Colfax School District: Together Everyone Accomplishes More

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU) - “Together, everyone, accomplishes, more. And that is our motto moving forward.”

For Colfax superintendent Bill Yingst, this is his 30th year in Vikings Country. Entering a new school year, Yingst wants teachers, staff, and of course the students to push the theme, ‘One Team’ every chance they get.

“We’re in the people business and the kids especially like social contact and being with their friends and it’s been huge this year, a totally different feel,” Yingst said.

A pride point for the Colfax School District is out of their fleet of 17 school buses, 10 are propane-powered. It dates back to an energy-efficient project in 2013.

“We ran the entire school year on 54 cents a gallon with the LP buses. It’s been a great thing for our students, the buses run quiet, they burn clean, they are energy efficient and it’s been great for the taxpayers as well,” Yingst said.

Yingst said the teacher shortage has impacted many school districts across the state, including Colfax.

“The well is going dry. There’s just not the candidates, we are all just fighting for the same candidates and when you live in a geographical area like the Chippewa Valley, you got the large schools, the medium schools and the small schools and we all need English teachers, we all need math teachers, and we all need science teachers,” Yingst said.

While no one wants to go through the challenges of the past two years ever again, Yingst said one thing is for certain: the pandemic has proven to be a lesson on resiliency.

“In running a school district, nobody handed us a playbook, here’s what you do during a pandemic and here’s how you run your school. We learned a lot of positives, we had to be a little more creative and more specific but learned some things coming out of it,” Yingst said.

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