MARINETTE, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – A former Marinette elementary school that has sat empty nearly two years has a buyer willing to pay full price, but the buyer says the public school district has rejected the offer.
Saint Thomas Aquinas Academy, a private catholic school, wants to purchase the former Garfield Elementary building from the Marinette Public School District. However, the district says it’s looking out for taxpayers in not selling the building to potential competition.
The district closed Garfield at the end of the ’21-’22 school year as part of right-sizing efforts.
Cheryl Sporie, the chair of Saint Thomas Aquinas Academy’s board of trustees, says the district recently rejected her private offer to buy the Garfield building for the district’s asking price of $299,900.
“We just have to look at other options and it’s just unfortunate that our public school absolutely refuses to work with us,” said Sporie.
Saint Thomas Aquinas’ elementary campus is currently in Peshtigo at St. Mary Parish, about 15 or 20 minutes from the middle and high school campus, which is only six blocks from the Garfield building.
“It’s in the perfect spot for us,” said Sporie. “It brings us all back together. It’s students we already have in our system. We’re not necessarily looking to pull from the public school. We’re serving our students better.”
Marinette Public Schools Superintendent Corry Lambie says the school board requested a deed restriction to prevent any new owner from using the property to provide 4K-12 grade services.
“We’re a district right now that has a declining enrollment. If it was owned by another entity that provides these similar services, more dollars could go to that entity, which then has an adverse impact on our taxpayers.”
FOX 11 asked Lambie how many students would need to be plucked from the district for there to be a financial loss, even with the sale.
“Let’s use simple numbers, if $10,000 follows a student there, if you help me with my math – that’s 30 students. So, over the course of a few years, if it draws 30 students away from our district, there’s your $300,000 that we got for the sale.”
“We’ve been here for 100+ years, so yes we might pull some out of their system, which we’ve always done,” said Sporie. “We usually get about 10% of the student population.”
Sporie says about 60 neighbors signed a petition to keep the building a school, signaling it could be difficult for a developer to get approval to rezone the property for multi-family housing.
FOX 11 asked Lambie what the district will do if it still owns the property in a year.
“I don’t like to speculate, it’s one of those where I think because we’ve been working closely with our realtor, we’re seeing where things could potentially go. We’re just going to continue until we find that right solution for our district, for the community and for our taxpayers and see where it takes us.”
Saint Thomas Aquinas says it can wait but will look at other options.
“I am kind of thinking if we wait them out,” said Sporie. “We don’t have to do anything. We can open next year as we are right now and we’ll still be here.”
Marinette Mayor Steve Genisot says the city looked at the old school building as it considers new locations for city hall and the police department. However, the council decided it wasn’t a good fit.
Genisot says there have been no requests so far about trying to rezone the property for housing.
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