The Lakeville Public School District Board of Education met in a special session to weigh how to address overcrowding at Highview Elementary and whether to delay a full boundary redesign in favor of a short-term, localized change.

Chair Amber Cameron opened the meeting by saying the session was convened to "make space for all the students in our district" and to gather board questions and community input ahead of a decision. District staff outlined the planning objectives: ensure room for long-term growth; preserve racial, socioeconomic and programmatic balance across schools; minimize moves for students with special needs; and keep attendance areas geographically logical.

The central dispute was whether the board should adopt a narrow, immediate move affecting one neighborhood block (the Pinnacle/Summers Creek area) that staff estimated would transfer roughly 150 students from Highview to Cherry View, dropping Highview’s projected load from about 741 students (cited in discussion) to near 600 active students (roughly 85% of capacity), or proceed with the larger E1 map that would reassign many zones across the district.

Director Ken Baker urged focusing first on an immediate fix for Highview to reduce multiple moves for students next year and to buy time for a careful long-range redesign. Supporters of the one-year move framed it as a way to let current fifth graders, and possibly fourth graders, matriculate without an additional forced change. Opponents said a partial move would still leave two buildings operating in makeshift spaces (gyms or art rooms converted to classrooms) and risk repeating boundary changes in the near future.

District staff and several board members also flagged operational implications of a phased approach: transportation complexity and cost (routes could require additional stops or duplicate buses on the same roads), staffing and classroom assignments that are difficult to alter midcycle, and the handling of intra-district transfer requests. A district staff member summarized transfer thresholds the board would use: low-growth schools would be capped at 80% for accepting intra-district transfers, and high-growth schools at 70%, with transfers permitted only if a school’s enrollment remains beneath those thresholds or if additional FTEs are added.

Staff noted the district’s planning tradeoffs and said prior localized adjustments left the community uncertain; they asked the board for clearer criteria (for example, whether geographic boundaries should take priority over other factors) to guide map redesign. Board members pressed for more granular numbers showing how many students by grade would move under each scenario, the likely number of multiple movers, and sibling impacts if the board considered grandfathering current students.

No formal motion or vote was taken. The board directed staff to produce transition-plan scenarios and enrollment breakdowns before the full-board meeting on Tuesday and asked directors to submit specific map questions to staff by Monday so the administration could prepare interactive visuals.

The meeting adjourned at about 5:39 p.m.; the board will revisit E1 and associated middle-school (M1) proposals at the next meeting with the requested data available.