Schools

What You Need To Know About The Basswood Elementary Boundary Proposal

Will there be high school boundary changes? Will open-enrolled students stay at Basswood? Questions answered here about Osseo Schools' boundary proposal.

Osseo Schools are considering a boundary adjustment proposal that will reduce overcrowding at Basswood Elementary. 

Maple Grove residents in Census Area 284 would be assigned to Oak View Elementary instead of Basswood Elementary. Pending School Board approval, Oak View will serve students in grades K-6 beginning in 2014-2015 (currently serves 4-6 grades).

Read more about the proposal and comments from community members here.

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As the issue heats up, information (both correct and incorrect) is circulating. We spoke with Barbara Olson, the director of school and community relations for Osseo Area Schools, to clarify some of the questions.

"We're trying to be really clear that if we stay with the current configuration then boundary reassignments are going to have to be made at the elementary level, and possibly other levels too, because we have to manage enrollment at the elementary level to accommodate for all day K," Olson said. 

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How many students are affected?

Olson said 109 students in Kindergarten through fourth grade would be reassigned to Oak View. There are 40 students in fifth and sixth grade next year who would be allowed to stay with continued transportation from the district.

What will happen to students open enrolled at Basswood?

Open-enrolled students will be allowed to stay at Basswood, unless they were assigned to Census Area 284 when they entered the district.

"Our open enrollment policy, based on a board policy, is based on a philosophy about treating open enrolled students and resident students essentially the same," Olson said. "Open enrolled students at this time under the current board policy, if they are not assigned to Census Area 284, will be allowed to stay."

There are some open enrolled students who are assigned to Census Area 284 who will attend Oak View if the proposal passes, but Olson didn't know how many. 

"It's a mechanism we use to manage enrollment," she said. "We assign in-district open-enrolled students and out-of-district open-enrolled students to a particular census area. Some of them were assigned to Census Area 284– they don't live there– but that's essentially their entry point in the district." 

Why was this proposed with a plan to act so quickly?

"Every year at this time, we look at enrollment, and we look at patterns across the school district and identify any adjustments that need to be made to better manage enrollment or to better align advancement patterns," Olson explained. "This year, we identified a concern with the Basswood enrollment which we've been monitoring. But this year it grew to the point where we determined action would be required. So as we normally do, administration makes a proposal to the school board to consider and then the school board decides whether we should pursue additional feedback from the community and families about it. And then later they make a decision." 

This proposal was introduced to the board on Jan. 7 with intentions to make a decision on Jan. 21. The timeline has since been extended. Now on Jan. 21, the board will meet for a work session on the issue, and then will act on Jan. 28.

"The extension is to give the board more time to talk about it," Olson said.

Are there any future plans to change boundaries for Maple Grove High School?

"We have made no specific recommendations for high school boundary changes," Olson said. 

She said as part of the "presentation of preliminary recommendations for district-wide grade configuration," one of the presenters noted that if they moved in that direction, ninth graders will be added to all of the high schools. 

"Again, we're going to do some adjustments to manage enrollment," she said. "And one tentative idea that was shared at that initial meeting in mid-December was to add space to Osseo Senior High and to shift some students. The estimate– and it was a rough estimate because we have not pursued this in detail, and we won't until the board gives direction– was that it could affect 400 students total."

This could be accomplished by reassigning a couple hundred from Maple Grove Senior High and a couple hundred from Park Center Senior High, she said.     

"We have made absolutely no decisions or proposals," Olson said. 



What about the difference in performance at the two schools?

Currently, fourth though sixth graders attend Oak View, and pre-K through third grade attend Fair Oaks and Cedar Island. Students in grades K-6 attend Basswood.

Some parents have argued that Basswood performs better than Oak View when it comes to test scores, but Olson said they can't be compared for two reasons:
1. Different grade configurations. 
2. Under the proposal, Oak View will have a different attendance area. 

"Right now, they are not the same," Olson said. "They are two completely different schools." 


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