New Lake Harriet Plans Revealed Tonight

The Linden Hills elementary school is being expanded.

After a long wait, Linden Hills is getting its first look at the design for the newest development proposal—an expansion of Lake Harriet Elementary's Lower Campus. Construction on the school, overcrowded and rising in popularity, is scheduled to begin in summer 2012 and last until to summer 2013. Steel pilings will be used because, despite attendant noise issues, the soft soil needs something strong. So if you're eager to see what the newest—and most likely-to-succeed—proposed development in Linden Hills will look like, troop on down to the Lower Campus gym at 5 p.m. Tuesday evening.

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Editor's Notebook

Liquor Stores Next To Churches, And More This Week

The news Southwest Patch is looking forward to this week, aside from Halloween.

Can Supermarkets Be "Farmers' Markets?" On Monday, the City Council's Regulatory, Energy, and Environment Committee is asking residents to weigh in on a proposal to limit and clarify the definition of a public market. Boosters of the measure say it will prevent for-proffit companies, like supermarkets, from creating "faux-farmers markets" and give more official support to the idea of local food systems. Why we're paying attention: If passed, this would be a significant victory for Soutwest's local growers and growers' markets. Watch for our story Monday morning. Liquor Stores Next To Churches? On Monday, the council's Regulatory, Energy and Environment Committee is setting a hearing date for a measure that would eliminate the required …

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Lake Harriet Takes Next Step Toward Addition

District officials also voice commitment to keep lower-income families at high-performing schools.

Tuesday night, the Minneapolis school board gave a unanimous nod to begin the design and planning process for an addition to Lake Harriet Community School's Lower Campus.  "If you'd asked me three months ago if we'd be here tonight (with this decision in hand), I would have said no," said Caroline Cochran, a Lake Harriet parent helping push for new construction. The district will use bonds, without levying property owners, to pay for the roughly $11 million project, along with $21 million in construction at similarly crowded Pratt and Lake Nokomis schools. The news comes as the district learned earlier this week that it has to find $15 million to make up for money lost after the state legislature eliminated the Market Value Homestead …

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Recommendation For Lake Harriet Addition Expected

Overcrowding has turned the situation critical at three Minneapolis campuses.

Superintendent Bernadiea Johnson is expected to recommend fast-tracking the building process at Lake Harriet Community School in her plan to deal with crowding there and at two other Minneapolis schools. Johnson is addressing the Minneapolis school board Tuesday night. "As a result of our facilities planning, three schools have surfaced with critical and immediate capital and maintenance needs," Johnson told the board on Sept. 20, naming Lake Harriet's Lower Campus, Lake Nokomis Community School's Keewaydin Campus and Pratt Community School. Johnson will likely recommend against conducting a feasibility study before beginning design and construction for the Lake Harriet addition, instead using information from a recently completed study of…

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Lake Harriet Parents Pushing For New Building

How officials deal with overcrowding could affect the district's reputation among parents.

Lake Harriet Community School has some problems—1,174, to be exact. That’s the number of students projected to attend the school in the fall of 2013. The school’s two campuses are collectively designed to only hold 1,050.  As everyone from school board members to parents will tell you, it’s a good problem to have. It means that people are moving to Linden Hills and Fulton—not cheap neighborhoods, by any stretch—to attend the school, or are choosing the school over its private-school competitors. Unlike most neighborhods in Southwest, July house prices in Fulton were up 15 percent from the same time last year. But if the projections hold true, the school will need one to two extra classrooms per grade. Lake Harriet has another problem: …

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James Sanna

10:17 pm on Saturday, September 24, 2011

Well, I say "families are tired" because I heard that refrain from several board members when they were first beginning to examine this issue back in the spring. It's something they're conscious of after CSO and the re-routing of pathways following it.   more ›

No Act of Kindness, No Matter How Small, is Ever Wasted

Lake Harriet Lower Campus sends 1,000 origami hearts to Japan.

Early this spring, Debi Mattson taught her class of second graders at Lake Harriet Community School Lower Campus how to make origami hearts in math class. It was a fun lesson, a challenge in practical application. The class had also just wrapped up a section on fables; Mattson cited Aesop’s No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted as one of her favorites. But shortly thereafter, Japan was hit by a record breaking earthquake and tsunami, and the ordinary paper hearts quickly became something much more meaningful.  With her class and the rest of the school, Mattson set a goal to make 1,000 origami hearts to send to schoolchildren in Japan as a way of showing them that kids on the other side of the world are thinking of them. …

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Lake Harriet 8th Graders Place in Worldwide Competition

The annual Destination ImagiNation competition involves students from 30 different countries.

Five Lake Harriet Community School students won sixth place at the Destination ImagiNation competition held at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in late May. The eighth graders formed the team in fourth grade. They won first place this year at the ImagiNation Tournament in April. Team members include Lake Harriet Community School eighth-graders Seth Colbert-Pollack, Hannah Fitzgerald, Nathaniel Larson, Piper Shatz-Akin and Becca Tincher, as well as Kaj Anders-MacLeod, who attends Groves Academy. This year's worldwide competition included more than 100,000 students from 30 countries. Destination ImagiNation, a non-profit, ferments creativity, teamwork and problem-solving. Students work in teams to solve challenges.

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Lake Harriet Students Braved Rain For Haiti

"Sleep Out For Shelter" raised money to rebuild earthquake-hit houses in Haiti

On a dark and stormy Friday night, as the rain fell in torrents, bands of elementary students gathered together in camping tents across Southwest Minneapolis. These soon-to-be-damp students at Lake Harriet Community School were raising money to build eight temporary houses for Haitians who lost their homes in last year's earthquake. Rory O'Driscoll was not fazed by the prospect of a cold and rainy night spent in the backyard. "In Port-au-Prince, it's raining there as well," he pointed out. "They've got nowhere to go." O'Driscoll and about three quarters of his fellow Lake Harriet students went door-to-door that night, collecting pledges towards their $8,000 goal, which would be donated to the American Refugee Committee (ARC). The homes, …

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Lake Harriet 2nd Graders Raise $1,000 for Environment.

The money raised will be split between the repair of Linden Hills tennis courts and Wood Lake Nature Center.

The second graders at Lake Harriet Community School wanted to show their classmates what $1,000 looked like. So in a packed auditorium last week, students unrolled 54-feet of brown paper on which they'd glued 1,000 dollar-sized bills. The rest of the school squealed at the sight. Kids leapt to their feet to examine the display up close. That was the amount of money that second graders brought in by selling old toys and books in the school's annual Earth Day service project. The money will be used to repair the Linden Hills tennis courts and buy boots for hikers at the Wood Lake Nature Center in Richfield. "It started out when we promised to be keepers of the Earth," said second grader Lucie, referring to a long pledge her class learned. "…

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Q&A With Lake Harriet Community School Principal Mary Rynchek

Lake Harriet Community Schools could address Southwest school crowding by opening the cafeteria to classes, or migrating classes to rooms empty during teachers' prep periods.

Southwest Minneapolis Patch sat down with Mary Rynchek, principal of the Upper and Lower Campuses of Lake Harriet Community School. Rynchek filled us in on everything from curriculum development to a middle school dance to benefit Haiti. Southwest Minneapolis Patch: So, the middle school dance is coming up? Principal Mary Ryncheck: We’ll be raising money for victims of last year’s Haitian earthquake [at the dance]. We wanted the kids to do Haiti originally before the earthquake because we wanted them to think globally.  This year, the object was to think to the next level of human need—after food comes shelter, and this year they’ll be raising funds for these hurricane-proof houses. It costs $1,000 to put these up, and we're hoping we can …

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