The School Expansion Committee met on May 2nd to discuss questions that church and school members have posed in advance of the school expansion presentation that will be held this Sunday, May 7th at 11:45am during Immanuel’s Open Forum and Voters Meeting. The Committee then formulated the following Q&A to answer those questions. (Please scroll down to the April 20th Update to see the actual building plans that will be presented.)
Answers to questions submitted to the
School Expansion Committee
May, 2023
Q. What are the plans for the usage of the new and existing classrooms once our new school expansion fills up?
A. Exact plans may change based on future class sizes, exact needs, etc. but one option would be to have Preschool, Kindergarten, and 1st grade in the new addition, Wrap Around Care in the current 2nd grade classroom, either 2nd grade and 3rd grade or 4th grade and 5th grade downstairs in the current kindergarten and preschool classrooms, and Robotics sharing the current space that the library is in. If needed, the classroom that is currently the 4th grade classroom could also be split in two.
Q. With this plan we are losing a space that is currently being used as a workspace/office for our Release-Time Teacher, and it doesn’t look like the new plan has any additional office space in it.
A. At first there will be space available. See answer above regarding splitting 4th grade classroom when needed.
Q. New storage areas in the plans are labeled for gym storage and custodial storage, but what about storage for teaching supplies (curriculum, art, Sunday School, VBS, etc.)
A. It is true that some of the planned storage space “took a hit” as the committee adjusted the plans to reduce the overall cost of the building. It is felt that we can be smarter about our storage options. There are plans to add storage space (cabinets) in new and existing classrooms.
Q. Will anything be done to improve lighting in the existing lower-level hallway?
A. Yes, improved stairway/hallway lighting should be part of the remodeling of the lower level. Also, the existing doors in the middle of the school out to the upper parking lot will be replaced with windows, so that might provide some natural light to the stairway.
Q. Are there plans for a light switch in the gym by the set of doors into the gym on the northeast side (current exterior doors which will become interior doors) at the bottom of the new stairs?
A. Yes. It is likely that code will require this.
Q. What will expanding the school allow us to do that we can’t do now?
A. We will be able to reach more children (space for 70-80 more students) with our Gospel message. We will have a dedicated concession and eating space and a much larger public gathering area for sporting events and other church and school activities that take place in the gym.
Q. If we don’t expand the school what is likely the effect on our school?
A. We would have to turn families away. We already have a waiting list for our 5th and 6th grade classroom for next year due to class-size limits. Also, we would either have to limit the size of our lower grades, or turn existing children away after they reach 5th grade.
Q. What is the projected enrollment for the next several years?
A. Our past total K-8 enrollment for the last 5 years has been:
2018 - 75
2019 - 91 (21% increase)
2020 - 99 (9% increase)
2021 - 105 (6% increase)
2022 - 120 (current year) (14% increase)
2023 - 125 that we are expecting to enroll, so by the time school starts, it may be around 130? (8% increase)
That’s an average of around a 12% increase per year. Will we continue to grow that way? Only the Lord truly knows.
Q. How many of our students are from member families and how many are from non-member families?
A. For next year’s 125 students, the breakdown is:
91 members (73%), 16 non-members (13%), 12 prospect (10%), 6 other WELS churches (5%).
Q. What is the process for having non-members enroll in our school?
A. In short, when a family submits an application, one of the Pastors and the principal meet with them to discuss the combined mission of Immanuel Church, School, and Preschool. They stress the importance and benefit of family and school sharing a unified goal in Christian Education. If the family is open to learning more about Immanuel through our God+Me class, they are accepted as a prospect. If there is a firmly stated lack of interest in knowing what their children will be learning in our school or preschool, the Pastors and principal attempt to lovingly inform the family that Immanuel might not be the best fit for their family, and they would make the recommendation to the School Board that the student’s application not be accepted. (This has happened only once in the past 6 years.) When one of the parents takes/completes the God + Me class, if they choose to become a member, they are moved to our member-tuition status. If they choose not to become a member of Immanuel, they are moved to the non-member tuition status. If they don’t take the class after a year or two (depending on our continued conversations and communications with them), the Pastors and principal will meet with them again to continue encouraging them to take the class. They would also be moved to the non-member tuition status at that time.
