District staff and members of a 19-member boundary committee presented three preliminary options for elementary school boundaries in the southern part of the Stillwater Area Public Schools district as the district prepares to open new Lake Elmo and Bayport elementary schools.

Executive Director of Technology Eric Simmons and committee members described the committee’s guiding principles: protect neighborhood integrity, minimize unsafe walking crossings, keep feeder patterns into middle schools unchanged, account for transportation efficiency and aim for a programmatic minimum enrollment near 400 students per elementary to support specialist staffing. Staff noted that Brookview and Lake Elmo currently enroll relatively larger shares of students from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds and that Brookview was recently on the edge of being identified as “racially isolated” under state definitions; the committee explicitly said it is trying not to increase racial isolation in any school.

The three options vary by parcel moves in the southwest district. Option A would move parcels 53 and 54 into Bayport and reassign some West Lakeland parcels, leaving Brookview’s south-end parcels intact; Option B moves parcels 40 and 41 into Bayport and assigns parcel 52 North (a development area) to Lake Elmo; Option C is similar to B but assigns parcel 52 North to Afton Lakeland. Staff explained parcel 52 North contains ongoing development (two apartment buildings totaling roughly 276 units in the near term) and that those units were modeled to generate about 60 students at buildout (projected across the next three years). Staff said Option A would affect approximately 135 current students, while Options B and C would affect about 39 current students; development-related students were handled separately in the estimates.

Staff emphasized a public engagement schedule: an in-person community listening session at Oakland Middle School at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 13, an online ThoughtExchange for those who cannot attend, a staff/boundary committee review after community input, a board report Dec. 2 and action (if any) Dec. 16. Board members asked about treatment of special programs: staff said GATE students who live within the proposed Bayport boundary were included in counts and that Spanish-immersion cohorts are accounted for in the model. Afton Lakeland’s October 1 enrollment was cited as 421, and staff reiterated that the 400-student threshold is a programmatic guideline to support specialists and scheduling.

Board members and committee members encouraged community participation and said the committee will return with refined options after the ThoughtExchange and listening session. Staff asked the board to consider the long-term development outlook when evaluating neighborhood moves and noted that many large developments are still in pre-construction stages; the committee said it sought to balance current students’ impacts and future capacity needs.