Edgar board looks to boost enrollment

By Kevin O’Brien

During a discussion last week about next year’s budget, Edgar School District officials and school board members talked about the need for more housing and economic development to draw more families with kids into the community in order to boost enrollment.

A chart presented to the board during the June 26 budget hearing shows a projected enrollment of 573 students next year, which would be a drop of 26 from this past school year. Seventy students are expected to openenroll into the district in 2024-2025 and 64 are anticipated to open-enroll out of the district.

District bookkeeper Morgan Mueller said open enrollment decisions are normally based on factors beyond the district’s control, including families who live right on the border with another district or travel to jobs in other cities.

Still, board member Rebecca Normington said “it makes me wonder what the school could do to spur economic development and help recruit people that would support the community and the school.”

“I don’t know if that’s something we

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could have influence over,” she said.

Superintendent Cari Guden said “it really comes down to housing,” but unfortunately, a previous committee dedicated to the issue dwindled and eventually disbanded.

Elementary school principal Lisa Witt said daycare is another “huge” issue. Edgar Child Care draws many families in, but it is also limited in the number of children it can accept due to staffing issues, she said.

Witt said she wonders if Edgar has lost some families to Marathon City after the recent construction of apartment complexes in the neighboring village. Earlier this year, the Marathon School Board put tight limits on open enrollment, allowing few or no new students from other districts to enter most of its grade levels.

Normington wondered if the district could take the lead in drawing more people and businesses to the area.

“I’m just wondering if there’s anything we can do to attract people to the school, and then the village would say ‘Oh, we need more houses,’ or some developer would be willing to invest if they see people being drawn to the community,” she said.

Board president Corey Mueller said the village has “no place to go” for development, though Normington disputed that notion.

“Without an investment by the village for infrastructure, that’s not happening,” Mueller said.

Guden said the district has been working really hard to publicize the good things going on in their local schools, but she agreed that it’s good to continue the conversation.

“I don’t want a victim to a lack of action,” Normington said. “I don’t have a plan, but I think ‘What could we be doing differently?’” Meanwhile, the district’s property taxes continue to be on a downward trend, based on information presented at the annual meeting.

Electors tentatively set a 2024-2025 tax levy of $1.6 million, with a mill rate of $5.12 per thousand dollars of equalized property value. If finalized in October, this would represent a 32 percent decrease from the amount of taxes collected this year. The $5.12 mill rate would be the lowest in at least 10 years, and would be 71 percent less than the high point of $17.85 in 1992-1993.

The actual 2024-2025 tax levy and mill rate will not be set until the end of October, after the district does a head count of students in September and finds out from the state what local property values are and how much per-pupil aid it will receive.

Electors also approved a motion to raise breakfast and lunch prices by 10 cents for 2024-2025 and to keep board member salaries the same for next year.

Other business

At the regular monthly meeting on June 26, the board took the following actions:

■ Accepted the resignations of middle school math teacher Katie Haas, custodian Sara Fehlhaber and part-time food service workers Barb Rauen and Ronda Durkee. Guden also noted that Marissa Ellenbecker, who was approved as a third-grade teacher at the May meeting, resigned before signing a contract.

■ Approved the hiring of Emily Mueller as a third-grade teacher, Fay Nieman as a middle school math teacher and Kaylee Olund as school guidance counselor.

■ Approved the hiring of the following spring sports coaches: Connor Handrick, baseball; Kevin Brown, softball; and Greg Streit, track.

■ Approved a change to the 2024-2025 school calendar so that the district’s holiday concerts in December will occur over the course of two days instead of just one.

■ Approved 12 new open enrollment applications, including seven coming into Edgar and five going to another district.

■ In her annual report to the board, school nurse Lara Beranek said this school year was mostly a return to normal, but there was a high number of norovirus cases that took several students out of school for multiple days or a week.

The report tallied 4,225 unscheduled visits to the nurse’s office and 24 students coming to the office on a daily basis for medications, mostly for anxiety and other mental health issues. Beranek also noted that her office has started seeing students under the influence of drugs, including one incident that required a 911 call.

TREND LINES - Superintendent Cari Guden points to a graph showing enrollment trends in the Edgar School District over the past decade. At the district’s annual budget hearing on June 26, board members discussed ways of boosting enrollment.

STAFF PHOTO/KEVIN O’BRIEN