This post originally appeared at https://www.bootsandsabers.com/2024/04/11/west-bend-school-district-looks-to-adjust-to-declining-enrollment/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=west-bend-school-district-looks-to-adjust-to-declining-enrollment

There are some interesting plans. The root cause, of course, is that the West Bend Schools District’s enrollment has collapsed and looks to continue to decline for the foreseeable future. The story is happening across the nation and is a demographic trend with which everyone is grappling.

For the moment, I will put aside my frustration that this district has seen these enrollment numbers for 10 years and did nothing. Small changes made along the way are preferable to massive changes after there is crisis.

The plans on the table are to close a couple of buildings, build a big new school in Jackson, upgrade some buildings, yadda yadda yadda. Same old stuff. It’s all designed to create a package that is attractive enough to enough voters to get them so pass an expensive referendum so that a lot of people will get paid and the school leaders get to pretend that they accomplished something.

Spoiler alert… it is very, very inexpensive to just close buildings, sell them (you can even sell them cheap to prioritize getting them off the taxpayers’ books instead of getting a windfall), and move kids to ample available space in the rest of the district. You don’t need to spend tens of millions of dollars shrink your physical footprint to adjust to fewer customers. No business on earth does that.