Thursday, September 19, 2024
MARINETTE – The former Garfield Elementary School building in Marinette wasn’t as empty as it should have been after the Marinette School District closed it in a rightsizing two years ago, public records suggest.
Several juveniles were apprehended and accused of burglary, criminal damage to property and trespassing involving three incidents in July, after they apparently entered the building through an unsecured door, according to police reports. The juveniles, whose names were redacted from the police reports for privacy reasons, allegedly defaced hallways and lockers with red spray paint, set off fire extinguishers, sprayed shaving cream around the basement and broke windows, bathroom fixtures and a ceiling tile, according to the police reports.
On over 25 occasions between July 2022 and July 2024, Marinette police responded to the vacant school for suspicious activity or with canines, according to a police log the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty obtained while investigating the vacant building at 1615 Carney in Marinette. Details weren’t available on most of the calls. The nonprofit sent Marinette School District officials a Notice of Claim and Injury on June 25 related to the property after the school district rejected St. Thomas Aquinas Academy’s former board president Cheryl Sporie’s full-price offer of $299,000 and imposed a restrictive deed, barring the property’s sale to another school.
The vandalism is relevant to the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty’s effort to encourage the building to remain a school, despite a restrictive deed the Marinette School District placed on the property to prevent a sale to St. Thomas Aquinas Academy or its former board president Cheryl Sporie, who made a full-price offer of$299,000 for the property in February. A state law prohibits public school districts from holding property at taxpayers’ expense without an educational purpose, Greuel said.
Marinette School District closed Garfield Elementary School and Menekaunee Sunrise Early Learning Center after a rightsizing in 2022. The early learning center sold soon thereafter, while Garfield was allowed to stand vacant.
Sporie said she made a full-price offer for the school herself because dealing with so many boards can be cumbersome and slow. She said received the Bishop’s approval to purchase the building on behalf of the Catholic school. “I thought the Marinette School Board would be able to negotiate with me,” she said. Instead, in response to her offer, the school district attached a restrictive deed prohibiting the sale of the property to a competing school.
By stalling the sale, the Marinette School District is violating a state statute, Greuel said. “By refusing to sell the property and continuing to leave it vacant, the district is creating a public nuisance and exposing taxpayers to additional harm and expense,” said Greuel in the Notice of Claim,
“We’ve done quite a few Open Records requests and have found there have been thousands of dollars of damage to the school building because it’s been sitting vacant,” Greuel told a reporter. Each time a fire extinguisher is misused potentially can result in tens of thousands of dollars in damage, according to a Marinette police report.
“Police have been called out there a number of times to handle these public break-ins, so it’s a huge public nuisance,” Greuel said.
Police records indicate juveniles were involved with serious vandalism to the school on three occasions in July, including:
July 10: Video footage showed four juveniles entered the building and went to the gym, where they kicked and threw balls at the ceiling, breaking a ceiling tile. A Christmas tree was smashed to the ground, a garbage can was thrown, a desk was kicked into a wall, and an American flag was taken out of the building and later turned in to police, according to the police reports.
July 11: Officers responded to a report of alarms going off at the school building. No one was in the building when they arrived, but a back door was open. On the second floor, a fire extinguisher had been sprayed in the hallway and a first-floor safe was broken with papers left scattered around it. Video footage allowed school personnel and a school resource officer to identify the juveniles involved in the vandalism.
July 16: Officers responded to a trespass call at the school building and found three bicycles outside and three juveniles inside, who said they entered the building through an unlocked door. A police report describes fresh fire extinguisher power in the gym, and red spray paint on the walls, floor, lockers and other areas near the gym. In the basement, police found shaving cream sprayed on the walls and floors. Police apprehended the three juveniles and handcuffed them with hands behind their back. They called their parents to pick them up. Police completed referral forms for the juveniles with charges of burglary, criminal damage to property and trespassing, according to the public records.
In response to HILL’s allegations about creating a nuisance to the community by leaving the building vacant, Marinette Public Schools Superintendent Corry Lambie said,
“We want to be good neighbors - and good stewards of the district’s resources. Therefore, the school district promptly addresses any type of vandalism to any of our properties, with the help of the Marinette Police Department. We monitor and maintain the Garfield building with our District’s maintenance team and intend to continue to do so until the sale of the property is finalized.”
