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In five to seven years, all Warsaw seventh- and eighth-graders could be attending school together at what is currently Lakeview Middle School, with Edgewood Middle School being used for Gateway Education Center and Warsaw Area Career Center classes.
Wednesday, Warsaw Community Schools (WCS) Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert gave the Warsaw Traffic Safety Commission a presentation on where WCS is going.
“So, as we talk about, this is a long-term planning. We started talking about Lakeview and what to do with Lakeview about 10 years ago,” he said. “... One of the things that we have in Warsaw Community Schools, we have an ongoing 10-year facility plan.”
One of the goals with the plan is to keep WCS from having to have a voter referendum to fix schools when it’s needed.
“Lakeview definitely is our biggest project going forward. It’s going on 65 years of age. We figured now that if we looked at just 500 students average a day for 180 school days a year, there’s been over 6 million school days that have taken place at Lakeview and over 42 million class periods that have taken place inside of that building,” Hoffert stated.
Lakeview was built very sturdy, he said, and that gives WCS an opportunity to be able to build on it.
There is an estimated 6.5 million square feet of space inside of WCS. Hoffert said they are always looking for efficiency. There are about 1 million bus miles a year, and about 1 million school lunches a year. WCS is the third largest employer in Kosciusko County, “so we know that what we do definitely has a long-term impact and we know that with our facility plans, everything needs to be timed, everything needs to be watched, whether it’s an HVAC system or whether it’s in growth.”
On the tax rates, Hoffert said the school system has one of the lowest in the state of Indiana. WCS is at $0.89 per $100 of assessed valuation, and the state average is $1.02.
“We’ve seen tax rate decreases the last two years. We’ve went down by a percent this last year, we’re down by about 3% this year. We’re 12% under the state average, and we try to pull all of that into it,” Hoffert stated, and adding that WCS is not one of the school districts in the state going for an operating referendum this next year.
WCS has already made adjustments inside of its operations fund in preparation for Senate Bill 1 impacts.
“We talk about fiscal planning, we talk about our debt management. This is how school systems pay for schools. We are not allowed to save up and buy a school. It’s kind of like we have a mortgage that takes place, and so we are always working on paying off our previous projects and looking at the next projects that we have,” Hoffert explained. “... We have been very wise in our budgeting, of the way that we have looked for these projects going forward because anything that we do to Lakeview, we know that there’s a financial cost and we want to make sure we are budgeting wisely where there is no tax rate or tax levy impact.”
The Warsaw Community High School project took five years to renovate, including the outside traffic patterns and over 125 different classrooms. The high school is now 35 years old.
Along with a middle school, Lakeview also holds many WACC classes and Gateway alternative education. Any movements WCS makes, including consolidating the two middle schools, would impact Edgewood as well as Lakeview, he said. Lakeview opened in 1962 as the new high school at that time, and is on great land, Hoffert mentioned to the commission.
“The current reality of Lakeview: Lakeview was built incredibly solid, and that’s a plus. We know that there are infrastructure needs because ADA compliance, roofing and HVAC, a lot of those areas, are very different. Over the last 30 years, we have done a lot of the intensive evaluation of that property because we know that not only does it impact the school, but also impacts Winona Avenue, Smith Street and the community around it,” Hoffert said.
Edgewood was the main middle school but became the second middle school in 1992 when the high school moved to the campus where it is today. Edgewood was built as an open concept school and still has a lot of life left in it, Hoffert said. When Edgewood was renovated in 2016, a lot of walls were put in, but they are not cinder block walls so it can be transformed and refigured quickly.
When WCS first looked at Lakeview, there were several options considered. One was to build a new Lakeview north of the city. Two was to renovate the current Lakeview and keep it as the second middle school, with a third option to look at a combination of the two middle schools.
Also taken into consideration were contextual factors, such as the birth rate statewide is down 25%.
“We do have steady enrollment projections over the next 10 years. There is potential definitely with Slate and other industry coming into town, but yet even with the new industry we are predicted to stay very steady in our enrollment,” he said.
WCS’ highwater mark was a student enrollment of about 7,000. Over the last 10 years, that’s dropped by about 6%, but many neighboring schools have dropped more drastically. Hoffert said Whitko was down by about 28%; Tippecanoe Valley, about 12%; and Wawasee is down by a little less than 20%.
Hoffert then brought up four options for the middle schools. Option 1 was for a new location north of town, but Hoffert said they couldn’t find the land space that was suitable or cost prohibitive. Schools also can’t build next to a railroad track. Option 2, which is still an option, is to renovate the current Lakeview. Option 3a was to combine the two middle schools at Edgewood, but Hoffert said that turned out not to be a viable option. Option 3b was combine the middle schools at the Lakeview site.
As for traffic safety, he said WCS does own Geneva Street and they would be able to ideally keep school traffic off Smith Street and Winona Avenue, along with having an appropriate area for school buses.
“So this is definitely not a short term, but we wanted to make sure it was on everybody’s radar of directions that we’re looking, questions that we still need to ask. This summer, we’ve been doing some roof work, some HVAC work and some electrical work. Next summer, it would be the same thing. The year after that is when we would start looking at some classroom renovations, and then the last kind of phases as we get into four, five, six, potentially seven, would be the addition of more classroom space and other space to bring students over,” Hoffert said.
“So we’d be looking still five to seven years before the middle schools would merge, but we would start working towards that path and, at the same time, working on some career center renovations as well,” he continued.
Anything WCS does, Hoffert stated, there would be no tax impact and no referendums. A combined middle school also would provide efficiency, and take care of the WACC, Gateway and adult education classes.
After Hoffert’s presentation, WCS Transportation Director Mark Fick provided a stop arm violation update for the past school year. He said there were 279, up from 262 last year. Of the 279, 98 were sent to the prosecutor’s office, 11 were police pull overs and 170 violations were not sent due to vehicles or their license plates not being identifiable.
The greatest number of violations happened at the bus stop in front of Papa John’s, with 71; followed by 29 on Detroit Street; 15, West Lake Street; 15, Orchard Ridge; 13, Parker Street; 11, Winona Avenue; 11 Shelden Street; and 10, Argonne Road.
There were 17 accidents involving WCS buses, but the majority of those were not bus driver error, he said.
