Save Armory Park

The discussion followed the defeat of the district's previous $135.6 million referendum proposal, which included a new middle school at Armory Park along with other safety, security and infrastructure projects. Board members broadly agreed that the middle school remains a major priority, but they wrestled with whether the next step should be a survey, town halls, focus groups, a communications consultant, or some combination of those tools.

The conversation marked a subtle shift from the board's April 26 working session, where members repeatedly emphasized the need to gather more input before returning to the ballot. At that meeting, board members discussed surveys, focus groups and listening sessions as complementary tools, and several members warned against rushing into another referendum without better understanding why voters rejected the April proposal.

At the April meeting, Pamela Woodard said the board needed to take the result seriously, noting that some residents questioned whether the ask was "too high" or "too much." Sandy Saltzstein raised concerns that previous focus groups had occurred too early to inform decisions about specific projects, locations or siting.

Dan Tyk was especially direct at the April meeting about the risk of ignoring survey results. He noted that the board had gone above the $125 million level where the prior survey had shown majority support, saying, "if we're going to do a survey we cannot sway from what the community tells us in that survey this time, because we will erode trust." He also cautioned that the board had "stretched beyond" what the community had indicated it might support and said, "we have to be very cautious about doing that again this time."

By contrast, the latest Committee of the Whole discussion showed the board moving away from an immediate formal survey and toward a facilitated listening process and potential help with PR, marketing or "crisis communication." Board members still talked about the need to hear from residents, but the conversation increasingly focused on whether a survey could be done well on the timeline, whether a facilitator or communications consultant was needed, and how quickly the district could organize community sessions before a possible November referendum.

Survey support fades amid timeline concerns

Board members were divided over whether a survey would help clarify the path forward. Nathan Christenson said he was skeptical of the draft survey, calling it "a bit unfocused" and questioning what the board would do with the results. W. Brett Christiansen said a survey could theoretically help the board understand why residents voted no or what they might support, but he questioned whether the board had enough time to design a survey that could answer either question well.

"I don't think a survey is a good idea," Christiansen said, because the board could not do either of those two purposes well under the current constraints.

Sandy Saltzstein, who said she had initially been leaning toward supporting a survey, also expressed concern about the timeline. She pointed to the lengthy process used to create the previous survey and questioned whether the board could produce something equally thoughtful under the current time pressure.

"I am feeling challenged on the timetable that we have to be able to provide that kind of thought to it," Saltzstein said. She suggested the board might instead build on what it had already learned and focus on "the community questions that have been raised by the question not passing."

Tyk said he had also moved away from supporting an immediate survey after reading messages from residents, including one from someone with survey experience. He floated the possibility of using the survey money — cited as costing $9,600 through School Perceptions — toward someone who could help guide or facilitate community conversations.

One board member noted that "a PR person is going to be more than that," and Tyk agreed. "That would be fair," he said, "but if that's the route we're looking anyways, we could put it towards that."

Woodard cautioned against framing the choice as survey versus public relations.

"I don't want the impression be that we'd rather do better PR than hear from people. Survey, no survey, we need to engage the community and give them an opportunity to share with us: I voted no because…" — Pamela Woodard, Whitefish Bay School Board

Lynn Raines continued to press the question of how the board would hear from residents who are unlikely to attend a town hall or board meeting. "I just continue to go back to the importance of really trying to reach every household in Whitefish Bay," Raines said. "And if we don't do a survey, how do we propose that we do that?"

Listening and marketing discussed

The discussion eventually turned toward a more structured listening process. Board members voiced concerns about holding open-ended town halls without a clear format. Board President Kristin Bencik-Boudreau said she did not want an unstructured format for town halls.

"I'm worried about town halls. I don't want to say an open, blank town hall. We need a lot more structure," she said. "We need to get our message out and say, What will you vote for now? Not necessarily, why did you vote for no before? It really doesn't matter at this point. Because we're moving forward with the new referendum, if we go to referendum."

"We need to get our message out and say, What will you vote for now? Not necessarily, why did you vote for no before? It really doesn't matter at this point." — Kristin Bencik-Boudreau, Whitefish Bay School Board President

"I do think we need to talk about what we want to do as far as a marketing person," Bencik-Boudreau said, "because I don't think just sitting down with community members is going to get us where we would need to be, either."

Christenson suggested the board may need a plan and someone who could help phase the process, while Christiansen emphasized the need to explain tradeoffs clearly — including whether residents would prefer a larger project now or a smaller referendum followed by additional needs later.

Woodard pushed back on the idea of presenting options too early, saying the board should listen before bringing specific packages to the community. "I don't want to have options going into, you know, like a town hall," Woodard said. "Because then we have not listened first."

The Armory Park location remained one of the unresolved tensions in the conversation. The district's earlier facilities planning process had considered multiple middle school options, including rebuilding or renovating the existing middle school in place, attaching a new middle school to the high school, building on a closed Henry Clay Street and tennis courts, and building on the tennis courts, Armory Park and Armory Memorial site.

