Residents Lose Battle to Leave Waukesha School District

About 200 residents in the City and Town of Brookfield on Tuesday lost a renewed battle to detach from the Waukesha School District and join the Elmbrook district.

The state Department of Public Instruction's School District Boundary Appeal Board denied requests by residents in the Black Forest, Summit Lawn, Emerald Ridge and Shire subdivisions located on the west and southwest side of the city and in the town.

The panel cited economics and the harm to the Waukesha School District, which could lose about $61 million in equalized property tax base if the 200 properties moved from one school district to the other. The homesites average about $300,000 in equalized value.  

Some of the residents involved have fought this for years, with this being their third appeal before the state panel. 

Brookfield resident Peter Crow said the decision was frustrating for families who are connected to Brookfield and Elmbrook communities, not Waukesha ones, including park and recreation programs.

"I am very disappointed," Crow said. "I don't have the answers, but our neighborhood is being punished for no other reason than tax revenue and greed."

He and other parents have said they live as close as across the street from Wisconsin Hills Middle School but under the current boundaries, are required to drive much further to schools in the Waukesha School District.

"I can't imagine the reasoning as to why I have to drive 25 minutes away from home to Waukesha North (High School), across freeways and some of the state's most dangerous intersections, when Brookfield Central is five minutes away and you could safely bike there," Crow said.

"Furthermore, I do believe Elmbrook offers a superior education with less distraction for my kids," Crow added. "Nobody in the neighborhood wants to sound elitist but there is a known and clear bad element found in the Waukesha school system that honestly isn't nearly as prevalent in Brookfield."

Crow said Brookfield families in the affected neighborhoods are choosing to send their children to private and parochial schools rather than Waukesha public schools, and some try to open enroll into Elmbrook with mixed success.

"If we are not choiced in to the Elmbrook school system for high school, my wife and I will be forced to move," said Crow, whose children attend St. John Vianney School in Brookfield, which teachers pre-kindergarten to 8th grade students.

The Elmbrook School Board in February voted in support of accepting the . The same night the Waukesha School Board voted against the petitions.

Because the two communities did not agree, the residents appealed to the state boundary panel. The panel conducted two hearings in Madison on Tuesday, one regarding a petition covering 129 properties in the Black Forest, Summit Lawn and southern part of the Shire subdivisions. The other hearing covered 71 properties in the Emerald Ridge subdivision. 

Organizers said they obtained detachment petition signatures from about 85 percent of the 71 properties and about 70 percent of the 129 properties. They said they didn't try for 100 percent endorsement because the state detachment rules required only 50 percent of signatures be obtained.

Elmbrook Superintendent Matt Gibson had said in February that Waukesha school officials had approached Elmbrook about the possibility of negotiating a voluntary boundary agreement that would settle ongoing disputes about neighborhoods near the districts' borders.

Crow said he understands why some people would say families shouldn't have bought homes that are part of the Waukesha School District if they didn't want to send their children there.

He said some homebuyers without children didn't realize which district it was in. 

"For my wife and me, we were told back in 2004 when we bought our lot that it was very easy to be choiced into Elmbrook and eventually we would be annexed into the city," Crow said.