By Doug Kott | The Brookings Register
BROOKINGS — Changes to school boundaries in Brookings is a near certainty, but what those changes will look like has yet to be determined.
A stakeholder committee has been working since fall to work out proposals for the Brookings School Board to consider.
The committee shared its recommendations at a school board workshop on Feb. 23 and gave the board options to consider.
Brookings Superintendent Summer Schultz informed the board that the recently rebuilt Medary and Hillcrest schools now have an increased capacity and were designed to provide “long-term flexibility for enrollment balance and programming.”
Schultz said the boundary changes will help provide that balance and help the district operate more efficiently.
Committee members are:
• Schultz
• Deb DeBates, Brookings School Board president
• Chris Gruenhagen, principal at Medary Elementary
• Tanna Stadler, PK-5 director of academic services and special programs for the district
• Nate Loer, transportation director for the district
• Shannon Smith, director of special services
• Dana Martens, social worker
• Amy Nielson, early childhood coordinator
• Laura Hove, teacher at Dakota Prairie Elementary
• Trish Matson Buus, parent and community member
• Ryan Krogman, Brookings Realtor
• Mike Struck, community development director for the City of Brookings
The committee discussed three different configurations for the board to consider:
• The currents configuration with three K-3 buildings — Medary, Hillcrest and Dakota Prairie — and one building for grades 4 and 5, Camelot
• A “partner schools” configuration with two schools for K-2 students and two schools for grades 3-5.
• The “neighborhood concept” with grades K-5 at all four buildings.
The committee dismissed the neighborhood concept as the least efficient and most expensive of the configurations.
Schultz said under the current model said there is not much that can be done in terms of improving efficiency.
She said the “partner school” configuration offers more efficiencies — both financial and transportation.
DeBates said changing elementary boundaries could save the district money and switching to the partner school configuration could save even more money.
The next step in the process is for the board to decide if it wants to move forward with consideration of switching to the “partner school” model. And if the board decides to stick with the current model, then it must decide on the recommended revisions to the current elementary boundaries.
Board members DeBates and Cassie Juba said it would be wise to make it a two-phase process — the first being to decide on the committee recommendations for boundary changes and following that up with further study on the switch to the “partner school” model.
Juba said the potential for savings makes the “partner school” plan attractive.
“We need to careful not to go too fast, because even a positive change can be a hard change for a community,” Juba said.
Board member Teri Johnson agreed. “We’re not out anything by exploring it … I’m all for looking at new ideas.”
DeBates said, “There would be a $200,000 to $500,000 efficiency savings with moderate K-3 boundary adjustments … If we are able to look at the partnership school models, that could save the district a much larger amount — $580,000 to $895,000.”
Both the boundary change and the shift to the “partner school” are proposals at this point. The school board plans further discussion and possible action at its March meeting.
— Contact Doug Kott at [email protected].
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