Options include drawing new elementary school boundaries, moving sixth grade to middle school, or school closure
As student populations shift, the Forest Lake Area School Board is facing tough options to help alleviate the impact of student enrollment decreases across the district.
Superintendent Steve Massey pitched a few options during the school board’s workshop on Thursday, June 13: Draw new boundaries within the school district to level out student populations at elementaries, close or consolidate an elementary school, or shift sixth grade to the middle school.
As student populations decrease, reducing teaching staff to cut costs is not always a viable option to solve reducing enrollment.
“Just simply reducing operations means we are reducing, quite frankly, teachers and raising class sizes where that becomes untenable over time,” Massey said.
The board had mixed opinions on the options Massey proposed, with the overarching desire to prevent the closure of any of the seven elementary schools.
“I think that is very concerning for parents,” board member Jill Christenson said.
With changing elementary school boundaries or closing a school on the table, Christenson said the district should be careful in how it proceeds, since some families may opt to drive their student to a closer school outside the district.
Board member Rob Rapheal was adamantly opposed to closing an elementary school.
“In my mind, one of the really powerful things that we’ve got as a school district is we’ve got an elementary in every community, and I will not support anything that changes that,” Rapheal said.
The discussion during the workshop was based on a presentation to the board during its Thursday, May 16, meeting from Hazel Reinhardt, president of Hazel Reinhardt Consulting Services and longtime demographer for Midwestern school districts. The district hired her to analyze historic and future district demographics to understand what future enrollment could look like based on current and projected birth rates.
Comparing current elementary school enrollment for the 2023-2024 school year to projected enrollment in 2028-2029, Lino Lakes and Linwood will see the largest increase in enrollment by around 100 students each. While Columbus is also projected to see a marginal increase, the other schools may see decreases in enrollment.
Forest Lake Elementary, an elementary school for fourth through sixth graders is expected to see a decrease of 87 students before 2030, while Forest View Elementary’s population is expected to decrease by just five students. Scandia Elementary’s student body is expected decrease by 96; and Wyoming Elementary will decrease by 14.
Across the elementary system between 2023-2024 and 2028-2029, these potential shifts could lead to an overall increase of six students, but the distribution is the challenge.
Another option that was discussed is the possibility to change elementary school boundaries to fill smaller schools and alleviate the strain on overfilled schools.
Board member Luke Hagglund thought one of the best options to ensure shrinking elementary schools remain open is to consider changing boundaries. While that is a disruptive process, the district can lessen the blow by letting current and new families know where the “gray area” would be near those boundaries, he said.
Board member Curt Rebelein Jr. floated the idea of making the elementaries a more uniform experience by removing individual mascots from the schools and calling all students Rangers.
“I know that’s critically important, but right now we need to focus on academic performance, and one way we could do that at scale is to reduce the uniqueness,” Rebelein said.
In doing that, Rebelein believes it would lessen the blow of being moved to a different community-based elementary school when they’re all effectively the same.
There wasn’t unanimity in rebranding the elementary schools due to the strong community ties each school has built in their communities for decades.
“We have to be careful going forward if we were to do that. But I agree when we all have that unified, we’re all Rangers,” board member Gail Theisen said.
Moving sixth graders from the seven elementary schools to the Forest Lake Area Middle School, making it a 6-8 grade school instead of its current 7-8 grade school, was another topic of discussion. This transition could offer those students an early start on the district’s career pathway curriculum and free up space in crowded elementaries.
“We see it as a potential, real expansion of educational opportunities for our sixth graders if they were exposed to the various options and the many options at the middle school,” Massey said.
But doing so doesn’t solve the problem for the four elementary schools facing likely declining enrollment.
“Everything ties together here. So let’s say we do move the sixth grade to middle school. We have extra space at those elementary schools, now we have to re-boundary to somewhat level out,” Hagglund explained.
Forest Lake faces another challenge of competing for students with two charter schools, who snag around 18% of area school-age children, higher than the typical districts in Minnesota, who lose around 7%.
“If we’re talking about making suggestions that we would like administration to look at, I mean … how can we change that?” Christenson said.
Despite the charter schools pulling students from Forest Lake Schools, Reinhardt’s data showed that loss of students annually is now stagnant, with just under 1,500 students utilizing charter alternatives.
On the same note, Forest Lake has lost students to other means between the 2019-2020 school year and 2023-2024. The number of students who turned to homeschooling went from 285 to 382, respectively. A similar increase was seen for nonpublic schooling options, with 208 going that route in 2019-2020 and 281 choosing that in the 2023-2024 school year.
The district just stepped into the planning phase about the future structure of the district, with August or September being the potential time formal proposals are considered by the board. After approvals, planning and preparation would begin for the next year, with potential roll-outs for the 2025-2026 school year.
With a few proposed and structural district changes on the table, Rapheal thinks they shouldn’t be taken lightly and the board should continue considering the impact on families and students with these choices.
“I’m personally and perfectly OK with staggering some of these changes over time. So then you reduce that amount of chaos that families are exposed to,” Rapheal said.
Any changes discussed at this mid-June meeting would have to go through the school board for approval.
“If parents had concerns, that would be an opportunity to hear firsthand what’s happening,” Christenson said.
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