La Crosse School District unveils short-term solutions for overcrowding

LA CROSSE, Wis. (WKBT) — The La Crosse School District is brainstorming solutions to deal with overcrowding at some of its schools.

When Northside Elementary School first opened in 2014, it was about 80 students below capacity. Two years later the school is now 20 students over capacity, with a waiting line.

The elementary school shares its space the Coulee Montessori Elementary School.

To prevent any more overcrowding,  the district has come up with three possible short term solutions.

“One of those is to move the fifth graders at Northside Elementary over to Logan Middle next year. Another is parse up the Coulee Montessori students and move the fourth and fifth grade students over to Lincoln Middle. Then a third option is to stay pat with what we have at this point, provide some additional staffing to support the students and staff at Northside,” said Randy Nelson, superintendent of the La Crosse School District.

The district did turn down a proposal to buy the former TCI building off of Highway 16 for more than two million dollars.

The purchase was part of the district’s plan to move the Hogan Administrative Center into the empty space.

It would have made room for the Coulee Montessori program  to move into the Administrative building, freeing up about 140 spots at Northside.