By Keighla Schmidt, Staff Writer

Elementary school attendance boundaries will change in the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage School District. The question is: by how much?

All plans currently under consideration include eliminating deteriorating “portable” classrooms and keeping all 10 elementary schools open.

“It was never an option to close a school once we started really looking at things,” said Superintendent Randy Clegg.

At the School Board’s Nov. 19 workshop Clegg gave members of the School Board maps and charts identifying potential boundary shifts.

Most of the maps and charts were produced by the Facilities Utilization Task Force – a group charged with looking at buildings throughout the district and determining overall efficiency.

The task force created multiple maps, each with different criteria that included: impacting the lowest number of students, maintain neighborhood schools with contiguous or natural boundaries, and balancing the ethnic, economic and social make-up of each school.

Task force Chairman Bruce Copp, a former School Board member, said the group now needs to know what the board values the most.

“We didn’t come here to get a recommendation on which map you like best,” Copp said. “We want guidance, which criteria do you rank higher?”

‘Option D’

After looking at four maps, the majority of the board favored “Option D,” a map that was created to lower the overall populations at some highly-diverse schools.

But, it was also a map the task force hadn’t seen or discussed, as it was an idea and map the superintendent presented.

“We could deliberately lower the number of students in a building so staff members may have a better handle on what’s going on with each student and will have a higher chance of addressing issues,” Clegg said. “Principals see the advantage to this, even though the concentration (of racial diversity) may go up, it would be a more manageable number to work with.”

That idea sparked a discussion amongst board members on how efficiency should be defined.

While no decision has been made about new boundary attendance lines, Option D is an example of how overall populations might be lowered, Clegg said.

The option lowers the overall population of large schools that currently have high rates of students receiving free and reduced lunches.

Clegg said free and reduced lunch counts line up with ethnic diversity nearly 75 percent of the time.

“We’re more comfortable talking about socioeconomic issues than we are with race, let’s be frank,” he said.

With Option D, Sky Oaks Elementary School, which has fewer than 50 seats open in the school, would decrease by about 60 students. The plan also includes dropping nearly 90 students from Hidden Valley Elementary School’s attendance area.

Currently, Hidden Valley operates at 95 percent capacity with 641 students – the district’s largest elementary school. According to the most recent numbers, it also has the highest concentration of students receiving free or reduced lunches at 50.7 percent.

Board Member Sandy Sweep pointed out that under Option D, the free and reduced lunch percent jumps up to 57.3 percent.

“The free and reduced lunches may go up, but the building capacity goes way down,” she said noting the overall capacity would drop from 95 percent to 82 percent.

“I like the idea of lowering the ratio of students with socioeconomic issues,” Board Member Gail Morrison said.

Board Chairwoman Sue Martin asked if shifting students to smaller schools would create a negative ripple effect.

“Is this doable without creating unduly large classrooms elsewhere?” she asked.

Clegg said it would be doable as the capacity levels of the buildings would have a significantly smaller range. Currently, Rahn Elementary School is at 61.7 percent capacity while William Byrne Elementary School is at 98.3 percent – a 36.6 percent gap.

With Option D, the gap would be smaller with Rahn maintaining the lowest operating level at 79.1 percent and M.W. Savage Elementary School operating at the highest at 95.1 percent – a gap of 16 percent.  

Board Member Ron Hill disagreed with other board members and said he thought the best idea was not to look at reducing some populations, but rather to try to get all buildings operating at the same capacity.

“I lean to more efficient use of the buildings overall,” he said. “If the buildings are used more efficiently … that may allow us to do more things in those buildings.”

‘Option B’

“Option B,” which was designed to create a socioeconomic balance between the schools, has no school with more than 45 percent of the students receiving free or reduced lunches. It also narrowed the operating capacity gap to 67.8 percent at Sioux Trail Elementary School to 98.6 percent at Edward Neill Elementary School – 30.8 percent gap.

Hill said a look into the future needs to be considered.

“Free and reduced lunch populations match closely with students of color and that has grown dramatically in the past five years,” he said. “The question now is how much higher is it going to grow or is it going to hit a plateau?

“What does the housing stock look like? If it’s old and worn out it will create more free and reduced lunch students,” he added.

Clegg said demographers have suggested the upcoming classes will mirror this year’s elementary classes where nearly 50 percent are students of color.

Copp said while the task force had not reviewed Option D or the idea behind it, the board’s discussion will help him lead the Facilities Utilization Task Force.

Following the meeting, Martin said Copp’s charge is to consider balancing out the demographics of socioeconomic issues.

What’s next?

No specific date has been set for the Facilities Utilization Task Force to come back to the School Board, but Copp said he will come back to the board with a recommendation.

The task force typically meets twice a month, but the schedule will likely be altered due to the holidays.

Keighla Schmidt can be reached at kschmidt@swpub.