The Hayfield Community Schools Board will decide the fate of the Brownsdale Elementary School next Wednesday.

The board will meet during a special meeting at 6 p.m. March 30 in the Hayfield High School Cafeteria with one action item on the agenda — to vote on the resolution to close Brownsdale Elementary School.

“The board requested to have that placed on the agenda for a meeting and we determined a special meeting would be the best to do that,” Hayfield Community Schools Superintendent Belinda Selfors said.

No public comment is on the agenda, which means there will likely not be comments allowed from community members, but the board could discuss the action before voting.

The board set the special meeting at a regular Monday meeting. Selfors explained the vote will either be to close the school or keep it open, but both paths are unknown after that. If the school remains open, the board will have to decide how to make up expenses. This could mean cutting programs, staff positions, or taking other measures to make up those expenses, yet administrators are unsure what they would end up choosing to do.

“We’ve already publicly said if the board votes to keep it open we’d have to look at other types of revenues to make our expenses,” Selfors said.

The Hayfield Community Schools Board brought up the idea of closing the elementary school due to a number of factors, including operating costs, capital expenses, facility needs, and decreasing enrollment trends.

If the school were to close, there would be an equally unsure path, needing to decide when to close the school and how to transition the students from the Brownsdale Elementary School to the Hayfield school. Selfors presented a tentative transition plan at the meeting Monday, which included information requested by the board during the March 14 meeting, such as staff assignments, classroom locations, class sizes, high school schedule, bus routes, time frame and more.

“It was really kind of a list of logistics and what we would see as possible solutions to those questions,” she said.

Selfors noted these changes would not be made without staff and administration input, and emphasized the plan is a rough draft that would likely change. The tentative plan was created by a team of administrators.

“We would back up the truck and get staff input on what those things would look like before any final decisions were made,” she said.

“At this point [the board] has to make the resolution first before we can move down those paths,” she added.

The tentative plan listed June 30 as a potential close date if the school were to close, but that was an estimate and could change.

The board has looked at much information about the issue, and Selfors said the district is at a point where it cannot ignore many of the problems any longer.

Yet the issue remains controversial, as many community members, parents and teachers don’t want the school to close, while others are more accepting of a possible closure. Several people argued the issue should not only be the board’s decision but should be looked at and decided by the community. During the public hearing Feb. 29 at the Brownsdale Elementary School, Selfors took time at the beginning of the meeting to discuss background information such as enrollment trends and projections, facility needs and financial status and projection for the future. Many people addressed concern over bus routes, a lack of options for students, a lack of transparency and loss of trust, and more.

One of the main issues is a 25 percent decrease in enrollment in the last 13 years. Selfors previously noted the Hayfield campus can hold about 1,000 students, and currently is housing just under 600. The Brownsdale campus currently holds about 120 students, including some kindergarten through second-graders, all the district’s third-graders, and some students in early childhood special education programs.

The main thing to do now is either increase revenues or decrease expenses, according to Selfors, to fix the immediate needs, which include things such as roofing, outdated fire alarm and security systems, a lack of sprinklers in buildings, parking lot issues, flooring, heating and cooling issues and more.

The Brownsdale campus was built in the 1950s as its own school, and consolidated with Hayfield Community Schools sometime later.

Selfors said regardless of what the board decides to do, she has full confidence administration will be able to handle any obstacles.

“Any obstacles we have in this process, I have full faith in our staff and community to move forward,” she said.

The tentative transition plan can be accessed through the school’s website at http://hayfield.k12.mn.us/schoolboard/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/sites/101/2016/03/10.C.0-Tentative-Transition-Plan-03.21.16.pdf.