Declining enrollment creates need to close schools
In an effort to make best use of financial resources, the Anoka-Hennepin School Board will close several schools next year in response to declining enrollment. "Instead of maintaining empty classrooms, we prefer to pay for teachers in the classroom to educate students," said School Board Chair Tom Heidemann.

As the result of a drop in the birth rate and aging of the population in older neighborhoods, enrollment has dropped by nearly 2,000 students since its peak in 2004. The decline is expected to continue for the next 20 to 30 years according to state demographer Tom Gillaspy. The district remains the largest in the state however, with a projected enrollment this fall of 38,800 students in kindergarten through grade 12 plus early childhood special education.

As a result to the decline, the district now has 18 percent more space than it needs for elementary students and eight percent more space than necessary for middle school students according to a detailed study by ATS&R Planners/Architects/Engineers.

High school enrollment is just now beginning to decline. Because the high schools currently use many portable classrooms, they have no excess capacity. As high school enrollment drops, use of the portable classrooms will be eliminated gradually.

In spring 2009 the board appointed a task force of citizens and staff to review the district's facilities needs and make recommendations on potential school closings.

After five months of study, the Facility Use Task Force presented its final report to the board Aug. 24, 2009, naming 17 schools that most closely matched their criteria for potential closure. Click here to download the final report. Click here to download the final presentation

Click on the document title, meeting date, presentation title or website link to download or access website.

Dates indicate when an item was initially presented.

Important Documents
August 2009
• Facility use final report
• Facility use final presentation

September 2009
• Schools under closing consideration
• School closing hearings presentation
• Sep. 16 hearing testimony
• Sep. 16 hearing comments
• Sep. 17 hearing testimony
• Sep. 17 hearing comments  

October 2009
• School closing Q&A

November 2009
• Nov. 18 hearing testimony
• Nov. 18 hearing comments

Important Links
October 2009
• Boundary changes section
• New hearing scheduled

November 2009
• Board votes again on closings

Community Input
Click here to provide input on school closings  

In April 2009, task force members convened and committed to creating an objective evaluation of all schools for potential closure.

Over the next months, the task force went "deep and wide" examining many types of hard data. Key information they heard, read, and developed is included below.

To answer the question "why must schools be closed," the task force examined demographic data and reviewed school district finances and school operating costs.

• Click here to download the Excensus LCC forecasts enrollment trends report      
• Click here to download the district's enrollment projections (through 2014) report
• Click here to download the Excensus LCC presentation on future enrollments
  
• Click here to download the Tom Gillaspy (state demographer) presentation (presented to the district's Discovery Team in 2008)
• Click here to download the district's finance report

To answer questions about existing school buildings, their capacities, locations and conditions, the task force reviewed data from ATS&R Architects and Anoka-Hennepin facilities staff.

• Click here to download the Facility Utilization Study presentation  
• Click here to download the Facility Overview presentation  
• Click here to download the map of schools in Anoka-Hennepin

Task force members learned that transportation costs are an important factor in the district's budget. Each school bus equals a teacher, in terms of cost. School boundaries that include many walkers are much more efficient than those that include few walkers. Hazardous traffic situations and geographical features, such as the Mississippi River, pose many challenges to creating safe and efficient ways of getting students to and from school each day. The task force reviewed data about each school's transportation situation. Click here to view the Transportation and Demographics presentation.

Three fact-finding committees were formed by the task force to do in-depth research and analysis. In addition representatives from Staff Resource Groups reported on Special Programs and potential uses of closed school buildings. 

• Click here to download the Intangibles Committee report
• Click here to download the Other School Districts' Closings Committee report
• Click here to download the Reuse/Repurpose Committee report
• Click here to download the Special Programs Considerations report 
• Click here to download the Change and Possibility presentation

The task force developed a list of criteria to objectively evaluate schools and to determine which schools might be most workable for closure. They began by brainstorming many possible criteria (92 to begin with). They narrowed them down and refined their definitions, resulting in a final list of 20 criteria and then ranked each criterion high, medium or low.

• Click here to download the task force criteria list
  
• Click here to download the Criteria Matrix and School Rankings document (PDF format)
• Click here to download the Criteria Matrix and School Rankings document (Microsoft Excel document, read-only)
  

The task force directed staff to apply their criteria to each school ("run the numbers") and share back the results. 

Meanwhile, groups of school district administrators had conducted a parallel but separate process of developing their own criteria for closing, ranking them and then running the numbers for each school. The task force list of criteria and the staff list of criteria were not shared between the groups until the numbers had been run. This was to ensure the integrity of the process, and to ensure that there was not undue staff influence on the task force. Once the numbers had been run on both sets of criteria results were shared, giving the Task Force a comparison to lend perspective. There were many similarities between the two sets of criteria though they had been developed separately.

The task force reviewed 17 schools that were indicated by criteria to likely be workable for closure. In small groups, a number of "what if" closing plans were drafted and then shared back in the full task force. The task force directed staff to play out the "what ifs" using sophisticated software that could show if there would be room in adjacent schools to accommodate students from closed schools. The software analyzed data to yield results of various "what ifs," projecting what newly configured schools' enrollments would look like, and how transportation would be affected.

• Click here to download the task force report on "what if closed" data for 17 schools  
• Click here to download the School Closing Scenarios and Opportunities and Risks Summaries report

The task force discovered through this process that school closings cannot be considered independent of one another. There is a domino effect that must be played out. After much discussion they forwarded Alternatives for Considerations for school closings to the school board on Aug. 24, 2009. The task force is confident that these alternatives are viable. The School Board examined the data regarding the original list of 17 schools and made its final decision on Sept. 28, 2009. Click here to read about the School Board's decision in the A-H Newsroom.

To correct a technical error, the district held a new hearing on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009 7 p.m. at Blaine High School, 12555 University Ave. N.E., Blaine. During this hearing, the district invited public testimony on all 17 schools suggested for potential closure by the Facility Use Task Force (click here for new hearing announcement).

• Click here to download Nov. 18, 2009 hearing testimony
• Click here to download Nov. 18, 2009 hearing written comments