Crowding in elementary and junior high schools tops the agenda this year for the Lawrence school district’s boundary committee.

“We need to know where we’re squeezed or where we’re low,” said Sue Morgan, school board member.

The board is piecing together a list of issues the committee should address during the 2003-2004 academic year. Panel members will convene for the first time in October.

One complex issue the committee will tackle is severe crowding at Deerfield School, 101 Lawrence Ave. After absorbing students from Riverside School, which closed in May, Deerfield’s official enrollment stands at 533. Deerfield is the district’s largest elementary school, with an enrollment more than 100 students higher than the second-largest elementary school.

Tom Bracciano, the district’s director of operations and facility planning, said the committee would recommend to the board options for alleviating Deerfield’s crowding through changes in boundaries dividing 4,900 elementary students among 15 schools.

Another vexing issue to be assessed by the committee is distribution of the district’s 2,500 junior high students among four junior high school buildings.

There are concerns about high enrollments at Southwest, West and South junior high schools, which range in size from 624 students to 678 students. All three have at least 135 more students than Central Junior High School.

“They’ve very overcrowded at Southwest right now,” said board member Linda Robinson.

Morgan said the committee would study options for improving flow of students from elementary schools to junior high schools. In some cases, students are sent to an elementary school on the east side of the city and then to a junior high school on the west side.

Specifically, the committee will look at moving junior high students from the Gaslight Village mobile-home park, east of Iowa Street along 31st Street, from Southwest to South. The neighborhood’s elementary students go to Broken Arrow School, adjacent to South.

The committee was instructed to plot enrollment on neighborhood maps, looking for trends. They’ll also explore areas ripe for residential development that could have implications for construction of new schools, Bracciano said.