News: Abbotsford - Abby & Colby School Consolidation (11 Mar 1996)

Transcriber: Robert Lipprandt
bob@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Gillaspie, Thompson

----Source: The Tribune-Phonograph (Abbotsford, WI) 3/13/2019

Originally published in the Tribune-Phonograph, March 11, 1996

A provision of Gov. Thompson’s education budget now under debate in the legislature would make school consolidation more palatable and profitable for those districts considering mergers.

If the Abbotsford and Colby school districts consolidated, for example, the 10 percent extra aids suggested in the budget would produce about $2.7 million in extra receipts of the next five years.

Current regulations state that districts consolidating will receive an extra five percent aid for three years. The new provision, which is under debate in the Senate, increased the incentive to10 percent and five years.

Abby Supt. Brad Gillaspie, taking figures from the DPT’s 1990-1991 Basic Facts book, noted that Abbotsford received $1,660,284 in state aids, and Colby received $3,748,274. Ten percent of those combined figures is about $541,000 annually and that multiplied over five years is just over $2.7 million.

Although consolidation talk often occurs on an informal basis in Abbotsford and Colby, there has been no official discussion of the topic recently, and no attempt to bring it to the table for a couple of years.

Two years ago the Colby school board voted to ask the Abbotsford board to consider the formation of a joint committee to talk about the consolidation issue. The Abbotsford board declined to discuss it and the subject was dropped.