Four paths, one decision.
A ~40-person task force spent five months evaluating how to put the Shorewood School District on long-term financial footing. Their report isn't a final recommendation — it hands the Board a clear-eyed look at the tradeoffs. This is a guide to that work.
Like many Wisconsin districts, Shorewood faces structural budget pressure: constrained state funding, rising operational costs, and declining enrollment. The current operating referendum — $5.5 million per year for five years — expires in 2028, and the report concludes the status quo is not a viable long-term path. The Board now has to choose between three leading reconfiguration scenarios (selected from seven originally evaluated) and the costlier alternative of standing still.
The task force's job wasn't to pick. It was to bring approximately 40 parents, educators, staff, and residents through a structured evaluation — a seven-criterion rubric, student focus groups, scenario rankings, and a 4½-hour scoring summit — and to lay the math and the human costs side by side.
What follows is an interactive walk through the four scenarios on the Board's desk: a scorecard, a side-by-side comparison tool, a building-by-building view, the four central tensions the task force surfaced, and the timeline of the work itself.
Four scenarios, scored.
At the March 14 Scenario Evaluation Summit, the task force scored all seven candidate scenarios against a seven-criterion rubric (scale of 1–4, where 4 is highest). The three leading configurations and Status Quo are shown here. The combined score is derived by multiplying the financial score by the non-financial score, reflecting the Board's charge: financial sustainability while maintaining academic excellence.
Projected annual savings
Recurring savings relative to the current operating model. None of the scenarios eliminate the need for an operating referendum.
Compare any two scenarios.
Pick two scenarios to see their numbers, strengths, and concerns line up. Bullet points are drawn verbatim from the task force's structured assessment on March 23, 2026 (Appendix B of the report).
Who goes where, building by building.
Shorewood operates four school buildings: Lake Bluff, Atwater, Shorewood Intermediate School (SIS), and Shorewood High School (SHS). Each scenario assigns grade bands and enrollment differently — and some buildings change purpose entirely.
The hard tradeoffs.
The task force's deliberations surfaced four persistent tensions. These aren't disagreements to be resolved by majority vote — they're value-laden choices the Board must weigh. Each dot below marks where a scenario lands on that axis.
How they got here.
Nine sessions across five months, anchored by a structured evaluation summit in March and a final review in late April. The next community information session is scheduled for May 18, 2026.
May 18, 2026.
The District scheduled another Community Information Session about this work. The Board's deliberation continues afterward; this report is intended as input, not the final word.