The Tri-Township School Board has decided to move high school classes to Wanatah, but what happens to the 105-year-old LaCrosse School building still remains to be seen. Superintendent Kelly Shepherd says there still isn’t any update on a possible use, and an estimate on how much it might cost to maintain it once it closes in 2022 still hasn’t been completed.
“We know that we will still be in this building for another year and a half, so we have time on that part to figure out what happens with the building and who becomes responsible for that,” Shepherd explains. “That’s kind of the next step, one of the next steps in this phase.”
But the fact that this hasn’t already been figured out is drawing concerns. Lisa Rosenkranz runs the website savelacrossehighschool.org and has been a vocal critic of the process. She said she hadn’t heard the school board discuss the topic in public until a November work session. “And that was really disconcerting because up until this point, they haven’t taken any notice into how we pointed out that that building is going to be left behind,” Rosenkranz says. “And there will be costs to maintain it, there will be costs to demolish it, and none of that’s been taken into consideration.”
Rosenkranz continues to argue that much of the discussion has taken place in secret, despite the fact that the superintendent announced the proposal nine months before the required public hearing and school officials have shared a number of documents explaining their reasoning on the school corporation’s website. “They could’ve begun the discussions publicly at the board meetings,” Rosenkranz says. “They could’ve included the public.”
An advisory opinion from the Indiana Public Access Counselor earlier this year found that the school corporation “acted in noncompliance with the Open Door Law on certain matters” related to executive sessions. But Superintendent Shepherd feels that accusations that the school corporation hasn’t been transparent “are completely disconnected from reality.” “There’s been virtually no building discussion that’s happened in executive session,” Shepherd says. “What’s taken place in any of our executive sessions is exactly what we have on our executive agenda. We feel we can’t be any more transparent than we have.”
The estimated cost of expanding the Wanatah School to accommodate high school classes is significantly less than what neighboring school districts, like Knox and North Judson-San Pierre, expect to pay for their building additions. Still, Shepherd is confident that Tri-Township can consolidate into a single campus for under $2.6 million. “We’ve had good people bring those figures forward for us, who have done a long line of experience they possess in building projects of this nature, so we’re confident that we can get what we need to be a single-campus school system,” Shepherd says.
Still, Rosenkranz and her group haven’t given up on the LaCrosse school. “The school has been in our community for 105 years, so it has a lot of meaning, both for our cultural heritage, and for our economic safety and security,” she says.
While Shepherd agrees that history is important and says he loves the old building, he’s also looking toward the future. “I feel that the school board has done a very good job of doing their homework, listening to the issues, having a future vision in mind so that Tri-Township exists for a long time coming, and has made a wise choice in trying to keep this school district from being put at risk of not existing going forward.”
Rosenkranz says she and her group are waiting for the state’s finding on Tri-Township’s proposed 2021 budget, as well as the results of public records requests related to the LaCrosse building’s maintenance, before figuring out their next steps.
