Last year, the Lawrence school district created controversy by closing three neighborhood schools.

Now, school officials are considering the possibility of building two new elementary schools to help ease overcrowding and accommodate growth on the city’s fast-growing fringes.

Lawrence will need two new elementary schools by 2015 unless the city’s growth slows or residents are willing to abandon the concept of neighborhood schools, a public school official said.

“We want to have schools where the kids are,” said Tom Bracciano, operations and facility planning director for the district. “If the economy tanks and no new kids come, we won’t even need them. But based on what’s going on … there’s going to be houses there.”

Options being studied by the district’s boundary committee include building two new schools — one in the north or northwest and one in the south or southeast Lawrence areas.

About 1,000 homes and 56 duplexes in the Langston Hughes, Prairie Park and Deerfield school areas are under construction or anticipated. Langston Hughes is on the western edge of town, Prairie Park is in southeast Lawrence and Deerfield is in the northwestern part of town.

The district has no set plans to build the schools but is weighing options.

The boundary committee last month began discussing nine options for reducing overcrowding in some schools, increasing enrollment in others and dealing with future growth in the Langston Hughes, Prairie Park and Deerfield areas.

Several options

Five of the options call for a new school in southeast or northwest Lawrence. A sixth option calls for busing students from new development in the Prairie Park area to Kennedy School, on the east side of town near the Douglas County 4-H Fairgrounds.

Committee develops options to alter school boundaries (8-18-04) District studies boundary changes (7-21-04) Committee studies school overcrowding (4-24-04) District to study overcrowding (10-22-03) School closings leave classrooms crowded (6-7-03)

Bracciano said the proposed schools might be outside city limits when built. But the city is steadily annexing land, he said.

Under the proposals, the schools would open within four to 11 years. Each new school could cost about $9 million, not including the price of land, Bracciano said.

Rick Gammill, the district’s director of special operations, transportation and safety, said he didn’t know how much land would cost.

“This being Lawrence, Kansas, it certainly isn’t cheap,” he said.

Closures last year

The district closed three low-enrollment elementary schools last year — Centennial, East Heights and Riverside — and sent students to other schools.

Small elementary schools are more expensive and inefficient for a district than large ones, said Supt. Randy Weseman said.

“It’s why you don’t have a Dunkin’ Donuts on every corner,” he said. “We have one in town.”

Closing the schools gave the district fewer buildings to maintain and cut costs, he said.

“Emotionally, I agree with everyone who doesn’t want their school closed,” Weseman said. “It’s just simple economics — it costs more money to run more facilities.”

Arly Allen, a member of the Centennial Neighborhood Assn., questioned why the district would consider building new schools.

“Are we simply planning to close down all the elementary schools in the center of Lawrence, like Centennial and East Heights, so that we can spend money to build new elementary schools on the outskirts of town for new citizens?” he asked.

William Dann, a Lawrence resident who also opposed the closings of Centennial and East Heights, said he wasn’t sure how opening two new elementaries would affect other schools in town.

“If there are children of school age in the newer areas, yeah, they’ve certainly got to put a school there,” Dann said.

He said he was wary of consolidation because he thought neighborhood schools closer to students’ homes were valuable.

The three closed schools had fewer than 200 students each during their last year, the 2002-2003 school year. Their enrollments had been dwindling for years.

Riverside had only 13 fifth-graders during its last year, compared with about 58 at Hillcrest, 59 at Sunflower and 62 at Quail Run.

Still, Cordley and New York elementaries in eastern Lawrence have fewer students than any other schools this year even though they received some students from Centennial and East Heights.

Some students from Riverside went to Deerfield, which is now the district’s largest elementary — about 565 students, or 65 students over capacity.

Busing, additions

Assuming Lawrence continues to grow, the district has some alternatives to building two elementary schools, Bracciano said.

One option would be to bus more students. Another would be to build additions to current schools. A third option would be to do some of both.

Though it may not be immediately apparent to consolidation critics, Bracciano said building two new elementaries after closing three did have logic. Lawrence has always treasured neighborhood schools, he said.

And if children attend schools across town, their parents tend to get less involved in the school and the children have to spend time on buses.

“We had too many schools in the wrong places,” he said. “It would be nice if we could lift them up and move them.”

The school board will meet with the boundary committee, probably this month, to give the committee some direction, Gammill said.

After that meeting, there will be an opportunity for public comment, probably at a school board meeting.

Voters would have to approve a bond issue to finance construction of the new schools, Gammill said.

“Our main idea is just to be prepared for expansion,” Bracciano said.