Still no easy solution in sight for Leopold Elementary crowding

Tamira Madsen  —  9/17/2008 12:19 pm

Five days after Madison Metropolitan School District and Madison School Board officials learn if voters approved a referendum to help finance the district budget, they're expected to vote on options to ease overcrowding at Leopold Elementary.

And those fixes, especially the long-range ones, won't be cheap.

Overcrowding at the largest elementary school in the district has been a hot-button topic the past several years, and the School Board has put the issue at the top of its priority list. Leopold had 718 students last year (new figures aren't available yet), making it more than double the size of many district elementary schools and larger even than all but one middle school.

A decision can't come quickly enough for the Leopold community, as evidenced by the 130 parents, teachers and faculty who attended a meeting Sept. 9 at the school. District officials were there to outline a variety of options (see them at www.mmsd.org/boe/longrange) they're considering for the south Madison school located on Post Road.

The options are different combinations of boundary changes and the temporary relocation of some grade levels to different schools. The annual transportation costs would be $50,000 to $150,000, depending on the option chosen. District officials plan to make a recommendation to the School Board on Oct. 6, and the board members most likely will choose an option on Nov. 9.

But the solution that the people at the Sept. 9 meeting really want to see is an additional school in the area. That would cost millions, though, and many there thought it would be a tough sell in the wake of a $13 million referendum two years ago for west side Olson Elementary, which opened this year, and the referendum scheduled for this fall that's intended to avoid program cuts.

Shirley Fuller's second-grade daughter attends Leopold and the Fuller family lives in the Arbor Hills neighborhood, an area mentioned in one of the boundary change options.

"I think what the board has to do and we as families of this district have to do is think about what the average taxpayer sitting in their home is going to think," Fuller said after the meeting. "They're not going to think of our immediate problems, what they're going to think about is: What is this going to cost me? And we're all doing that now."

On Nov. 4, voters will be asked if they want to let the school district exceed its revenue limits by $5 million during the 2009-10 school year, then by an additional $4 million in each of the following two years. If approved, the higher limits would be permanent. The referendum would add $27.50 onto the tax bill of a $250,000 home in the first year, district officials say, but accounting changes would decrease the tax rate for homeowners in the second and third years.

Even if voters don't warm to the idea of a new school in the Leopold area, the district must do something. Officials want to implement a 650-student capacity at the school, which could see an enrollment of 822 students by the 2012-13 school year based on anticipated population growth in the attendance area.

That growth is fueled in part by residents of Coho Street, located less than a half mile from Leopold. There are several apartment buildings populated by many young families with children, and 71 students from there attended Leopold during the 2007-08 school year.

Many of the families who live there speak limited English, so the district has placed an emphasis on outreach by sending out materials in Spanish and even going door-to-door to talk to parents to make sure their feedback on boundary issues is taken into consideration. Children who live on Coho Street factor in all five boundary options drawn up by the district. If students from the Coho neighborhood are reassigned to another school, they would be bused there instead of walking to Leopold.

"My own personal feeling is that the long-term plan has to be a building in this community because the growth is going to precipitate that," said Board Treasurer Johnny Winston Jr., who attended the Sept. 9 meeting with fellow board member Marj Passman. "But that would require a referendum and the community would have to decide if a building should be built here."

The school district has made a number of efforts over the past five years to deal with Leopold's enrollment, with mixed results. Eight classrooms were added in 2003, but a $14.5 million referendum to make upgrades to the existing school and build a second school on the site failed in 2005. In 2006, the cafeteria and several areas of the campus were remodeled. Furthermore, attendance boundaries were modified on two occasions and third-graders were transported to other schools for two years.

To deal with overcrowding during this school year, the district approved transfers of 31 students both within and outside the district. An extra classroom was also added by moving the computer lab to the library.

Feedback offered at the Sept. 9 meeting included concerns over sending students who are learning English to other schools that don't have a bilingual program like Leopold does and busing students who live within walking distance of Leopold to other schools. The other schools under consideration to receive additional students are Thoreau, Shorewood, Franklin-Randall and Midvale-Lincoln.

Lisa Shebesta has two children in first and fifth grade at Leopold and a child who will enter kindergarten next year. Shebesta was impressed with the effort the district made in detailing options, but she said her family would move if her children were affected by boundary changes or a grade level relocation.

"Leopold has been full from the beginning, and it's just stuffed full and while we're not the only school in that situation, we're the school in the worst situation," Shebesta said. "I don't know how to fix it without affecting bus schedules and money. It's going to require all those things and where's that money going to come from?"

Tamira Madsen  —  9/17/2008 12:19 pm