Due to overcrowding at one of the four elementary schools in Albert Lea, school board members got into a lengthy discussion about neighborhood boundaries during a regular meeting Monday evening.

One option is to have kindergartners and first-graders from Clarks Grove attend another elementary school. Currently, those students are bused to Lakeview Elementary School, which is projected to have 70 kindergartners and 69 first-graders in the fall. That will mean larger class sizes or a fourth classroom, for which there isn’t really space.

“We can probably get by for another year,” Superintendent Mike Funk said. “But this problem is not going to go away.”

Sibley Elementary School has about half the amount of kindergartners and first-graders, but the question of who will move there is still up in the air. The school board held its workshop earlier this month at the Faith Baptist Church in Clarks Grove and asked parents to attend to give their input on the issue.

Other options could be to make all open enrolled students attend Sibley, which could alleviate the amount of students at Lakeview. School board member Julie Johnson said she’d like to look at that option and also said she wants to make Clarks Grove families a priority.

Member Bill Leland said he remembers having a state demographer come to the board years ago. The demographer said the district would see flatlined enrollment until 2014, when it would start to rise again.

“We’re at that point,” Leland said.

He also said he didn’t want to cram students into one building just for the fact that students already had relationships at that school.

“It’s going to hamper student achievement, student growth,” Leland said. “I’m not for it.”

Funk said part of the problem the administration is seeing is what he called “the Lakeview mystique.” He has seen that people hold Lakeview in high regard but said he doesn’t see why because all the elementary schools do well.

“I think the Lakeview mystique is winning out here,” Funk said. “If I’m a student and have a class size of 24, and almost identical demographics, or I can go to a school two miles away and have a class size of 20 — it’s the mystique of Lakeview.”

School board members echoed that with new policies to standardize curriculum across all four schools that all have been performing well.

“Our schools are awesome; we’ve got great teachers in every school,” Chairwoman Linda Laurie said.

After more discussion school board member Mark Ciota asked when a decision needs to be made. It was decided that Funk and district administrators would keep looking at solutions and bring a recommendation to the board in June for what to do about the issue.

In other action, the board:

• Terminated five teachers contracts as it waits for final budgets. The contracts could be renewed. It was not clear whether the teachers were full- or part-time.

• Heard from Funk about legislative updates that affect school districts. He expects that there will be no more graduation test. The district is also expected to receive $470,000 annually instead of the $150,000 it was receiving for compensatory pilot aid.

• Heard from Ciota about a workshop he attended relating to adverse events in a child’s life. The summit had people from schools, the health care field, law enforcement and more to talk about how adverse events in a child’s life, like abuse and family problems, can affect their eduction.

• Increased lunch prices, for students and adults, by 10 cents.

• Approved event entry rates and activity fees. Students and staff will again get into athletic events free with their school-issued ID. Funk said he’s had nothing but positive comments from community members about letting students attend events for free.