The Wauwatosa School District’s Secondary Schools Ad Hoc Committee resumed meeting this week for the first time since mid-November and further defined what is at stake in the five facilities proposals under consideration for the city’s middle and high schools.
The process in the short term is building toward a community survey, which now is scheduled to be released to residents in early January to collect feedback on models that could create one large citywide high school, consolidate the middle schools and high schools into two buildings or maintain the district’s current four-building footprint.
Read Tosa Forward News’ summary of those five models here.
The district in May formed the Ad Hoc Committee, made up of about two dozen parents, other residents and school faculty members, to closely study the district’s existing middle and high school facilities, which are underutilized and in need of millions of dollars in deferred maintenance. The committee also toured comparable school systems around the state and began meeting this fall to discuss what would be best for Wauwatosa and its students.
In the longer term, the committee is expected next year to recommend one of the five proposed options. That recommendation then would be taken up by the school board and, after further community input, possibly put to voters as a capital referendum with a price tag of at least $346 million.
Recently, however, that process was briefly sidetracked by debate over an issue that the district thought it had already settled: a decision to move sixth-graders from the middle schools to the neighborhood elementary schools while ensuring that all elementary schools would remain open.
At the committee’s Nov. 18 meeting, minutes from the meeting show some members proposed what became known as “Model K,” which suggested closing Jefferson Elementary School and redistributing its students to other schools while keeping sixth-graders at Longfellow and Whitman middle schools.
Because that model was brand new, Paige Richards, a contractor hired by the district to facilitate the committee’s discussions, later asked the committee members by email to vote on whether Model K should formally be added to the mix. The vote was a majority “yes,” though the committee was nearly evenly divided.
District officials, including Superintendent Demond Means, raised objections that the committee was going beyond the scope of its work by considering a proposal that would violate the district’s established policy, approved in 2024, to move sixth-graders to the elementary schools by the 2029-2030 academic year in anticipation of enrollment declines.
“The WSD does not support Model K,” Richards said in a Nov. 26 email to the committee that the district later provided to Tosa Forward News. “While the WSD’s stance is unambiguous, the structure of this process has always centered on empowering the ad hoc committee to examine complex scenarios. Therefore, if the committee wishes to continue exploring Model K, you may do so — but only with the full understanding that the decision belongs to you and that you must assume full ownership of its implications.”
When the committee reconvened Dec. 9 in the district’s Fisher Administration Building, the top items on the agenda were design and engineering experts’ presentations about the other five models and small group discussions about how committee members can best present their preferences to the community. Richards also reserved time at the end of the meeting to discuss Model K.
“Is Model K in alignment with the essential charge of this group?” Richard posed to the members.
By that point, there no longer was much appetite to add the newer option to the five models already under consideration.
“We were asked specifically what to do with the four [middle and high school] buildings,” not the elementary schools, Martin McLemore said. He is one of four committee members without students in Tosa schools.
Andrea Hoffman, a Roosevelt Elementary parent, agreed with McLemore. “Closing an elementary and redistricting [students] would be a heavy violation to the community," she said.
Before the two-hour meeting ended, Means spoke briefly to underscore that the committee is empowered to come to its own conclusions on which of the remaining models would best serve the community.
Although those five options vary in ways both significant and subtle, they essentially will require the committee to choose from three configurations:
- One combined citywide high school, likely on the current West High School campus, and one combined citywide middle school on the east side, which would require busing.
- One east-side school combining grades 7-12 and a second 7-12 school on the west side, with the younger grades separated from the older grades in both schools.
- All four existing schools as they are, renovated and enhanced, but without addressing unused space and inefficiencies.
That discussion continues this month. The committee’s next meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Dec. 16 at the Fisher Building, 12121 W. North Ave.
- David Paulsen, a Tosa East Towne resident and editor of Tosa Forward News, has more than 25 years of experience as a professional journalist. He can be reached at editor@tosanews.com.
