ESCANABA — The Escanaba School District will be reduced by one school when starting the 2020-2021 school year after the school board voted to close Soo Hill Elementary Dec. 16.

A timeline has been created to make the move for students, teachers and administration as smooth as possible.

“We hope to identify locations for all classrooms by late January,” said Escanaba Superintendent Coby Fletcher. “We already have a good idea of the number of teachers needed for each grade, and we should be able to assign teachers to specific grades by March after we know who will be retiring at the end of the current school year. The actual moving will occur over the summer.”

Current first grade students attending Soo Hill Elementary will consolidate with the current first grade students attending Lemmer Elementary next school year in second grade.

Second grade students currently at Soo Hill will go to the Escanaba Upper Elementary as third graders in the 2020-2021 school year, along with current third graders who would transfer to the Upper Elementary as fourth graders.

Students who will be sixth graders next school year will attend the Escanaba High School, with the seventh and eighth graders.

“We already have enough classrooms to move the current sixth grade class to the junior high next year,” said Fletcher. “We’ve identified a couple more classrooms not currently being used for instructional purposes that we can convert. Either way, we have plenty of space.”

Fletcher has a plan of two years to convert the self-contained sixth grade program, currently taught, into a middle school model starting the 2022-2023 school year. Sixth grade students will move from class to class like the junior high students. According to Fletcher, it will open up many new course opportunities to the sixth graders.

Closing Soo Hill Elementary will reduce the need for a principal and secretarial position. Fletcher said because the Soo Hill building is closing, it doesn’t mean the current principal, Paulette Wickham, and secretary, Tara Gartner, will not have a job with Escanaba in the 2020-2021 school year.

“When administrative positions are reduced, we look at the entire administrative group when making the decision. This means the principal whose building is closed may not actually be the principal who is reduced,” said Fletcher. “When we reduce secretarial positions we follow the union contract in making our decision.”

Administrative assignments will be announced as early as January 2020.

The Soo Hill building is in good condition and has been well-maintained, according to Fletcher. The district will give the Delta-Schoolcraft Intermediate School District (ISD) right of first refusal to purchase the building. Currently the building is being appraised. Fletcher is hopeful the building will be sold by June 2020.

“There is no legal requirement for the district to bid out real estate when selling … We see many long term advantages to the ISD moving their Learning Center program to the Soo Hill location,” Fletcher said.

If the ISD decides not to purchase the building, the district will put it out for bid immediately.