GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV) – The Green Bay Area Public School District Board of Education chose a new board member and a new direction for their highly scrutinized boundary adjustment plan on Monday night.
The school board continues to try to figure out ways to right-size the district as they face declining enrollment and projected budget deficits. District officials told Local 5 News their district is at 76 percent capacity and project that in 10 years that number will fall to 67 percent capacity.
On Monday night, the school board passed a motion for district administrators to start working on a third boundary adjustment scenario after two other scenarios received major pushback from the public and from the district’s boundary advisory adjustment committee.
“Let’s be very concise and let’s be very sensitive to the amount of disruption the facility closures create,” said board trustee James Lyerly about some of the goals for the new boundary adjustment scenario.
Green Bay Police Department holds promotional and swearing-in ceremony
The two other boundary scenarios would have closed up to six elementary schools in the district and added additional grade levels at other schools.
According to a district memo, a community survey revealed that only 28.2 percent of people were supportive or very supportive of the first boundary change scenario and only 24.4 percent of people were supportive or very supportive of the second boundary change scenario.
According to the district memo, some of the feedback they received was that people didn’t want their community schools to close and felt like the district wasn’t doing this in an equitable or transparent way.
“There’s some bigger conversations that have to be had about K-8,” said school board trustee Andrew Becker, addressing another concern that people have raised about the first two boundary change scenarios.
One board member described the boundary adjustment process as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to provide the best education for their students and that they needed to get this right.
District officials said the third scenario will be a scaled-down version of the first two. They listed several goals for the new scenario that they will create:
- Use the Facility Task Force recommendations, which focused on building education adequacy, enrollment, and short and long-term maintenance needs.
- Continue to address the budget deficit through school closures/consolidations.
- Reduce overall District capacity to address declining enrollment.
- Minimize student movement and feeder pattern disruptions, with a focus on elementary schools.
On Monday night, the school board also filled a vacancy that came about when former board member Laura Laitinen-Warren resigned in February.
At the meeting on Monday, they interviewed six finalists for the position. Current board members each asked candidates one question and candidates had 30 minutes to answer all six questions and then give a closing statement.
New community orchard at Green Bay East High School
Board members asked candidates the exact same questions each time.
Ultimately, the school board selected Reginald (Rick) Crosson to fill the open position. He will serve the remainder of Laitinen-Warren’s term which ends in April 2025.
“What I believe I can bring to this group is a very rapid assimilation into this group, and can help this team to move things forward,” he said during his interview.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Crosson has over 20 years of executive leadership positions at several different companies. He’s also a veteran of the U.S. Army.
