Lakeville's Elementary Parents Speak Out on Proposed Boundary Changes

A small but vocal crowd turned out Monday night to talk to Lakeville's School Board about the .

The community information session was held at and offered the community a chance to raise grievances or offer support for the redrawn boundaries beginning with the 2011-2012 school year due to the near Lakeville’s northern border.

The Attendance Area Adjustment Task Force had previously laid out their recommendations to the school board and public earlier this month, and Monday’s event served as a chance for board members to hear community comments regarding the recommendations.

The new boundaries will disperse current Crystal Lake students to three neighboring elementary schools: Orchard Lake, Christina Huddleston and Oak Hills. Middle school and high school boundaries would remain unchanged as would five other elementary school boundaries within the district.

Jon Braun, Principal of , began the evening with summarization of the recommendations on behalf of the task force in front of those in attendance.

Public comments followed and included praise for the way the boundary change process has been handled to date, as well as concerns over issues that included larger class sizes and potentially crowded lunch rooms.

Chris Moates, a father of an Oak Hills Elementary fourth grader, said he was concerned over what an influx of students will do to an already tight lunchroom.

“I allow my kid to eat hot lunch once a week because his average eating time is only 11 minutes,” said Moates. “He doesn’t have enough time to eat.”

Another Oak Hills Elementary parent echoed those concerns saying that current students already have minimal time to eat after waiting to go through the hot lunch line and even though the district was increasing allotted meal times from 18 to 21 minutes, she had concern about kids only having time for “sitting down and scarfing their dessert” should those lines grow.

Other parents voiced concerns over class room sizes that would balloon to 35 for fourth and fifth grade students saying that the additional desks would create safety hazards as well as impact teaching efficiency. They also felt they were unfairly paying the price for the failed levy last November that is .

“We are a group that votes for an increase in funding (for the schools),” said Jared Camdin. “I think we’re being disproportionately burdened with this move.”

Erin Gonyea questioned why only four of Lakeville’s elementary schools are taking “the majority of the fall.”

“Nothing about this budget process has been easy for this board,” said board Chairwoman Judy Keliher. “The entire district will be impacted by this as a result of a no vote on the levy. All schools have had the higher guideline of class sizes put into effect. We understand this particular issue does affect parents we’ve heard here tonight, but we have students across the district that will be impacted by this.”

Some parents also spoke about a “little anomaly of weirdness” happening with a pocket of approximately 150 students in an impacted neighborhood that will be split multiple times as they advance from elementary to middle school and again in high school due to a quirk in the proposed boundary.

Under the proposed plan approximately 30 percent of future Oak Hills Elementary students will go to Kenwood Trail Middle School, with the remainder going to . Some of those going to Kenwood Trail would then go on to while the majority of their classmates continue on to .

“That little pocket to me just isn’t logical,” said Laura DeMars who has a daughter currently enrolled at Crystal Lake Elementary.

“My kids are going to learn a lot in life while learning to make new friends,” said another affected parent.

“The pieces to that are somewhat similar to Lake Marion Elementary,” said Braun after the meeting. “We were aware of that (situation).”

Board member Bob Erickson asked Braun and other task force members if they could present additional information to the board before Tuesday night’s work session so the board could “possibly dissipate” some of those concerns.