A "Mega" School?
Is the proposed new middle school a mega school?
No, the new middle school is not a mega school. With a planned capacity of 680 students, it will be smaller than several existing middle schools in our area, including our newest middle school - Vel Phillips, which has a current enrollment of 811 students, and Neenah Middle School, which has a current enrollment of 1,941 students (almost 3 times the size of our proposed new school).
Many nearby middle schools are larger than our proposed middle school, as shown in the graph.
The new middle school is designed to provide an optimal learning environment for students while providing significant annual cost savings and meeting our community’s needs for decades to come.
Do bigger schools mean more students per class?
No. The district maintains the same class size targets regardless of overall school building size:
- 24 students per instructor (Grades K-3)
- 27 students per instructor (Grades 4-12)
Students in our proposed new middle school will have the same instructor to student ration as they currently do.
Why do we need a new middle school anyway?
This new school will replace South Park, which is 120 years old, and has mold issues that none of us want our kids exposed to.
It will provide new generations of students with a modern building that will be used for the next 70-100 years.
It will also satisfy current requirements that the old schools never did.
What advantages do consolidated schools like the proposed new middle school provide?
The biggest reason for going to a bigger school is the operational efficiency it provides. Vel and Menominee together are providing annual savings of $1.9M, so will pay for themselves in 45 years or so. The new proposed school at Shapiro will provide about $600,000/year in savings.
It simply costs more to maintain several smaller, older schools than fewer, more modern ones. And we would then be maintaining less efficient buildings with fewer amenities and resources than what the new ones provide.
With the newer, consolidated buildings:
- Teachers have more resources at their fingertips to instruct our kids
- Staff don’t have to spend their time traveling from building to building but can instead concentrate on their jobs and building relationships in their schools
- Kids can access resources like counseling and other services without having to wait
- Kids can choose from more programs and activities than at a small school
And finally, modern schools help to attract employees to the area. That’s why the Chamber of Commerce has unanimously endorsed this referendum… that’s how strongly the businesses in the area understand how important it is for this referendum to pass.