Goodland Elementary School (Racine, Wisconsin)

Goodland Elementary School is an elementary school located at 4800 Graceland Boulevard in Racine, Wisconsin, which opened in 1962. Part of the Racine Unified School District, Goodland is the district's only. The school is surrounded by Graceland Boulevard on the south, Ohio Street on the east, Lutheran Church of the Resurrection on the north, and Graceland Gardens Apartments (across the city of Racine's border with Mount Pleasant on the west. As of 2019, the school has 190 enrolled students.

History
As early as 1943, the city of Racine owned what it described as "vacant school property, outside of City... Near Graceland and Ohio." By 1950, the Racine Board of Education owned two large plots of land outside the city of Racine that were reserved for future school construction, one on the western side of Ohio Street at Sixteenth Street (now the location of Starbuck Middle School), and the other west of Graceland Cemetery.

By 1959, there was a growing (and ultimately successful) push to consolidate the Racine Board of Education with the surrounding rural and suburban schools, creating the Racine Unified School District. In that year, the Board announced it would build a new elementary school on the Graceland site, less than half a mile from Mygatts School, which was planning to replace its own building at the time. Voters in the Mygatts district were opposed to consolidation, and a Racine Journal Times editorial described the Graceland proposal as "pressure for consolidation". The Racine Board of Education decided in September 1960 to name the new school for, former publisher of the Racine Times-Call, mayor of Racine, and governor of Wisconsin. The school opened to students on September 5, 1962, with 23 classrooms and space to accommodate 700 pupils.

In 2016, Goodland became the first school in the Racine Unified School District to offer classes. The district created a "phase-out" plan for the school in 2017, in which Goodland would not accept new non-Montessori students, and when the existing non-Montessori students had all reached middle school, Goodland would stop offering non-Montessori classes. When the program began, superintendent Lolli Haws promised that non-Montessori students at the school would not be transferred to other schools before the phase-out process was over. However, the district announced in April 2019 that non-Montessori classes at Goodland would end in June, saying that declining enrollment at the school made it impossible for them to fulfill Haws' promise. All non-Montessori students at Goodland were transferred to Janes and Giese Elementary Schools.

Principals

 * Alfred Held, 1962-January 1965
 * James Ogura, 1965 (acting)
 * Roland Krahn, 1967-1982
 * LaVerne Diem, 1982-1993
 * Billie M. Novick, 1993-2013
 * Richard Spates, 2013-2015
 * Janet Colvin, 2015-October 2018
 * Esteban Malacara, October 2018-2019

Director of Montessori School

 * Lisa Johnson, present