The Porter Township School Corporation is pursuing approvals with Porter County to facilitate a $19 million, 20,000-square-foot addition at Porter Lakes Elementary that will address burgeoning enrollment in the lower grades.

“We have absolutely no free space in our buildings right now, not even an inch,” said Superintendent Stacey Schmidt of the lower grades. Porter Lakes has about 550 students.

“We have, for the last three years, been sweating,” she added, explaining that the Falling Waters subdivision is growing, while various parcels of land are for sale in the area and other subdivisions have been proposed.

Porter Township School Corporation has 1,500 students and educates Pre-K through third grade at Porter Lakes; fourth and fifth grades at Boone Grove Elementary; sixth through eighth grades at Boone Grove Middle School; and ninth through twelfth at Boone Grove High School. Schmidt said enrollment trends have seen the most growth with the youngest of school-age families.

She said the district’s three and four-year-old preschool programs have been “bursting at the seams” and “our kindergarten enrollment has been robust. The hard part, when you have new developments coming, you don’t know where they’re going to go (gradewise).”

There is room in the district’s classrooms for fourth grade and up to manage the “slow and steady growth” expected there. The addition will include classrooms, a new kitchen, expansion of the cafeteria, utility rooms, more parking, and allow changes to the drop-off arrangement.

“We’re trying to solve problems,” Schmidt said. “Our drop off and pick up we’ve had spilling into county roads.” The addition is being paid for with a $19 million bond that will not raise taxes.

It comes on the heels of other improvements in the district that include: a competition football field and track that the high school was lacking, a weight room and wrestling facilities for the high school, new HVAC and roofing, and switching to LED lighting. “We’ve done all of these projects without raising taxes,” Schmidt said.

The school system introduced the proposed project and gave an informal review at the county’s last Development Review Committee meeting. School officials will appear before the Board of Zoning Appeals on April 16 to request a variance allowing them to not install curbed stands in the parking lot and have less robust landscaping than is typically required in the county.

“It becomes a security issue,” explained Mike Jabo, Porter County’s director of development and stormwater management, who said less landscaping allows clear lines of sight for drivers.

The district will appear before the Porter County Plan Commission April 23 to request a permit to begin construction.

Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.