In the August 2025 options development presentation, the Armory Memorial/Tennis Courts option was listed at $67.7 million, while other middle school options ranged from $66.9 million to $68.2 million, with infrastructure-only work at the existing middle school listed at $21.7 million. Other possibilities were also considered, including a new middle school at the Lydell site, a new middle school on the Armory lacrosse field, and a new middle school bridging over Henry Clay.

That earlier process ultimately led to the broader $135.6 million referendum package centered on the Armory Park/Tennis Courts middle school plan, which voters rejected.

The April 26 board discussion had a more cautionary tone, with members acknowledging the need to better understand whether voters objected primarily to cost, scope, timing, location, process or some combination of those factors. Tyk said at that earlier meeting that the board had gone beyond the prior survey's support level and warned that if the board surveyed residents again, it could not "sway from what the community tells us" without further eroding trust.

Tyk said he did not expect most residents would identify Armory Park as the main reason for voting no, but he acknowledged the risk if location concerns were larger than expected. Woodard said if the board learned that Armory Park was an overwhelming barrier, it might need to rethink the plan, revisit other options, or take more time. "If the reason was Armory Park and it was really overwhelming, then we have to think, are we still going to ask people to do that?" she said.

The board also discussed whether a future referendum should be smaller or phased. Woodard said the community had rejected "a pretty aggressive plan" and that, without a survey, the board would be left with anecdotal information about how much opposition was driven by Armory Park. She said the board may need to "peel it back" and focus especially on the middle school if that remains the key priority.

"The community said no to all of the things that we thought were in our 10 to 20 year long range maintenance plan," Woodard said. "So we are, I believe, going to have to peel it back." She added that "coming back with the exact same thing and marketing it better" would not be sufficient.

Raines, meanwhile, continued to support some kind of short survey before moving into focus groups. She said she wanted to know why people voted no and what their appetite was for doing the work all at once, in a condensed version, or in phases over time. "What I was saying was to find out… why people voted no," Raines said, and to understand "the appetite for spending it all now… or layering it out over the years."

What happens next

By the end of the meeting, the board appeared to settle on exploring a facilitator or consultant to help guide the next phase of public engagement. Bencik-Boudreau summarized the emerging direction by asking whether members agreed to "look into a facilitator," and several board members indicated support.

The board also discussed identifying potential dates in June and July, developing questions for community conversations, and improving public-facing information about why renovation of the existing middle school has been viewed as unworkable.

District administrators laid out a possible timeline for hiring outside help. Under one scenario, an RFP could be brought to the board in mid-May, posted soon after, applications could be gathered later in May, interviews could be conducted, and a facilitator could be brought back to the board for approval before a public engagement plan is developed for June.

Board members also discussed ways to make feedback easier to submit, including a Google Form or dedicated email address. Christiansen called for specific outreach to teachers and staff as part of the re-engagement process.

The likely next step is for the administration to determine whether to prepare an RFP for a facilitator or engagement consultant. If the board proceeds on the timeline discussed, it could consider that RFP at an upcoming meeting and potentially approve a facilitator by late May.

The Facilities Committee is also expected to continue working through possible project "buckets," priorities, and information that could be used for a public mailer, website updates, and future community conversations.

The central unresolved question remains whether the board's next referendum proposal will be a revised version of the previous Armory Park plan, a pared-down or phased version, or a broader reconsideration shaped by additional community feedback. The April 26 meeting suggested a board that wanted to listen before deciding. The latest meeting suggested a board still exploring listening, but increasingly focused on how to move quickly, whether to skip a formal survey, and whether PR and marketing needs to be a more central focus.

Board President Kristin Bencik-Boudreau, along with members Dan Tyk, Pamela Woodard, W. Brett Christiansen, Nate Christenson, and Sandy Saltzstein, weighed how to structure that input, what timing would allow for a meaningful process, and which projects from the failed referendum should remain priorities going forward.

Listening to the community

A through-line of the meeting was a stated commitment to hear directly from residents before assembling another referendum package. Board members discussed surveys, focus groups, and listening sessions as complementary tools.

Pamela Woodard emphasized that the board needs to take the April 7 result seriously and engage with the reasons voters said no. "We were told by different people — and the survey may or may not bear this out — that the ask was too high, and just too much," Woodard said. She recounted comments from previous listening sessions and tours where residents expressed confusion about the size and scope of the ask. "Some people just walked up and said 'I don't know, do they need all of this?'" she said.

Brett Christiansen stated the next survey should focus on narratives rather than line-item projects. "I think if we survey based on projects, we will end up similar to a spot where we are where we construct a narrative out of the projects that the community gives us, and then people go, 'Well wait a minute, that's not what I meant when I filled out this piece of data in the survey,'" Christiansen said. He suggested asking residents whether they preferred a single comprehensive ask or smaller, repeated requests over time.

Bencik-Boudreau countered that voters need concrete projects and dollar figures to react to. "We're asking them to spend their money, and I think you have to be more concrete than that," she said. "We have to come up at the end of this with a specific number if we're going to referendum. So we have to have specific projects associated with that specific number."

Sandy Saltzstein raised a sequencing concern in response to Bencik-Boudreau, who had noted that the district conducted listening sessions during the previous campaign. Saltzstein pointed out that the previous round of focus groups had been held too early in the process to inform decisions about specific projects or locations.