Lambie earlier said a sale to a competitive school could have financial implications for Marinette Public Schools. This stance prompted the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) to become involved. It sent a Notice of Claim and Injury to the district on June 25 after the school district rejected St. Thomas Aquinas Academy’s former board president Cheryl Sporie’s full-price offer of $299,000 and imposed a restrictive deed, barring the property’s sale to another school.
The Notice of Claim, which accuses the school district of violating a state law by delaying the sale of the building, might have encouraged the school board to approve a sale of the building to Anything You Want LLC, a housing redeveloper based in Green Bay that apparently intends to convert the school building to housing units. The Marinette School Board approved Anything You Want’s offer for $265,500 at a special meeting Aug. 30. The sale is contingent on the city’s approval of a zoning change, she said.
Sporie said over 200 Marinette residents signed a petition that asked the Marinette School Board not to approve the zoning change. Many residents want the building to remain a school, she said. As of Monday, Sept. 16, the issue wasn’t on the agenda for the City of Marinette’s Planning Committee or Zoning Board of Appeals.
The Notice of Claim cited Wisconsin Statute 893, which prohibits a district from using taxpayer dollars to maintain a building it’s not using. Holding on to a vacant school building to prevent others from establishing a school there isn’t a state-approved expense, Greuel said.
“WILL has brought forth a claim on behalf of three citizens. We are following our district’s processes for handling any claims, and we will continue to do so,” Lambie said.
Greuel said, Marinette School District hasn’t acted in the best interests of the community by delaying the sale of the former Garfield School property. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty is representing St. Thomas Aquinas Academy and Sporie.
“Our clients have put in two offers – one a full-priced offer—which have either been declined or they let the offer expire simply because St. Thomas Aquinas wants to use the building for education purposes and the school district doesn’t want it used as a school. It’s kind of an interesting claim that a school district doesn’t want it used as a school,” Greuel said, noting quite a few community members want it to stay a school.
The Institute’s Notice of Claim was sent to Terri Florek, school board president and Tom Faller, school board clerk on June 25.
The Marinette School District said the deed restriction prohibiting a competing school from purchasing the property was designed “to safeguard the district’s financial interests” by preventing more income-based education vouchers for St. Thomas Aquinas Academy students, which might occur if the Catholic school expanded.
“Given the already limited state funding for public schools, it is our responsibility to make decisions that prioritize our students’ educational opportunities to support the excellent programs and services we offer. We also have a fiscal duty to the taxpayers to manage our resources responsibly,” Lambie said in a statement provided to the Peshtigo Times.
But Sporie said the public school district is over-estimating the financial impact of keeping the building a school because only a fraction of private school students qualify for state vouchers, which are based on income. About 50 St. Thomas Aquinas Academy students receive vouchers, she said, or less than one-third of its enrollment.
“Our total student population is less than what they lost to other school districts” through Open Enrollment, Sporie said.
In a Letter to the Editor of the Peshtigo Times, Sporie cited Open Enrollment data from the State of Wisconsin indicating the Marinette public school district lost a total of 445 students to public schools in other communities in the 2021-2022 and 2020-2021 school years combined. The trend continued in 2022-2023, when Marinette schools lost 216 students to schools in other communities. The Marinette School District refused to provide enrollment numbers to a reporter.
In comparison, Peshtigo public schools saw more student transfers into its school district than transfers out in the same years, the state data shows.
If St. Thomas Aquinas Academy acquired the former Garfield School building, it planned to move its elementary program to Marinette from Peshtigo, so its pre-K to grade 5 school would be closer to its high school in Marinette, Sporie said. The deed restriction hadn’t been imposed before Sporie made her full-price offer, she said, and it contradicted information on the real estate listing that described the property as suitable for a school or child-care center.
The district’s rationale that it would lose state funds was exaggerated because state vouchers for private school students are based on income, she said.
Marinette schools lose more money to other neighboring public schools than they do to St. Thomas Aquinas, she said.
According to information on a State of Wisconsin education website, the amount of money the state transfers with each qualified Open Enrollment student to the new school was $8,125 in 2022-21 or $12,977 for pupils with disabilities. The amount rose to $8,224 in 2022-23 or $13,076 for pupils with disabilities.
Besides Peshtigo, some Marinette families have chosen to send their children to public schools in Crivitz or other nearby communities, as Wisconsin’s Open Enrollment program provides, Sporie said. “It’s taxpayers’ money, and parents should be allowed a choice in how they want their children educated,” she said.
