Neenah Joint School District will close Hoover Elementary
NEENAH, Wis. (WFRV) – Another Northeast Wisconsin school district has made the decision to close one of its elementary schools.
At a school board meeting on Tuesday night, the Neenah Joint School District Board of Education voted 5-4 to pass a boundary revision plan that includes closing Hoover Elementary.
Over 40 people attended the meeting imploring the Board of Education to keep their beloved school open.
“Neenah with pride, we hear it, we see it, we live it and when I hear what this is doing to our community it is heartbreaking,” said a teacher at Hoover Elementary.
“But I do ask that you do listen to the parents and the teachers here, we absolutely don’t want to be disbanded,” said Roseanne Boutain a Hoover Elementary parent.
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“The teachers are absolutely phenomenal, the principal has a heart of gold,” said Liz Rosenow.
The Hoover Elementary closure is one of the items on the district’s boundary revision list. Hoover students will now attend Horace Mann, Coolidge, or Tullar Elementary Schools. Some students from Lakeview Elementary will also now attend Coolidge.
“The student population in that building (Hoover Elementary) wasn’t enough to sustain a full and complete elementary school,” said school board president Brian Epley.
Horace Mann Elementary would become a four-section school under this plan, growth that district officials said the building is able to accommodate.
District officials said that reducing overcrowding at Lakeview was an extremely pressing need. They said these moves will help them deal with growing student populations in certain parts of the district.
” I would like us dreaming more about what happens on the inside of the building rather than how we are going to get them to maneuver students to get them to the facilities that we have,” said board member Sarah Moore-Nokes. “I would encourage us not to wait (on approving the boundary revisions), I would encourage us to think about what the possibilities are (once we can get past it).”
The final vote was 5-4 in favor of accepting the boundary revision plan that would close Hoover Elementary. Several people were visibly emotional after the school board made their decision.
“I think there is something to be said for smaller schools, there’s just an element of community that you lose in larger schools,” said Boutain. “You just do.”
“Decisions like this are terrible to make, as a servant of the public and trying to do what’s best for the community,” said Epley. “Please know that we are going to do our best for kids no matter what. That has always been the primary focus of our school board.”
District officials said they had six community engagement sessions with the public to talk about the boundary revision plan prior to the vote on Tuesday night. They said said closing Hoover Elementary will save them about a half million dollars.
For a full summary of what the boundary revisions entail, please click here.
