Ad hoc committee recommends $349 million "Model F" to modernize Wauwatosa secondary schools

A volunteer secondary school ad hoc committee presented its recommendation to the Wauwatosa School Board on March 3, 2026, urging the board to pursue "Model F," which would retain and renovate all four secondary buildings to modern learning standards, with an early cost estimate of about $349 million.

The committee's external facilitator, Paige Richards of Build Capacity Consulting, told the board the committee of 24 volunteers spent hundreds of hours touring the district's secondary facilities, reviewing the district's Analysis of Learning Spaces and hearing from education and construction experts. Richards said the committee's work was deliberately process-driven: "My job was to support this group of humans to really come together and for them to determine their own outcomes," she said, stressing the advisory role of the committee.

Committee presenters said deferred maintenance in district buildings already totals roughly $165 million and argued that simply funding only that backlog would not address accessibility, safety or the need for modern instructional spaces. "We need to, and quite frankly, have to do something," said Michael Hayden, a committee representative and East High parent, summarizing the tours and the facilities analysis that informed the group's view.

The committee's recommended Model F preserves the district's four secondary-school footprints (East, West, Whitman and Longfellow), modernizes and renovates instructional spaces, and keeps specialty facilities such as pools, theaters and…