La Crosse School District’s $53.5 million referendum for elementary schools easily passes; Superintendent Engel will join WIZM on Wednesday morning

Two years after voters denied a plan to build a new $194.7 million high school, they approved a far less expensive one Tuesday in the School District of La Crosse.

The $53.5 million elementary school referendum easily passed. The plan to build a new elementary school and update another got 60.9% of the 34,240 votes cast.

La Crosse Schools superintendent, Dr. Aaron Engel, will be on WIZM’s La Crosse Talk in the 6 a.m. hour on Wednesday. Listen on the WIZM app, online here, or on 92.3 FM / 1410 AM / 106.7 FM (north of Onalaska).

The biggest part of the district’s plan is to tear down the Hogan Administrative site and build the new elementary school there. It will also update State Road Elementary with eight new classrooms and a gymnasium.

Three elementary schools will close — Hintgen, Emerson and Spence.

In 2022, by 69.1%, voters denied a plan to turn Central and Logan high schools into middle schools, while building a new high school at an old Trane site on the south side.

That election, which didn’t have a presidential race on the ballot, saw 27,308 votes.

The first repercussion of that referendum failing was to close Lincoln Middle School months later.

The next move for the district to continue to solve its budget and declining enrollment problems, could be going back to middle schools changes, which School Board president, Dr. Juan Jimenez, spoke about last month on La Crosse Talk PM.

“So there’s been a lot of commentary at the board level,” Jimenez said, “from board members talking about, ‘When are we going to address the middle schools? The middle schools are older have needs. Those schools need some help. How are we going to address them?’

“I have been very adamant during the board meetings to say, ‘Let’s finish this project first. Let’s get through the referendum. Let’s get through November 5. Let’s see where we land. Then we can start looking at and talking about, ‘What do we do with the rest of our buildings?'”