Students who use wheelchairs take a road less traveled when entering New York School.

Handicapped parking space is on the Lawrence elementary school’s north side, but the ramped entrance for disabled students is on the south side.

The Americans with Disabilities Act could require 3 million in work to existing schools in the district, says a consultant hired by the district. DLR architect Brad Kiehl, Friday at New York School, said a ramp and curb cuts at the front of the facility would be two items needed for ADA compliance.

The school’s main entrance and office is at neither end. It’s at the center of the building’s west side along New York Street.

“In front, there are no ramps up to the front door,” said Brad Kiehl, a project manager with the DLR Group consulting firm.

It’s on a growing list of Americans with Disabilities Act compliance deficiencies identified by DLR Group in Lawrence public school buildings.

The $81,500 cost of fixing New York is just the tip of the iceberg.

Expensive problems

Kiehl said the price tag for addressing ADA issues throughout the district could run $4 million to $5 million. That’s still an estimate, since numbers have been crunched on only a few schools. A final report on ADA compliance won’t be presented to the school board until mid-May, he said.

“I’m a little leery about putting out numbers now,” he said. “Just one 50-foot ramp that goes up 5 feet can cost $50,000.”

Small problems can add up as well. For example, an exit from New York’s gym has a ledge that drops off to a grassy area difficult to navigate by wheelchair.

“If there’s an emergency, the person would have to be assisted off that stoop,” Kiehl said.

	U.S. Justice Department’s ADA home page

Elsewhere at the school, Kiehl pointed out round door knobs to classrooms that should be replaced by levers, rest room doorways too narrow for wheelchairs to pass through and wall telephones that are too high for people with a disability to reach. Handicapped entrances are locked for security reasons, but they don’t have a buzzer or phone system that would alert staff there was someone at the door.

Familiar obstacles

Jeff McGovern, who uses a wheelchair and completed his education in Lawrence public schools in 1998, said the description of New York was all too familiar.

He went to Centennial School, West Junior High School, and Lawrence and Free State high schools.

“For the most part, everything was accessible in all those,” said McGovern, a volunteer at Independence Inc. in Lawrence. “There are still areas you can’t get to with a chair.”

He recalled that a motorized chair designed to carry people up and down stairs at LHS never worked during his two years at the high school. Friends helped carry him over that obstacle, he said. But it’s not the kind of system that does justice to students with disabilities, he said.

“I think it’s important that people have the freedom to go where they need to go,” McGovern said.

‘A function of money’

For the district to address a big list of ADA issues, millions of dollars needed to pay for the work would have to be included in a bond issue that the board expects to place before voters in November. The bond issue also would contain financing for new school construction and general renovation of existing schools.

If the school board votes to close or replace schools, some ADA deficiencies identified by DLR Group would not have to be fixed.

Supt. Randy Weseman said the district had a track record of working within its budget to adhere to ADA regulations. He said the Lawrence district had done more in this area than many Kansas public school districts.

The list of needed upgrades doesn’t come as a surprise, Weseman said.

“It’s a function of money,” he said. “We just don’t have money falling off trees.”

He said the board would deal with ADA issues if the facilities study by DLR Group points that way.

“If we do the kind of renovation that triggers ADA requirements, we’ll do them to the letter of the law,” Weseman said.

DLR Group was hired by the school board to prepare a facilities master plan by this summer. That board will lean on that report to decide how to handle school consolidation, renovation and construction planning for the next decade.

Analysts for the Overland Park consulting firm toured each school and produced a preliminary estimate that the buildings had $18 million to $22 million in capital needs. The $22 million total would include at least $4 million for ADA.