East metro school briefs

East Ridge arts center is put on hold The new East Ridge High School in Woodbury will open this fall without the community-based performing arts center that had been planned, but the non-profit group pursuing its creation says it will continue raising funds for the project.

Arts Connection, the Woodbury group developing the new center, says it has received raised $1.9 million of the $2.5 million needed to begin construction of the community space.

The center, which would be built adjacent to the school's auditorium, would include a black box theater that provides a smaller space for performances and rehearsals, a gallery for displaying art work, a separate entrance and a reception area.

"They haven't raised sufficient money to begin construction," said district Superintendent Tom Nelson.

Open enrollment will close temporarily The South Washington County School District will close its schools to open enrollment of students from other districts next year in order to ease the transition of opening a new high school and reformulating the grade alignment in its upper schools.

Minnesota's open enrollment statute allows students to petition for transfers into schools outside their district, but gives the schools the right to close their open enrollment status when they are within 1 percent of full capacity.

The impact is likely to be small because in the prior school year, only 229 students transferred into the district's schools from other districts, while 1,130 students who live within the South Washington County boundaries attended schools in other districts.

Nonetheless, school officials said they believed it was necessary to close the district to open enrollment because they are opening a new high school and changing their junior high schools to middle schools that will have grades six through eight, while adding ninth grade to the high schools, which currently house grades 10-12.

In another change, South Washington County will not allow any intradistrict transfers at the high school level in the district next school year because of the impending changes. That will all apply to siblings as well. "We understood that it is difficult, but that is where we have to draw the line today," said Superintendent Tom Nelson. "We wanted to get the new boundaries established."

Nelson said he views both changes as "one-year" items that the school board will reconsider next year.

Compiled by Gregory A. Patterson.