The current Elementary School is located on a 9 acre, residential site in downtown Lake Mills. When the District was planning for this school 10-years ago, the community indicated a strong preference (through a survey process) that the new school be built behind the original school on the same site despite its limited size. The alternate site explored at the time was the district-owned land on Highway 89 where the new Intermediate School is now being proposed.
The current site is already too small for an elementary school of nearly 600 students. The international Association For Learning Environments (A4LE) recommends elementary schools sites be a minimum of 10-acres, plus 1 more acre for every 100 students served at that location. So per those guidelines, Lake Mills Elementary School should be located on approximately 15-acres of land. The site needs to be large enough to appropriately support the building itself, physical education areas, playgrounds, parking, sidewalks and curbs, roads for student drop off and pick up, school buses, and required stormwater retention areas. Because the site is already small, parent traffic primarily needs to use the surrounding streets for after school pick-up in particular, creating significant traffic congestion in the neighborhood.
It would be very difficult to expand the existing building to the size needed to accommodate the projected future enrollment at the elementary level. It’s not as simple as adding on a wing of classrooms because the common and shared areas of the building would also need to be expanded, including the cafeteria and gym.The current site is simply too small for additional expansion and adding more students to the site would also generate additional traffic congestion for the neighborhood.