers into the neighborhood schools and that may not be the best situation for students who have mental health challenges.
An additional possibility was that they could move some of their smaller charter schools into Columbus.
View full meeting video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBQw_0P6LX0
View meeting details here: http://go.boarddocs.com/wi/aasd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=CACQ6Q66D8CC
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