County clears way for nature school in park

Plans for Sugar Maple Nature School to open this fall at Ozaukee County’s Hawthorne Hills County Park are in full swing with approval last week of its building and site plan.

In addition, only one seat is available for a second grader while the other grade levels are filled and have waiting lists.

The building plan calls for a 70-by-120-foot one-story building containing eight classrooms, one of which will be used for offices for an administrator, nurse, counselor and speech pathologist, Director of Education Cindy Raimer said.

It will be located on a five-acre “exclusive parcel” near the park’s maintenance building and a campground being developed immediately to the west.

Approval of the plan by the county Natural Resources Committee allows the school to begin construction.

The school is moving from its former home at Riveredge Nature Center to Ozaukee County’s Hawthorne Hills Park. The first modular pieces of its new schoolhouse recently arrived from Mobile Modular, the Illinois company constructing the building.

Raimer said school officials are just waiting for the ground to dry out to begin pouring the foundation. She said she expects everything to be ready when the school opens on Sept. 3.

The classroom building will replace the iconic yurts the school utilized at Riveredge, but outdoor learning will still be the school’s hallmark, Raimer said.

“We will create tree stump and bench circles where learning will take place, as well as in the woods,” she said.

The school also will have access beyond its five acres to use the 57-acre Hawthorne Hills Park and 67-acre Shady Lane Natural Area as an outdoor classroom and learning lab, including the park’s nearby pond and the Milwaukee River,

The school is a charter school of the Northern Ozaukee School District, making it a tuition-free public school.

Enrollment is currently capped at 104 and has 103 students enrolled for the coming year from kindergarten through sixth grade.

The one opening is in second grade, Raimer said.

There is a waiting list for every other grade — the school has combined third-fourth and fifth-sixth grades. The kindergarten waiting list is 23 students long, Raimer said.

Students attending are from 16 area school districts, some from as far away as Whitefish Bay, Slinger, Glendale and Cedar Grove-Belgium, Raimer said.

The school announced last month it is receiving a $1 million grant from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction to add middle school classes.

The Wisconsin Charter School Program grant will allow the school to add grades six to eight in the coming years, Raimer said.

The committee’s approval came with a proviso that the school return to the committee if County Planning and Parks Director Andrew Struck feels the building should be painted a different color so that it blends in with existing nearby county buildings.

The school and the county recently amended the school’s lease arrangement to allow it to hold classes at the park through 2029, two years longer than the school’s previous agreement with the county. The original agreement was for three years, through June 30, 2027.

In addition, the investment by the school has grown significantly as officials recently learned it needs to dig a well separate from the park’s and requires an upgraded electrical system.

Both school and county officials have described the agreement as temporary and said the school is still looking for a permanent “forever home,” that may or may not be on county-owned land.

The extension was necessary because a commercial construction loan the school took out to support the school’s development requires the loan to be five years to match the school’s charter with the Northern Ozaukee School District.

The school will pay for the electrical upgrade itself, but the county will have to pay for the new well and be reimbursed by the school.

The construction of the new well will be $71,592, plus a 15% contingency of $10,739 for a total of $82,331.

The county must take the lead on construction of the new well to meet requirements for public bidding and permitting.

The school is paying rent to the county for use of the 5.5-acre site. Under the updated agreement, total rent through 2029 will be $375,666.

While not saying it’s more likely that the school will become a permanent fixture at Hawthorne Hills, Struck said the increased investment certainly makes it more difficult for the school to abandon the site after only a few years.

Extending the agreement by two years adds one complication to the county’s plans to build campgrounds at the park.

Construction has begun on the first phase of the campground —13 campsites and five sites for recreational vehicles.

The school is located on where the second phase of the campground is planned. That phase will include 27 RV campsites. Construction on that phase was expected to begin after the school vacated the spot in three years.

County Administrator Jason Dzwinel said he was confident that a way would be found to accommodate both plans.

“The school and the campground can coexist,” he said.