Riverside and Deerfield are public elementary schools in northwest Lawrence, but that’s where similarities end.

Deerfield, the district’s enrollment heavyweight, serves 525 students in a large building on Lawrence Avenue with a staff of 70 people. Just about everything at Deerfield is four times as big as the district’s 125-student Riverside on North Iowa Street.

Students gather in the cafeteria at Deerfield School, a giant among Lawrence elementary schools with more than 500 students. The school is four times as big as nearby Riverside School, which has just 125 students. The Lawrence school district is trying to create a blueprint for the model elementary school. What is an ideal size for such a school is a question that will figure largely in that debate.

“I call it cohesive. It’s a family environment,” Riverside Principal David Theilen said.

These schools could serve as torch-bearers for the Lawrence district’s entrance into a national debate about ideal elementary school size. The subject surfaced locally because a consulting firm hired by the school board is working on a blueprint for the model elementary school.

DLR Group of Overland Park will put Lawrence’s 19 elementary schools six have fewer than 200 students, while five have more than 400 children under a microscope. Enrollments will be a key factor in the study.

The trend in U.S. education for more than 50 years has been to create schools with larger and larger enrollments, either by building schools from scratch or consolidating smaller schools. The trend in Lawrence is to build elementary schools on the scale of Deerfield, but there’s also great reluctance to let go of small schools like Riverside.

In small schools, supporters contend, students get more individual attention, school governance is easier, and parents are more involved. Large-school backers claim students can get a wider variety of educational offerings and enhanced services that smaller schools cannot.

Theilen and Deerfield Principal Suzie Soyster, who have worked at opposite ends of the school-size spectrum for years, know nothing about the issue is black-and-white.

From their vantage points, there are advantages and disadvantages of both small and large schools.

Close-knit community

A small enrollment can be terrific for students if parents and teachers make use of that close-knit educational environment, Theilen said.

“It’s like walking into a family room,” he said. “I think the strength of relationships can have a large impact on the level of education our students receive. If it’s strong … it leads to a strong level of morale and commitment by the staff and parents. It’s kind of like a family-owned business.”

Small schools are more likely to nurture a sense of belonging for students and staff, Theilen said. Students often become more involved in their school, while staff participate fully in school committees. That fosters a sense of ownership that makes change easier, he said.

He said that feeling may be tougher to achieve at Deerfield, where the school’s enrollment of fifth- and sixth-graders alone is greater than the total enrollment at four of Lawrence’s elementary schools.

Soyster said her staff worked hard to build a feeling of community at Deerfield. There is heavy parental involvement in the school, and students are made to feel welcome. But, she said, it is challenging to simultaneously meet the evolving needs of more than 500 children.

A major advantage for Soyster in that effort is extra staff a large school has on hand.

Deerfield’s enrollment requires the school be served by full-time art, music, physical education and special-education teachers as well as full-time librarians and counselors. Deerfield’s nurse spends a portion of her time at Riverside. But district staffing ratios require Riverside make do with part-time staff in all support areas.

When a child needs help in Deerfield’s library, there’s always a librarian there to offer assistance. When a student is overcome with personal problems at Deerfield, there’s always a counselor there to lend support.

“Having full-time support staff and full-time teachers in one building makes it easier,” Soyster said. “To me, it’s a more unified staff.”

Teacher specialization

Deerfield is considered a three-section school, because it has at least three classes at each grade. This year, the school’s enrollment of fifth- and sixth-graders led Soyster to add a fourth classroom at those two grade levels.

On the other hand, Riverside is a one-section school.

Soyster is at an advantage when it comes to departmentalizing instruction. She can have the third-grade teachers specialize in an area science, math, social studies and rotate students in each class from teacher to teacher during the day.

“Larger schools would say that’s a deficiency of smaller schools, because you can’t manipulate how you serve students as much,” Theilen said.

In the latest round of state math and science assessments, students at Deerfield performed far better than those at Riverside. The tests, however, don’t offer conclusive evidence school size made the difference on scores at Deerfield and Riverside.

Theilen said Riverside didn’t have the staff to departmentalize like they do at Deerfield. Teachers at Riverside don’t even have a grade-level peer to compare notes with at school. A student struggling in one classroom can’t be switched to another class.

Theilen said Riverside does dabble with a multi-age approach to instruction by mixing third- and fourth-graders together for language arts.

“Generally speaking,” he said, “I like the whole idea of multi-aging language arts reading and writing.”

Soyster said Deerfield’s routinely large enrollment enabled her to avoid “combination” classes, in which students of more than one grade level are placed in the same class. Small schools in the district often turn to combination classes. Here’s why: A school has too many third-graders for one class, but not enough for two classes. The solution is to form three classes: one with only third-graders, one just with fourth-graders, one that combines third- and fourth-graders.

“At no point in my 10 years have I needed a combination classroom,” Soyster said. “I see that as a big advantage.”

Theilen and Soyster said that class size may be more important in determining student achievement than school size.

Student behavior

Much of the published research about school size suggests student behavior is generally better in small schools.

Theilen said he’s convinced students can get more individualized attention at Riverside than at larger schools. It’s part of the extended-family philosophy, he said.

“I do strongly feel that the depth and strength of that relationship with parents and a kid has a direct impact on being able to reach that student. Kids are less likely to get in trouble if they know that,” he said.

However, Soyster said she didn’t have an overwhelming caseload of student discipline issues. In part, she said, teachers make a strong effort to work with students before kicking them out of class.

She also said Deerfield’s full-time counselor benefits students by being there throughout the day. Students don’t limit troublesome moments to the schedule of a part-time counselor.

“Our counselor focuses on conflict-resolution strategies,” she said.

Theilen and Soyster said it was clear problems arise when schools become too small or too big.

Drawing that line is best left to the experts, they said.