Lakeville’s Crystal Lake Elementary School to Close

An analysis by the Lakeville Area Public School District’s engineering consultant, Wold Architects, recommends be closed next year.

The school closure will likely be approved during the board’s May 8 meeting and comes as part of the School Board approved in February.

Vaughn Dierks, a partner with Wold, presented a 163-page report and analysis of Lakeville elementary schools to the board at a work session on Thursday evening, which outlined Crystal Lake, which was built in 1987, as the best candidate to be closed.

Now that a school has been identified for closure, the work on reconfiguring the district’s attendance boundaries will begin. But School Board member Jim Skelly cautioned parents that just because their child’s school may not close, the boundary changes could still impact them.

“It’s time to stay tuned to see how attendance changes affect (students),” Skelly said.

Dierks said a number of factors went into recommending Crystal Lake, including maintaining a geographical balance between schools that would have the least impact on boundary adjustments. Secondary considerations included which building would be the easiest to repurpose, traffic patterns and the schools' proximity to borders as well as open enrollment in and out of the school.

Wold’s analysis found that Crystal Lake, Eastview and Oak Hills elementary schools were best served for closure and repurposing because they sat in areas where other nearby schools had the most capacity to absorb additional students and also offered the least boundary change impact.

But Eastview, Dierks said, had a large neighborhood density of students that cut down on transportation costs, and Oak Hills has proven to be a destination school for open enrollment and defends the district’s boundaries from students leaving.

Crystal Lake, meanwhile, is suitable for repurposing, Dierks said, because of its high visibility location on County Road 46, as well as being built with demountable partition walls that allows flexibility for reconfiguring space. All those factors put Crystal Lake on the top of the list, Dierks said.

All told, Crystal Lake Elementary School is home to 442 students this year. But enrollment has declined by 14.7 percent in the past six years and this year, nine students open enrolled into the school, while 27 students open enrolled to a different school.

Closing the school will save the district around $750,000 a year in costs.

Closing a school isn’t easy, and School Board member Bob Erickson said he has some sadness to see Crystal Lake closed.

“Each building has its own personality,” said Erickson, whose youngest daughter attended the school. “But all the fond memories my wife, my daughter and I have—those will never be erased.”

Superintendent Gary Amoroso said work will begin in earnest to reconfigure boundaries. In addition to Board Chair Judy Keliher and Board member Roz Peterson, retired district administrators Tom Coughlin and Greg Utecht, both of whom were a part of the district’s last boundary change in 2007, will be part of a group charged with making new boundaries.

Dierks said closing the elementary school shouldn't require a boundary change at the middle school or high school levels.

No decisions have been formally made about what Crystal Lake could be used for in the future, but the lease for the district’s Community Education programs that currently occupy the Kenwood Center is up on Aug. 31, 2012.

Dierks said those programs wont fill the building, and multiple tenants, such as Lakeville’s Early Childhood Family Education could also occupy the building, saving lease payments for both programs. Those leases total more than $500,000 a year.

At a Tuesday, April 5 School Board Study Session, the attendance boundary model will be presented.