Finances, student experience important during Burrell School District reconfiguration

Money, schedules, busing and the student experience are top of minds of Burrell’s Huston Middle School focus group as the school will shift to accommodating fifth graders next school year once Stewart Elementary closes.

District administration has been working on schedules and building organizations for the review of the focus groups — comprised of parents and district staff — for their review. About 20 people are in each task force, one focused on Bon Air Elementary and the other looking into Huston. Bon Air’s group met last week; Huston’s met Monday.

“I really think, as a district, we preconceived those concerns and worked really hard to address them,” said Krista Pisano, assistant principal of Huston.

The school board in October voted to close Stewart Elementary, citing declining enrollment, aging infrastructure and the district to focus its resources on three schools instead of four.

For the 2025-26 school year, fifth grade students will attend Huston with sixth, seventh and eighth grade students; Bon Air will house students in kindergarten through fourth grade.

Superintendent Shannon Wagner said the goals of the task forces are to improve on the administration’s proposed schedules and building organizations, and make recommendations around the logistics of students’ transition. Ultimately, they will present their recommendations to the school board at a Feb. 11 meeting and participate in meetings with families in the spring.

Transition to middle school

Pisano said Huston’s sixth grade team of teachers does a good job of transitioning students from the elementary to secondary level, and believes staff can easily add fifth graders into the mix. Herself and Principal Travis Welch have met with Stewart administrators to work out ideas on how best to have fifth grade students at the middle school.

“We’re not trying to change everything about fifth grade, at all,” she said. “They’re changing location; they’re really not changing a lot of other things.”

She said sixth graders still have supports and behavior incentives that are similar to what they experienced at the elementary schools, and they transition into being more middle-school appropriate throughout the school year.

Over the past few years, the number of disciplinary incidents has decreased at the middle school, Pisano said.

“I’m hopeful it will be a positive experience,” she said. “I think it will be good. I’m excited about it.”

Balancing act

The focus group ranked money and finances as being difficult and important when configuring schools.

Officials say that closing Stewart would glean a mill in taxes each year that they can put toward infrastructure improvements at other buildings. Upgrading Stewart had an estimated cost of $17 million.

Wagner said that previous district budgets have seen losses in real estate tax revenue from businesses reassessing their properties and lowering the tax burden.

“In order to maintain the programs … the tax burden transfers to us as taxpayers,” she said.

Additionally, costs for special education placements for students are increasing.

Administration is also tasked with having fair schedules for students, teachers and an adequate number of substitutes.

District administrators are also studying the most efficient way for busing to and from school. The district currently has three runs — a high school, middle school and elementary schools — daily, Wagner said.

If administrators were to keep those three runs, fifth grade would be included in the middle school run. Wagner said she is looking to see if there would be a cost savings to change that in any way.