This week’s article comes from Club Y.E.S volunteer Breanna Smida.

Plymouth, Minnesota is full of a rich and diverse culture that has been
formed over hundreds of years. Not only does Plymouth have such a
diverse culture, but it also has a multitude of various historical sites and
activities that all help form the culture and community even further.
An institution that has been around for a long time and added to this
diverse culture in many different ways is the Wayzata Public School
District, which has been around since 1855 when the first school in the
Wayzata area was established.

Throughout its history, the district has had to face many different challenges and problems that have come up over the years. Some of these challenges include the fact that in the mid-1800’s and early 1900’s two of their schools burned down and were both replaced by different buildings. Currently, the school district is a part of eight different cities including Corcoran, Maple Grove, Medicine Lake, Medina, Minnetonka, Orono, Plymouth and Wayzata. However, the district did not include the city of Plymouth until around 1946 when the Beacon Heights/ Medicine Lake area joined with the district which resulted in the Wayzata district obtaining their second school, Beacon Heights Elementary, which was run until it was ultimately closed in 1982.

Ten years after obtaining the Beacon Heights/ Medicine Lake area, the
Wayzata School District obtained five one-room school districts which
resulted in the district holding the approximately thirty-eight square miles that it still holds to this day. In those thirty-eight square miles the district has fifteen schools in total, including nine elementary schools, three middle schools, a transition school, and a high school, which serve 12,720 students. Something interesting about the district is that what is now known as Wayzata West Middle School and Wayzata Central Middle School were both used as the high school at one point until finally in 1997 the current Wayzata High School was built. Recently, the district approved building two new elementary schools which opened in 2016 and 2019. In conclusion, the Wayzata Public School District has influenced the community and culture of Plymouth by touching the lives of thousands of students and their families over the course of more than 160 years.