Forest Lake releases proposed elementary boundary changes after year-long design and public input process

Forest Lake Area Schools officials on May 1 presented a recommended redraw of elementary-school attendance boundaries, a multi-month process meant to respond to enrollment shifts, the district's planned move of sixth grade to the middle school and projected housing growth.

Superintendent Dr. Matthew Massey and consultant Dr. Heather Mueller of TeamWorks outlined a process that included a design team, a 50-member input team and multiple map iterations. "We began with being clear about our why," Mueller said, describing goals to preserve neighborhood elementary schools while balancing enrollment and working within current budget constraints.

The recommended plan, labeled 10F2.2 in consultant materials, seeks to balance enrollment across the district's elementary buildings and anticipate growth in areas with active housing starts. Massey said the district used parcel-level data and developer-provided housing-start projections to model three enrollment paths over the next 10 years: steady enrollment, projected housing starts on the books (roughly a 5.7% enrollment increase) and broader developer scenarios (up to about 17%). He said the plan aims to be durable across those projections.

TeamWorks presented an estimated effect: about 23% of current K-5 pupils would be reassigned under the recommendation, with the change timed to take effect for the 2026-27 school year. The recommended boundaries also consolidate language-immersion programs at Forest View to create programmatic continuity and to allow potential program growth as housing drives additional enrollment.

Consultants stressed that the process sought to avoid splitting neighborhoods and that the input team repeatedly asked whether proposed lines created short-term fixes or long-term stability. "We were able to use that information and [the design team] came back," Dr. Mueller said. She and district staff said design and input team members attended multiple meetings, reviewed more than 25 map versions and returned for iterative refinements.

Board members asked about specific schools. Superintendent Massey said Columbus Elementary shows lower capacity utilization in the recommended plan and that the map preserves flexibility to move small boundary slivers if actual development patterns exceed projections. The consultants said transportation routing and costs were included in planning: district transportation staff participated in the design team and guided decisions to avoid adding buses or routes that would breach the district's existing transportation capacity.

Next steps: the district will publish maps and a Q&A on its website after the board meeting and hold public open houses (May 8 and May 12) in the high school media center to allow families to review maps and ask questions. Massey said school principals would later reach out to families directly who would be impacted by any change and that the district expects to finalize any adoption in coming months so families can plan for 2026-27.

Why this matters: changing boundaries reshapes which elementary school children attend, affects transportation and could alter school enrollment and resource allocations for years. Massey said the district sought to make changes now to be positioned for the next decade of enrollment variability tied to new housing projects.