The Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan district’s newest school has attendance boundaries, a leader and now a name.
The state’s fourth-largest district will call its 19th elementary school East Lake. The name appeared 25 times among the roughly 1,000 suggestions the district received for the new school, district leaders said.
East Lake is also the name of a 40-acre wetland that borders the new school, which is being built near the intersection of Diamond Path and County Road 46 in Lakeville. East Lake Community Park will be visible from the new school when it opens in the fall.
East Lake is the first new elementary school constructed in the district since 1995 when Red Pine Elementary opened in Eagan.
The newest school is paid for by a $180 million levy for capital projects and technology approved by voters in 2015. When completed the land and the new building are projected to cost about $27 million.
Last month, school leaders picked Miles Haugen to lead the new elementary. Haugen has been principal of Deerwood Elementary since 2004 and started as a teacher in the district in 1984.
Haugen will continue to lead Deerwood through the end of the school year, but will also begin preparing for the opening of the new school by hiring staff and communicating with parents early next year.
“I am excited by the challenge of opening a new school and the opportunity to meet the students and families that will become part of this new learning community,” Haugen said in a statement.
The district needed to build East Lake to handle growing enrollment with classroom space being tough to find after the state started funding all-day kindergarten in 2014. Nearly all kindergarten students in the state attend school for a full day since the funding change.
District enrollment grew 1.4 percent this school year, more than 600 students, to 28,182, district records show. That enrollment growth includes 217 new elementary students.
In November, school board members approved attendance boundary changes for five elementary school to accommodate the opening of East Lake.
The moves will put the new school and Diamond Path, Highland, Parkview, Rosemount and Shannon Park, which struggled with space issues, slightly under capacity next fall.