The Monona Grove School District is considering busing some of Cottage Grove’s youngest students to Monona to help ease space problems in the district.

District leaders are quick to say such a change isn’t likely: Parents want to keep their children in their neighborhood schools, and busing students is costly.

But the possibility has been left in the mix to illustrate the breadth of options being considered to resolve crowding in Cottage Grove’s two elementary schools.

“This is something I was hoping to get off the table, but I think there was enough concern of the committee that the community have an understanding that we’re really looking outside the box,” said Monona Grove Superintendent Craig Gerlach. “This (option) is certainly outside the box.”

The district, which will outline options at a listening session Sunday, hasn’t developed a plan on how the elementary school boundaries could be changed because officials aren’t sure it’s a viable solution, Gerlach said.

“Politically, it would be extremely unpopular,” he said.

The district is considering a range of options for handling growing enrollment in 4-year-old kindergarten through eighth grade.

Most of the growth has been in Cottage Grove, where elementary schools are at or over capacity, while elementary schools in Monona are below capacity.

“I’ve studied this now for the entire school year, and there just isn’t a really good option,” Gerlach said.

Aside from the unpopularity of busing young children, the transportation costs also are high. Another likely controversial option would be adding modular units to Cottage Grove’s already crowded two elementary schools.

Barbara Berg, principal at Cottage Grove School, said while modular units could help, they aren’t ideal.

The units would add more students to the school, Berg said, and students in those units sometimes feel left out or segregated from their peers. It’s also hard to decide what classes to place in the units, because subjects such as art have a lot of equipment that can be hard to store, she said.

An ad-hoc committee studying the issue is expected to report its findings and propose a recommendation to the Monona Grove School Board in June. None of the proposed changes would happen until fall 2010-11.

“One solution is simply to hold tight and do nothing,” Gerlach said, adding “a lot depends on our enrollment growth. If we stay relatively stable, I think we can deal with the issues … without any major changes.”

Susan Fox, a Monona Grove School Board member who serves on the ad-hoc committee, agreed and said the district is “far more likely to do something totally less dramatic.”

Betsy Zande, president of the PTO for both Cottage Grove elementary schools, said most parents she has spoken with favor modular classrooms over busing students to Monona.

“I don’t know of any parent in Cottage Grove in favor of busing elementary children to Monona,” she said. Students could be on a bus for up to an hour to and from school, she said.

“(Modular units) would keep our elementary school kids in their home community.”

IF YOU GO

What: A presentation by the Monona Grove ad hoc committee to study grade configurations from 4-year-old kindergarten through eighth grades.

When: 6 p.m. Sunday at Glacial Drumlin School, 801 Damascus Trail, Cottage Grove.