School boundary dispute heads to S.D. Supreme Court

At a glance:

• Three families who live in the Tea Area School District have appealed to the South Dakota Supreme Court as part of a legal battle to join the Sioux Falls School District.
• Tea public school officials denied the families' petition last year. A Minnehaha County judge upheld the school board's decision, saying the minor boundary change request would have turned school district lines into a checkerboard.
• All of the original homeowners live in the Westwood Valley development in southwestern Sioux Falls, blocks away from where a Tea elementary school is being built.

Three Sioux Falls families will take their case to South Dakota's highest court in an effort to ditch the Tea Area School District.

Efforts to secure the Tea district's borders experienced an apparent victory this fall, when a Minnehaha County judge sided with the school board against a minor boundary change request submitted for three individual lots in Sioux Falls' Westwood Valley development.

Homeowners have appealed the ruling to the South Dakota Supreme Court.

"It is what it is," Tea Superintendent Jennifer Lowery said. "It has been appealed and we will do our due diligence to follow the legal process and respect that process."

Families in a southwestern neighborhood pushed for years to join the larger district to the north.

A few succeeded, before border-conscious Tea officials started denying requests. In two years, the Tea school board has rebuked five such requests from Westwood Valley residents. Meanwhile, officials approved construction of a new elementary school smack on the subdivision's doorstep.

The $5.2 million school, located near the intersection of Ellis Road and 32nd Street, will serve K-4 students when it opens this fall. Extreme cold has created some complications, as have wet and warm spells, but Lowery still expects the new building to open in time for the first day of school.

Beams and joists are up, and workers are installing walls and roofing this week, Lowery said.

"We have a goal to have an open house in August," Lowery said.

The school is part of the reason why Westwood Valley families lost their appeal. Judges consider a number of factors before ruling on a school boundary squabble, including which schools are closest to the families making the appeal.

The ruling in the Tea case says the new Tea district school is closer to the homeowners than any school building operated by the Sioux Falls School District.

"I'm sure that would be the nail in the coffin," said A.J. Swanson, a Canton-based attorney. "I don't see those folks as leaving the school district any time soon."

Swanson has experience when it comes to school border disputes, though he said he hasn't followed the Tea case. He represented families were initially denied a boundary change after moving into a new development in the Canton School District.

The case eventually went to the state Supreme Court, where judges agreed to let families leave Canton schools for Harrisburg schools, which were closer.

"It was about a two-year fight," Swanson said. "Canton dug in its heels all the way."

But unlike Westwood Valley homeowners, Swanson's clients were surrounded on all sides by the Harrisburg School District. In the Tea case, switching districts would only further muddy district boundaries.

Lines are already blurred in Westwood Valley. Because of successful appeals by neighboring homeowners, the Sioux Falls district juts into Tea like a peninsula.

Before ruling against the families in October, Judge Doug Hoffman called the phenomenon "a vein starting to slash its way into the Tea district."

Attorneys for the district and for the petitioning homeowners did not return requests for comment. Attorneys for the families have said their clients wouldn't benefit from the Tea school because their children are too old.

They already open-enroll to Sioux Falls.

In January, attorney Sam Goodhope said Tea's attempts to secure its district boundaries are only about the bottom line.

"We are talking about money," Goodhope said. "And that is the sole reason why the school is being built up in the northern part of the district."