Mahtomedi Public Schools is in many ways a district to envy.
Students shine on state tests. Teachers are backed by local grants. The high school's "fab lab" — even its gym floor — have drawn private money, too.
But the district faces yet another budget deficit, is searching for a new superintendent and planning for a levy vote that may hinge in part on public understanding of an ingredient in its success that also has been a political flash point locally: its acceptance of a large percentage of students who live in other districts.
A Star Tribune analysis of state enrollment data has revealed Mahtomedi to be a big winner when it comes to families using open enrollment to send their children, and the state revenue they generate, across district boundaries to another school system for the programs and services they want.
Mahtomedi's success in attracting nonresident students comes despite the absence of one key element: "We don't actively recruit students for open enrollment," Superintendent Mark Larson said last week.
Demand is so high, however, that while the district bordering the eastern and southern shores of White Bear Lake needs open enrollment students to ensure it has enough kids to maintain its current course offerings, not every applicant is able to get a seat.
Siblings of students now in the district and the children of employees working for the school system have priority if spots become available. Everyone else is in a pool from which the district selects students randomly. There is no eyeing, for example, a potential captain of the robotics team.
"You can't pick and choose," Larson said. "There is none of that."