LAKEWOOD — After months of delaying the decision, the Lakewood School Board approved the reconfiguring of the district’s elementary schools.

The change will go into effect before the 2011-12 school year, giving district officials a year and a half to figure out how they will transfer staff throughout its three kindergarten through fifth-grade schools.

“We will strive to keep our community informed of the process established for the implementation of this new configuration and to clarify the attendance areas,” Lakewood Superintendent Dennis Haddock said in a statement. “It will be important for the district to keep our parents informed periodically throughout the year as we move closer to the date of the reconfiguration.”

Currently, Lakewood’s three elementary schools enroll kindergartners through second-graders (Lakewood Elementary), third- through fifth-graders (English Crossing) or kindergartners through fifth-graders (Cougar Creek).

By re-drawing the schools’ boundaries, district officials are hoping to improve academics by limiting the number of transitions students must make while attending school.

“If we had three regular elementary schools like most districts, we wouldn’t be (changing),” said Michael Mack, chair of the district’s boundary revision task force and executive director of human resources and administrative services for the district, in a January interview.

The School Board approved the boundary revision during its March 17 meeting.

“I would like to extend a big thank you to those staff and community members who assisted in the two task force groups as well as those of you who more recently engaged in providing the district with additional information and feedback as we worked to try and further assess the implementation questions that we were analyzing,” Haddock said in the statement.