Q. Do we have an intentional process for sharing the gospel with non-member families who send their children to our school?
A. Yes, definitely.
Q. If we expand, how many new teachers will be needed?
A. Possibly three new teachers would be needed over a 5-to-6-year period: 1) split 5th and 6th grade 2) split 7th and 8th grade, and 3) we eventually might need a full-time special education teacher.
Q. How many of our preschool students enroll in kindergarten?
A. The percentage of preschoolers that have continued on to Immanuel kindergarten for the past 6 years has been 85% overall.
2017/2018 12 out of 16 75%
2018/2019 10 out of 11 91%
2019/2020 7 out of 9 78%
2020/2021 7 out of 9 78%
2021/2022 7 out of 7 100%
2022/2023 14 out of 15 93%
Q. Where will students come from? Manitowoc is not growing. What other demographic studies have been done?
A. The students are coming from our own families and also via word-of-mouth encouragements from our school families to other families. Most of our new students from non-member families are children who had previously been in MPSD schools. And Manitowoc is actually growing. It’s not growing at the same rate as some other cities about the same size, but there has been about a 1% growth over the past few years.
Q. I did not understand the following statement from the minutes of last meeting: “Number of kids & siblings of current students used in number projections. 5 years = 12, 13, 18, 6, 10”
A. This is a list of the number of siblings of our current students who will be of Kindergarten age in the next 5 years. (This is to the best of our knowledge – there might be more we are not aware of.) This includes all families: member, non-member, prospect, and other WELS. For example, next year there will be 12 students who will be Kindergarten age and are siblings of current students.
Q. What is the additional cost for taking care of a larger building?
A. Some of the extra expenses include: more custodial time, extra teachers, and higher utility bills. This would be analyzed as part of the feasibility study
Q. What are your thoughts about how to cover those costs?
A. The plan was to estimate these costs and include 2 years’ worth of these extra costs in any sort of capital campaign that was done. After that, these would become budgeted items.
Q. If we go ahead when would we plan to start building?
A. The earliest possible start would be the spring of 2024.
Q. How will this school expansion affect traffic flow and parking?
A. A couple parking spots would be lost in our upper parking lot between church and school. Through redesigning our parking layout, we can actually gain a couple spots in the lower parking lot. See drawings.
Q. Where are these parking spots going? How will there be room for a turnaround and parking spots in the upper parking lot? Where are the ADA spots?
A. See drawings.
Q. Is MLHS planning to add a middle school to their property? How does that affect our plans?
A. Although there have been very preliminary talks about this at MLHS, it is not an actual plan at this point. MLHS has not yet contacted any of the federation churches or schools about this. If this idea is seriously considered it will be much further down the road and will not be ready in time for Immanuel’s current needs. To be seriously considered by all our federation grade schools and MLHS, there would have to be discussions about how something like that might affect our current situation, where our Lutheran grade schools are closely integrated with our churches, and our pastors are able to interact with our school children and their families.
Q. It was stated that the addition to the north of the gym is not feasible because “the structure of the north wall of the gym would have to be increased to take the expansion”. Wouldn’t the longer east also have to be reinforced to take the extra load?
A. The alternate plan that would have involved expanding our school building to north of the gym would have involved actually moving the gym to the north, which is why the wall would have had to be reinforced. Other alternate plans that would have added classrooms to the north of the gym (perhaps early childhood), were rejected because it was felt that integrating the early childhood, lower grades, and upper grades together in the school building was an important feature that should not be given up. And expanding to the north of the gym would have also required sprinkling the whole school building which was determined to be a significant cost increase to the project.
Q. Why do we need two bathrooms in each of the new classrooms? Do we even need one in each of the new classrooms?
A. With adding three more classrooms to accommodate up to 80 more students, additional bathrooms are needed. An earlier plan included adding these new bathrooms where the existing 2nd grade classroom exists. However, the current design actually fits better into the space, still allowing us to add three additional classrooms without having to eliminate an existing classroom in order to accommodate more bathrooms. This plan also has other advantages over adding a larger boys and girls bathroom.
