Lake Harriet Upper
This school stays open in all three options. What changes is who attends it and where its students go next.
On paper, this school appears to have low utilization. In reality, MPS manufactured it: the 2020 Comprehensive District Design made changes to move students across the district and they never restored the enrollment it took away.
See the full timeline of changesWhat happens under each option
Becomes a K-5 school and absorbs the Lower campus.
Same.
Same.
Source: MPS proposed options pages, read Sept 17, 2026 [MPS], and the unprogrammed-building maps on slide 82 [presentation].
The building
Design capacity from MPS building reports, Table 2 [MPS]. Enrollment is the state's official Oct 1, 2025 count, grades K-12 [MDE].
The Sept 15, 2026 presentation uses Oct 2024 enrollment for every school. The state's Oct 1, 2025 count for Lake Harriet Upper is 286, against 285 a year earlier.
Large enough for MPS student experience, approaching optimal enrollment
Slide 6 of the Sept 15, 2026 presentation [presentation].
What the district's own dashboard shows
MPS School Detail Dashboard (Tableau), publicinsights.mpls.k12.mn.us/transformation, printed Sept 2026. Capacity and enrollment use MDE and MPS building-report figures elsewhere on this page, not this dashboard -- the two sources disagree on those two fields for every school checked so far.
Who attends from the boundary
Lake Harriet Upper shows the exact same 3-way split as its paired school on this dashboard. That could mean the two schools already share an attendance zone, or that MPS updated the zone definition ahead of the proposed merger rather than reporting today's actual boundary. Confirm which before treating this as a pre-vote baseline.
We don't know the exact number of children that percentage represents, so this doesn't set a ceiling on the slider below -- it's context for how much room there plausibly is to recapture, not a hard limit.
This school's FY27 per-pupil rate isn't in our data yet, so a dollar estimate isn't shown.
Per-pupil rate: this school's FY27 total school-based budget divided by its own FY27 projected enrollment. It's the district's core classroom funding only -- it excludes centrally budgeted costs like transportation and district administration, so it understates, not overstates, what each student is actually worth to the district.
Your community meeting
Sourced from the MPS School Transformation page [MPS].
Additional community events
Organized by the community around Lake Harriet Upper, not by MPS or this site.
What the district has not answered about this school
- How many of this school's students does MPS expect to stay in the district?
- How many students would this school need to be sustainable, and what is the plan to recruit them?
- What evidence ties the district's size minimum to student outcomes? MPS left the minimums out of the 118 slides and confirmed them on Sept 25: 432 students for a community elementary under 70% free and reduced meals, 360 at or above 70%.
Director Callahan asked about savings, retention and sustainability at the Sept 15 work session and asked for answers by the Oct 13 business meeting. What the board heard.
Who decides
All nine board members vote on Lake Harriet Upper Nov 10. One represents this school's district; three more represent every school in the district, regardless of address.
The tag under each name is our read of their stance, based on the Sept 15, 2026 work session and Oct 14, 2025 votes on file — not their own statement of a position.
Sept 15, 2026 work session: read the list of schools proposed to close and rejected all three options: "I find these options offensive... three options that close more than a dozen schools is not what we ask for." Asked for three answers by the Oct 13 business meeting: per-school savings, the share of displaced students expected to stay in MPS, and what each listed school needs to stay open. Oct 14, 2025: voted for defining the "sweet spot" as 70-89% capacity (failed 2-6) and for Resolution 2025-0045.
Hear her full commentsSept 15, 2026 work session: asked seven questions, including whether the board can combine options (staff: yes), what success metrics are (no target or date given), and how much of the deficit the plan solves. Staff answered that closures are "not a huge cost savings." Thanked staff in closing. Oct 14, 2025: voted against defining the enrollment "sweet spot" as 70-89% capacity, and for Resolution 2025-0045.
Sept 15, 2026 work session: "You guys brought back exactly what we asked you to do... I think I have enough information." Asked no questions requiring answers. Suggested Afrocentric programming and raised the safety of adult Wellstone students at South. Oct 14, 2025: voted against the "sweet spot" definition and for Resolution 2025-0045.
Sept 15, 2026 work session (virtual): said staff "followed direction exquisitely" and called the plan "courageous." Asked nine questions on North Minneapolis equity, walk zones, dual language, inclusion, interventionists and libraries. Oct 14, 2025: proposed defining the "sweet spot" as 70-89% capacity (failed 2-6) and cast the only vote against Resolution 2025-0045.
These board members represent other parts of the district. The administration doesn't vote, but sets the agenda the board votes on.
Board members' emails and phones are theirs directly, from the MPS Board of Education page. Administrator contacts are their own direct lines, from MPS's staff directory.
This school's board district is confirmed. Check it yourself.
Ask them to stop the vote and wait for the newly elected board and for published goals to fix the budget.