It is bitter irony to some East Heights teachers that their suggestions for making the school better are being used to justify shutting down the school.

“Some of that came back to haunt us,” said Adela Solis, who works in East Heights’ high-tech classroom and is the district’s 2002 elementary teacher of the year.

Consultants hired by the Lawrence school board conducted a survey of hundreds of people tied to the district to find out what their dream school might look like. DLR Group staff used those comments to create a baseline model of what all Lawrence elementary schools should be.

That document, which spelled out shortcomings at East Heights, was a key factor in leading the school board to tentatively select East Heights, Riverside and Centennial schools for closure.

The school board and DLR Group are working on a 20-year facility master plan. They also want to put together a bond issue of at least $50 million to finance school construction and renovation. No date has been set for a bond vote, which is expected to take place sometime in 2003.

Rethinking strategies

Joy Lominska, a first-grade teacher at East Heights, said knowing then what she knows now, she would have filled out the survey differently.

For example, she said, if the alternative was closing the school, there would be no need to build a cafeteria at East Heights. People could continue to eat in the school’s gym, she said.

“A separate gym and cafeteria, it’s not necessary,” Lominska said.

DLR Group staff estimate that it would take $5.6 million to bring East Heights up to the district’s benchmark standard. That includes constructing and renovating classrooms, building a cafeteria, making utility upgrades and improving accessibility for students with disabilities.

The board decided to close East Heights rather than New York School, in part, because it would cost only $3.3 million to bring New York up to the district’s standard.

“In a town the size of Lawrence, we have to look at operational efficiencies,” Supt. Randy Weseman said. “We have to examine how to deliver quality education at a price we can afford.”

Implications of a move

Solis and Lominska were among a group of East Heights supporters who met Friday at the school, 1430 Haskell Ave., to discuss implications of the board’s facility study.

They said they’re deeply troubled about implications of moving 160 East Heights students to a renovated New York School at 936 N.Y. Enrollment at the combined location would be about 300 students.

“It’s hard for kids, many struggling to get here every day, to be taken out of a smaller school and then suddenly sent to a school two times larger,” said Kirsten Roussel, an East Heights parent. “You’re going to find more students falling through the cracks.”

Misguided logic

Vicki Scott, the East Heights Parent-Teacher Organization president and a special-education paraprofessional at the school, said the board should be more receptive to maintaining small-enrollment elementary schools.

“Lawrence is big enough to have all sizes of schools,” Scott said.

The board, in collaboration with DLR Group, agreed Lawrence elementary schools of the future should each have at least two classes at each grade, or two sections.

East Heights has one section of students in a majority of grades.

But creating bigger schools in the name of economic efficiency is misguided, Lominska said.

“These are children,” she said. “Efficiency isn’t the answer when educating children.”

Roussel, who is also co-chair of the school’s site council and president of the Brook Creek Neighborhood Assn., said extending the distance East Heights parents must walk or drive to participate in school activities at New York would undermine efforts to make them an integral part of students’ education.

“The district is imposing undue hardship on families,” she said.