The Waukesha School Board voted to close three elementary schools at the end of this school year in an effort to deal with declining enrollment.
Board members voted 8-1 for the option that would close, repurpose or sell Bethesda and Hawthorne elementary schools and the Whittier building, which houses the district’s STEM elementary program. Diane Voit was the only school board member who voted against the proposal during the Nov. 12 meeting.
The option would also:
- Make Horning Middle School a K-8 STEM School
- Offer two middle schools, Butler and Les Paul
- Have three elementary dual language sites at Banting, Heyer and Lowell based on enrollment. Dual language programs teach students in English and Spanish.
- Potentially sell the Saratoga building, the White Rock campus and the Pleasant Hill campus. Waukesha STEM Academy’s Saratoga campus and Saratoga complex currently reside at the Saratoga building; Waukesha East, an alternative high school, currently hosts students at White Rock; and Richardson School serves high-needs special education students at the Pleasant Hill campus.
- Create an estimated savings of $3.2 million to $3.7 million.
Prior to the vote, board members rejected an amendment 7-2 that would close Lowell Elementary School instead of Bethesda Elementary School. Voit and Bette Koenig were the only board members to support that effort.
The vote came after nearly three hours of discussion on the options, including just over an hour of public comment from 31 people, a mix of parents, students and community members. Most of the parents who spoke had children attending Bethesda Elementary and advocated for their school to stay open. Others spoke in favor of Hawthorne and Lowell staying open or slowing down the pace of the district’s process.
The Waukesha School District’s administration provided a recommendation to the School Board at an Oct. 27 board workshop for Option E, which originally would have closed three elementary schools – Hawthorne, Lowell and the Whittier building and had Bethesda Elementary as one of the dual language elementary sites.
Then at the Nov. 12 board meeting, Waukesha School District superintendent James Sebert presented two offshoot options. One had Bethesda, Hawthorne and the Whittier building closing and had Lowell Elementary as one of the dual language sites. The other was the original option E of closing Hawthorne, Lowell and the Whittier building and having Bethesda Elementary as one of the dual language sites.
Sebert told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Nov. 11 the district believes the option of closing three elementary schools is “a palatable and viable option” to get the district started and one it could implement for the 2026-27 school year.
The option would take the district from 12 elementary schools to nine and three traditional middle schools to two. That would then leave the tenets of Option F, which would involve relocating sixth graders to the elementary schools, and Option G, which would create kindergarten through sixth grade and seventh through 12th grade schools on the table for the future along with the possibility of two high schools in the future as opposed to three.
The district’s enrollment projections show the district could consider those type of ideas with enough building space by the 2029-30 or 2030-31 school years, Sebert said.
The district’s enrollment has dipped from a peak of over 13,000 in the 2012-13 school year to 10,396 students as of September.
In the weeks before the meeting, the Alliance for Education in Waukesha started a petition on hosted on the popular activism platform Change.org calling for the district to slow down its process, requesting an impact study be conducted and delaying the implementation of any plan until the 2027-28 school year. The petition had 390 signatures as of Nov. 12.
The Alliance also shared a news release from the League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin on its Facebook page a few hours before the Nov. 12 meeting, where LULAC urged the Waukesha School Board to reconsider its options and said the district’s plans have a disproportionate impact on Latino families.
The group also argued Latino families were excluded from the process by being denied interpretation at meetings and said delays in translation occurred. LULAC added poor participation occurred at meetings because sessions were not held at the affected schools and because online streaming with Spanish captions was not an option.
Sebert disputed that, saying the district had 12 Spanish-language website materials, seven community information sessions with a live interpreter, two Spanish-language community input gathering sessions, and seven parent emails provided in both English and Spanish. He also said the board’s public comments policy allows for extra time for speakers who need an interpreter and offers six devices in the board room that individuals can use for digital translations. He also said the district’s meetings are livestreamed on YouTube TV and are available with closed captions in Spanish and other languages.
Parents started petitions to save their respective schools over the past few months. A Change.org petition to save Bethesda Elementary School had 1,161 signatures as of Nov. 12; one to save Lowell Elementary School had 885 signatures while an effort to save Hawthorne Elementary School had 402 signatures.
Contact Alec Johnson at (262) 875-9469 or alec.johnson@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @AlecJohnson12.
