Future of La Crosse school district unclear

What should the future of La Crosse schools look like? That is the question that will have to be decided after the defeat of yesterday’s referendum. That plan would have merged La Crosse’s Central and Logan High schools into one building on the far south-side. But the district says even with the defeat of this referendum, consolidation will still be necessary. The school administration elaborated on the future of the district and its schools in a news conference Wedbesdat. Despite the referendum’s defeat, the issues leading to it have not gone away. La Crosse school enrollment has been declining, and continues to decline. The district’s buildings are aging, and we have more schools than we need. How to address that is the challenge, but apparently the answer won’t be to put a single high school on the far south end of town. Ideally, if we only need one school, it would be more centrally located, but there aren’t a lot of options for a building of that size. And ideally future plans won’t carry such a hefty price tag. So now, the hard work begins. We’ve decided what we don’t want. Now we need to decide what it is we do want.