"The focus groups, while we did do them previously, they were a little bit earlier in the process, so they weren't really directed at project ideas or even locations or siting or any of that in the feedback that we were getting," Saltzstein said. "It was very much informing some of the prioritization pieces and looking for what our larger projects might be."

Nate Christenson raised concerns about the compressed timeline involved in commissioning another formal survey. The board would need to be ready to send a survey within roughly three weeks, with results not arriving until early August.

"My biggest issue with the survey is that it feels time-crunched to me, because I feel like that's an important data point for all the other work that we're talking about doing," Christenson said.

Tyk reflected on what the previous survey had told the board, and what the board chose to do with that information.

"We didn't take the number that the survey gave us. And yes, economic times changed, and I'm not even convinced that 125 million would have (passed), but I think if we're going to do a survey we cannot sway from what the community tells us in that survey this time, because we will erode trust." — Dan Tyk, Whitefish Bay School Board

Tyk's comments were likely in reference to the referendum question going above the $125 million threshold where a survey indicated a majority of community support.

At the January 22 meeting that set the referendum amount, Tyk and Woodard expressed reservations about the size of the ask going above the majority on the survey. Tyk said: "I don't want this to pass at 50.1% and have 49.9%. I want this to be something that brings the village together behind the schools. And that number from the survey we have is at the time was known to be that $125 (million)."

Tyk compared the board's decision-making to a household weighing what it can afford against what its members might want.

"The same way you would evaluate a project at your home — you're like, 'I would love to put an addition on and add a bathroom,' but the bank will only give me or I only have this," Tyk said. "Yes, my family's telling me they want a swimming pool outside, but I don't have the money to do it. And that's what we did. We said, 'community's telling us, I have this much money potentially for a project.' We said we have this much money, and those are important — those are needs. They're things we need to do, but we didn't have the support to spend the money or the money to do it. We stretched beyond. I voted for it and I supported it. We stretched beyond, and I think we have to be very cautious about doing that again this time. That's my message."

Tyk also raised a related question — whether voters might prefer a series of smaller asks over a single comprehensive package, even if that approach costs more over time.

"I had a conversation about this, and I equated it to people who subscribe to Netflix or Hulu," Tyk said. "Do you want to subscribe for the year — it's cheaper in the long run — or do you want to go month to month and know that in the end it's going to be more expensive, but it's more palatable to do it in those little snippets? The person unequivocally looked at me and said, 'I do everything month to month because I don't like the commitment.' That got me churning. We're planning for 20 years. We're going to try to save the money, but do we need to do it in little bites, and does that make it more palatable — although knowing and transparently trying to explain, in the long run it's going to be far more expensive, especially when you're not talking $20 a month? We're talking much bigger numbers."

Board members generally agreed that a new or substantially renovated middle school should remain the top priority, though the location or scope may be reconsidered in light of sticker shock to the cost and opposition to the proposed location at Armory Park. They emphasized that infrastructure work is still needed across the district regardless of whether a new middle school is built, including boilers nearing the end of their service life, fire alarm and sprinkler systems required for code compliance, and HVAC needs — all cited as work that cannot be deferred indefinitely.

Next steps

Several board members raised concerns about the feasibility of placing a new question on the ballot for November 2026, given the time needed for surveys, focus groups or listening sessions.

Brett Christiansen offered a counterpoint to the case for delay, drawing on his experience working with the Yes for Whitefish Bay Schools advocacy group during the previous campaign.

"With better focus on not just providing a dump of information, but providing the information that people need so that they can feel confident that in November, that voting yes is the right choice, I think we could pass something in November very similar to what we have with a slightly reduced budget," he said.

Nate Christenson pushed back on that approach, saying the board had been discussing a longer timeline to address why the referendum failed. "That's not what we've been talking about," Christenson said. "I don't disagree with you, but what we've been talking about is something different… I just think it's going to be a big push for coming up with a question by the end of August."

The board's facilities advisory sub-committee is scheduled to meet Thursday, May 7.

Information the board indicated it wants before the next major decision includes updated pricing on a renovation-in-place option for the middle school, analysis of phased or split renovation approaches and the cost those carry, sample survey instruments to review before committing to another community survey, and clarification of which projects are dictated by code requirements.

Board members did not formally decide whether to target a November 2026 or April 2027 referendum.

The April 7 vote followed months of community discussion about the referendum, which would have been the most expensive per-capita school referendum on Wisconsin's April ballot. The package included a new middle school on the site of Armory Park alongside other safety, security and infrastructure projects.

Residents who opposed the referendum included veterans, longtime homeowners, young families, parents of current students, and retirees. Common themes included concerns about the cost, the loss of mature trees and green space, the relocation of the veterans memorial, and the size of the project relative to the district's enrollment trends.

Thank you to every Whitefish Bay neighbor who took the time to learn the details, talk with friends and family, and show up to vote.

The conversation continues. The school district is now planning its next steps, and we'll keep covering board meetings and opportunities for residents to share input. Stay subscribed to receive updates as new information becomes available.