Districts eye Valley Crossing as possible answer to school needs

In the state's estimation, Valley Crossing Community School is a major success, having been recognized four years in a row with its top rating for schools receiving federal poverty money.

The school, situated near the boundaries of the Stillwater and South Washington County school districts in Woodbury, also is a unique collaborative of three local districts — with the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale district also sending students there.

But due to a combination of forces — the coming payoff of bonds that built the building as well as the need for new facilities in the Stillwater and South Washington County districts — Valley Crossing finds itself at risk of a takeover and overhaul by one of its founding districts.

The prospect of one partner buying out the others to control the building has yet to move beyond discussion.

But a takeover has been pitched by South Washington County in one of two proposed building packages that now are the subject of community conversations that will wrap up Monday, Oct. 27, at Oltman Middle School in St. Paul Park.

In addition, Tom Nelson, superintendent of the Stillwater Area Public Schools, wrote in an Oct. 10 letter to Valley Crossing families that his district — as part of its current long-range facilities planning study — also is considering three options relating to Valley Crossing: Buying the school, selling the district's share to invest in construction of a new school or "keeping the tri-district arrangement as it is."

Whether either district actually seeks to acquire it should become clearer in November when their respective school boards are expected to receive sweeping facilities proposals that they then could put before voters in 2015.

"It's wonderful," she said of the school. "They have real creative teachers in a creative environment."

Stillwater currently uses Valley Crossing as a neighborhood school for students living in the district's southwest corner.

In South Washington County, the school is a choice program for children throughout the district. The proposal now up for discussion calls for the district to acquire the building for $16 million and to make it an "attendance boundary school" in 2015-16.

Connie Hayes, superintendent of Northeast Metro 916 Intermediate School District, which runs the school for the Stillwater, South Washington County and North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale districts, said that her district has no say in who owns the building. A purchase by one of the partners would be a complex process, she said, "not impossible, but it's going to have to take a lot of conversation," if pursued.

She said each of the superintendents has "high praise" for Valley Crossing, and that Northeast Metro 916 is proud of the staff and students.