The Anoka-Hennepin School Board took a second vote Nov. 23 on schools to close next year, but the result is the same as the first vote taken Sept 28. Eight schools will close, but two of those will reopen immediately for other programs.

Shortly after the board's first vote, a parent informed the district that it had not followed state law in the closing process. The district had not published a legal notice of the board's two public hearings on proposed school closings in the district's legal newspapers for two weeks prior to the decision. The district had, however, advertised the hearings early and extensively in two documents mailed to all families in August and other ways including automated phones calls to families. To comply fully with the law, the district scheduled another public hearing and advertised it in all legal newspapers as required and took a second vote on the closings.

The final hearing, held Nov. 18, attracted several dozen community members. Most of those who testified objected to the board's plan to close Riverview Specialty School for Math and Environmental Science in Brooklyn Park. Some parents asked that closing of Riverview be delayed to allow time to explore other options, including creation of a "site governed school" allowed under a new state law.

Here are details of the school closings approved by the board plus:

Kindergarten
Park View Early Childhood Center in Champlin and Peter Enich Kindergarten Center in Anoka will close and students will attend kindergarten at their neighborhood schools. These two schools were originally designed to reduce the enrollment crunch at overcrowded elementary schools during years when the district was growing rapidly. Park View will be used for elementary students from both Champlin Elementary and Riverview Specialty School for Math and Environmental Science. Peter Enich, which is located within the district's Learning Center/Distribution Complex, will likely be used for other district purposes.

Elementary
Anoka County
Washington Elementary School in Anoka will close and its students will be moved to Crooked Lake, Franklin, Lincoln and Wilson through a change in attendance boundaries. The Washington facility will reopen next fall as a sixth-grade campus for students from Sandburg Middle School and Fred Moore Middle School Center for the Arts.

L.O. Jacob and Sorteberg elementary schools, both in Coon Rapids, will close. Attendance boundaries in much of Coon Rapids will change and L.O. Jacob students will attend Adams, Hamilton, Hoover and Mississippi. Sorteberg students will attend Eisenhower and Sand Creek. It has not yet been determined how those buildings will be reused.

Hennepin County
Students currently attending Riverview Specialty School in Brooklyn Park and Champlin Elementary School in Champlin will attend school at the Park View building, which is located next to Jackson Middle School. Because there will not be enough space at Park View for all students, some will attend school in a portion of Jackson. That portion of the Jackson building was originally Oxbow Creek Elementary School. The two buildings were linked with a classroom-lined corridor that provided flexibility for changing needs. As middle school enrollment grew, more space was needed so a new building was built for the elementary school and the original Oxbow Creek facility became part of Jackson, greatly expanding the capacity of the middle school. There is discussion of linking the Park View building to Jackson with an enclosed walkway and providing a barrier in Jackson to separate elementary classrooms from the middle school portion of the building.

No decision has been made about alternate uses for the Riverview and Champlin buildings.

Middle School
Sandburg Middle School, one of the district's oldest buildings, will close and students will attend Fred Moore Middle School Center for the Arts. Sixth graders from the combined schools will attend classes at the Washington building, which is five to six blocks from Fred Moore.

The school closings were prompted by declining enrollment and the need to reduce expenditures in light of state funding shortfalls. As the result of a drop in the birth rate and aging of the population, 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 the state demographer. The district currently has 94 empty elementary classrooms and approximately 1,400 extra middle school seats.

The School Board based much of its decision on school closings on the recommendations of the Facility Use Task Force, a group of community members and staff that developed school closing criteria and studied detailed data about enrollment and facilities before recommending 17 schools for potential closure. Criteria included such things as actual operating costs, capacity of school, transportation costs per school, specialized programs, geographical barriers and traffic trend issues, and others. The School Board also considered the impact of closings on surrounding schools to ensure that the changes would not result in creation of "racially isolated" schools, which is contrary to state and federal law.

The schools selected by the board for closing were all recommended by the task force and closely match one of the task force's scenarios. Click here for complete information on the Facility Use Task Force.

The board also approved changes in school attendance area boundaries to accommodate students from schools that will close. The boundary change process included meetings at each school plus a series of public hearings.