Weyerhaeuser district to conduct consolidation information sessions

Luke Klink

The Weyerhaeuser Area School Board will hold two meetings to provide information about an upcoming referendum on consolidating the Weyerhaeuser and Chetek school systems.

The board voted unanimously last Wednesday to hold the sessions on Monday, Sept. 21, and Wednesday, Oct. 21. Both meetings will begin at 7 p.m. and be held at the high school.

School district residents successfully petitioned to force a referendum on consolidation after both boards voted to proceed on merging the schools without such a vote. The referendum will be held Nov. 3. The question must pass with a majority vote in separate votes held in each school district.

As a cost-saving measure the school board also voted unanimously to merge several polling sites, requiring fewer poll workers for the referendum election. Poll sites to remain open in the Weyerhaeuser Area School District are the Village of Weyerhaeuser and the towns of Stubbs, Big Bend, Rusk and Strickland. Voters in the Town of Wilkinson will vote in the village and voters in the Town of Sumner will vote in Strickland.

The board has projected a $17,500 cost for a referendum in both school districts, but those who circulated the petition have questioned that amount. It is based on the amount of attorney fees each school paid on recent referendums to exceed state revenue limits, but the move to paper ballots could reduce the expense.

School board president Ken Czekalski said there are plenty of unknowns surrounding the vote, including the amount of attorney fees.

“We want to be dotting our Is and crossing our Ts. We want to do this proper,” Czekalski said. “It is not a number we pulled out of our hat.”

The school board and administration have worked for the last 1.5 years to address continued declining enrollment. They determined the viability of a Weyerhaeuser K-12 school district would continue to be jeopardized by significant enrollment declines over the next four to five years, the negative impact of the state’s revenue cap.

To inform the public, the Weyerhaeuser Area School Board approved mailing information to school district property owners. That mailer went out this week.

“The Board determined that it had cut the budget significantly over the past several years by eliminating teaching positions and programs, consolidating bus routes, and establishing cooperative sports teams among other things in order to survive and still provide a quality education to district students,” the mailer states.

Weyerhaeuser schools reached a high mark of 256 students during the 2001-02 school year, and had 186 students during the 2007-08 school year compared with 131 students projected this fall — a decline attributed to fewer and smaller families in the school district. It graduated 18 students last spring and gained only four kindergarten students this fall

“As the Board grappled with the future of the school district it was clear to us that we had two viable options: either consolidate with one or more school districts or dissolve the school district,” district officials said.

Weyerhaeuser school officials have held meetings with school boards in Cameron, Bruce, Chetek, Ladysmith-Hawkins and a committee meeting with Birchwood. Those meetings led to Chetek and Weyerhaeuser school boards forming a Joint Task Force to review, study and discuss a consultant’s recommendations on consolidation. Both school boards held special informational meetings on the issue of consolidation. The overwhelming majority of people in attendance indicated support of consolidation without going to referendum.

Weyerhaeuser school board members believe consolidation provides for the long term educational needs for the majority of students, creates a stable and viable school district for the foreseeable future, lowers tax rates and maintains Weyerhaeuser’s identity in the area.

The referendum results are binding and will dictate whether or not the consolidation will take effect on July 1, 2010.

School officials project the property tax rate will decrease in the Weyerhaeuser area. They have also committed to bus routes of no more than one hour long coming to and leaving from school.

Taxpayers approved a three-year override of the state’s revenue controls, agreeing to pay an additional $468,000 in 2008-2009, $648,119 in 2009-2010, and $688,119 in 2010-2011 to operate the school. Without these extra funds, the school board would have been required to reduce staff and programming even more significantly than it has already has. When the school board proposed the referendum to override the revenue control, it promised to use the money to operate the school district while seeking ways to cooperate or consolidate with another school district.

Also, state aid has dropped from $1,041,131 in 2002-2003 to $391,540 in 2008-2009, forcing local taxpayers to pay more to operate the district.

If the referendum passes, all assets and liabilities — including land — become the property of the new consolidated district. The Weyerhaeuser School would be closed and all students would attend the Chetek School. The Weyerhaeuser School, the Weyerhaeuser School property, including the Weyerhaeuser School forties, would become the property of the consolidated district.

If the referendum fails, “the Weyerhaeuser Board does not have an alternative plan.”

“We do not have a first choice, second choice, third choice. In the view of the Weyerhaeuser Board we only have one choice that makes good sound educational and financial sense to the Weyerhaeuser District, and that is to consolidate with Chetek District,” the board said in a combined statement.