Ideas for transforming Homecroft school just keep multiplying

The Highland area elementary has been losing enrollment, but possibilities for use abound.

By JAMES WALSH, Star Tribune

Last update: March 7, 2008 - 12:10 AM

The complicated fate of Homecroft Elementary School in St. Paul got more complicated Thursday night, as school district officials unveiled additional possibilities for the small and underused school.

The district e-mailed several new ideas Thursday night to a task force considering Homecroft's future, including: consolidating the district's middle years language immersion programs; using the building to house middle years International Baccalaureate programs, or transforming the space into an early learning center, home for early childhood programs and staff development from birth to age 5. This option would also include lab space for work with special education students in grades 5 through 10. A fourth option is to turn Homecroft into a "professional children's school," with a focus on athletics and the arts.

A final new idea is for the St. Paul schools to turn Homecroft into a charter school run by the district or to contract with another charter school for the space. But that would require a change in state law to allow existing school districts to create their own charters and collect the revenue for those students.

St. Paul schools superintendent Meria Carstarphen had been considering three recommendations by the task force and a recommendation of her own. One possibility is a "Learning Through Music" school, another is to focus on environmental science. A third possibility is to re-create Homecroft into an economics and classical education elementary, capitalizing on the growing popularity of such schools around the metro area.

Carstarphen's recommendation -- turning it into space for middle school and high school students in alternative learning programs and special education programs -- remains on the table.

The community has called for preserving Homecroft as an elementary school in the Highland Park area.

But the school has for decades suffered from low enrollment, as Highland families have chosen other schools for their children. Carstarphen has repeatedly said that any option has to pull new students into the district, rather than simply attract students from other St. Paul schools.

James Walsh • 651-298-1541