The entrance to the Shiocton school building is seen April 27, 2026, as students return to classes for the first time in eight days following historic flooding. PC: Fox 11 Online
SHIOCTON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Rather than extend the school year, the School District of Shiocton is requesting a one-year waiver from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
The resolution was passed unanimously. With it, the Superintendent will now ask for a waiver.
The district had already used its two pre-scheduled days for inclement weather before missing 8 days due to flooding.
“Can’t really account for natural disasters, especially to the magnitude of what happened here in the village,” said Garrett Zimmerman, Shiocton School District Superintendent.
The lack of days remaining in this school year leading to the waiver request.
We don’t have any opportunities to add up minutes or take away school days, like no school days. So, it’s kind of limiting some of our choices if it weren’t to go through or weren’t to happen,” said Zimmerman.
Now, Broad St. in Shiocton is dry. However, Superintendent Zimmerman said, when school was closed, it was covered with fast-moving water.
“We couldn’t get back to the building in any way,” said Zimmerman.
Parents and teachers at Monday’s meeting said the students may have missed out on school minutes, but not lessons.
“A very large majority of our students were learning about our things in our community. Learning about volunteer work, learning about compassion and seeing the numbers of the community struggling,” said Amy Austin, who has children in the district.
The community is undergoing joint preliminary damage assessments. Next, it’ll be up to the state to submit a federal declaration to FEMA for aid.
Wisconsin Emergency Management provided an update Monday.
According to a press release:
The process begins with a FEMA desk review of the information collected during the initial damage assessments that occurred in impacted counties. This step minimizes the need for on-site visits and prioritizes areas needing further assessment.
It is important to note JPDAs do not look at every home damaged but use sampling methods to develop an accurate picture of overall impacts.
After this process concludes, it will be up to the state after analyzing the data, if there are grounds to request a federal declaration. The deadline for Wisconsin to submit a declaration request is May 23. There is more information on the federal declaration process on FEMA’s website: https://www.fema.gov/disaster/how-declared.
“A lot of my friends and such were affected and have flooded basements. So many furnaces were lost,” said Austin.
Austin and Zimmerman said volunteer work made a big difference.
“Two weeks ago, this place was underwater, you can’t really tell. Now there’s still families fighting for their homes. Still a lot of work to do, but full credit to the village and all the volunteers for what they’ve done,” said Zimmerman.
The damage has been done, and the Shiocton community is on its way back to normal.
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