The Wauwatosa School District is contracting with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America for the first time this year to provide the organization's Blue Door Academy as a before- and after-school care program to support Tosa families that need it. For any family still on the fence about whether to enroll, the district has two urgent messages.
First, school officials are assuring families that the care is guaranteed for students at all 10 elementary schools through the full 2026-27 school year, which starts Sept. 1. And second, the district needs more families to enroll now, to avoid having to implement a backup plan that would involve busing some students.
Under the backup plan, which was authorized Aug. 24 by the Tosa School Board, the Blue Door Academy sites at any elementary school that falls short of the program’s enrollment minimums by Oct. 1 will be closed a month later, and the students at those sites will be bused, at the district's expense, to and from consolidated Blue Door Academy programs at other Tosa elementary schools.
District officials call that a “worst case scenario,” because no busing will be needed if enrollment in Blue Door Academy continues to increase in the coming month. Initial projections indicate that current shortfall likely affects only a few schools and primarily students in the before-school care program.
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“We still have time. We want families to sign up,” Superintendent Demond Means told Tosa Forward News in an Aug. 27 interview.
The uncertainty about the rollout of the new Blue Door Academy program still has some parents on edge.