Attendance-Area Adjustments

The Minnesota Statewide Enrollment Options program known as “open enrollment” involves students who apply and are accepted to attend school in a different public school district from the one in which they live. An intra-district transfer involves students who apply and are accepted to attend a different school in the same district. School boards can limit both open enrollment and intra-district transfers. In District 196, schools are closed to open enrollment when enrollment reaches building capacity. For intra-district transfers, schools are closed when enrollment reaches capacity plus 5%.

No. Rosemount High School has been closed to open enrollment for multiple years. There are a very few open enrollment students currently attending Rosemount High through previously approved open enrollments involving sibling preference.

Yes, families can always apply for an intra-district transfer. However, because of current and projected overcrowding, it is likely that Rosemount High School enrollment will continue to exceed capacity plus 5% and be closed to intra-district transfers and open enrollment.

Families could apply, but intra-district transfers would be approved based on available capacity. Intra-district transfer enrollment allows schools in District 196 to accept their capacity plus 5%. The proposed adjustments are to alleviate crowding at Rosemount schools, therefore the number of accepted intra-district transfers would be very limited.

This would further delay relief through attendance-area adjustments and would cost an additional two years of providing transportation to two high schools in these areas. Four years is promised in the current proposal, extending this option to current 6th and 7th grade students would extend the phase-in timeframe to six years and would also delay relief for overcrowding.

Approximately $2 million total -- $650,000 in the first year and slightly less each of the next three years, averaging roughly $500,000 per year over the four years.

District administration continuously monitors enrollment data and regularly reviews growth and development trends in the nine communities District 196 serves. Former state demographer Hazel Reinhardt conducted enrollment studies for the district three times in the last 10 years (2012, 2017 and 2020). The district has used projections from these studies to guide decisions regarding facilities and equipment needs, including a 2015 bond referendum that provided funding for a new elementary school (East Lake) and the current attendance-area adjustment process, which was scheduled to happen in 2020 but was delayed a year to focus on responding to COVID. The idea of reviewing middle school and high school attendance areas was discussed at multiple School Board meetings and multiple articles were published in the district’s Spotlight newsletter before the board decided to move forward  with the process this fall. Separate from this process, a committee has also been meeting since last spring to determine options for adding space to meet the district’s projected facilities needs for the next 10-plus years. Those recommendations will be provided to the board sometime in 2022.

The short-term goal with these recommended attendance-area adjustments is to provide some relief to current and projected overcrowding over the next four to five years at Rosemount Middle School and Rosemount High School by using available space in existing schools. The district felt it needed to do this before it can go out and ask voters to increase taxes to build additional school space.

The long-term plan is to examine our future facility needs and continue to review projected growth data, including the impact of the attendance-area adjustments. Making attendance-area adjustments to better utilize existing space is the first step in a two-step process that will include recommendations to seek voter approval for a bond referendum to fund construction of additional school space that will be needed to meet the projected facilities and equipment needs over the next decade-plus.

The administration reviewed student demographic data for the areas being recommended for attendance area changes, including the schools these areas are currently assigned to and the schools they would be assigned to under the recommendations. The proposed changes would not increase concentrations of poverty or students of color at the schools receiving more students into their attendance areas.

The areas recommended for change are at the outer edges of the Rosemount High School attendance area and are the most logical to shift. They also align with proposed changes to the middle school attendance areas and also take elementary school attendance areas into consideration. District 196 supports the idea of neighborhood schools, to the extent possible, and offers choice through its magnet school programs. To provide significantly greater demographic balance would require non-contiguous attendance areas, which is counter to the neighborhood school concept.

The target to shift 600 students out of the Rosemount High School attendance area over the four-year phase-in period was determined/limited by the available capacity at the other high schools. With this number shifted, combined with anticipated growth, Rosemount High School enrollment is projected to be at but not significantly over or under capacity following the four-year phase-in.

The attendance-area adjustments are being proposed to address current space needs and short-term growth at these schools by more fully utilizing existing space at other District 196 schools. One of the parameters of this process is to maintain similar-sized schools at each level across the district. The administration does not support having one school much larger than the others at that level. Making attendance-area adjustments to better utilize existing space at other schools is the first step in a two-step process that will likely include recommendations to seek a bond referendum for funding to construct additional school space to meet projected facilities and equipment needs over the next decade-plus.

A current 6th grader could choose to remain at Rosemount Middle School or attend the middle school in their new assigned attendance area. If the student does not have a sibling at Rosemount High School during their 9th grade year, they would be assigned to their new attendance-area high school. Students could apply for an intra-district transfer.  However, enrollment at Rosemount High School is very likely to continue to exceed capacity, with no opportunity for new open enrollments from outside District 196 and very limited opportunities for intra-district student transfers.

The proposed recommendation would move current 5th graders to their new attendance-area middle school to establish the pathways to their assigned high schools for social, athletic and co-curricular reasons. It would also require an additional year of middle school transportation costs and would delay relief from overcrowding at Rosemount Middle School by another year. 

Yes. There is one very small area in the city of Apple Valley that will shift from the Shannon Park Elementary attendance area to Diamond Path Elementary School of International Studies. There are no current Shannon Park Elementary students living in this area.

The current recommendation is to allow current 4th and 5th grade students taking Mandarin at Diamond Path Elementary and who live in MS Area #2 to attend Scott Highlands Middle School through an intra-district transfer in order to continue their Mandarin courses at Scott Highlands. However, transportation would only be offered during the two-year middle school phase-in, through 2023-24.