Karen Cooper loves sending her third-grade daughter to Deerfield School.

“There’s almost 600 kids in the school and the secretaries know who the kids are,” Cooper said. “They know what classrooms they belong in. They know who their parents are. It makes me feel safe, and it makes me feel like people care.”

But the school is becoming so popular that some of its students will likely be moved to a different school in the fall.

Deerfield’s capacity is 540 to 600 children. The school district predicts nearly 590 children will attend there in the fall if the school board doesn’t change the boundaries. About 565 children attend Deerfield this year.

This week, Lawrence public schools released next school year’s enrollment projections for its elementary, junior high and high schools. The projections do not include the Lawrence Virtual School.

The district is predicted to have 9,926 students next school year — about 147 more than this school year. The estimate does not include other programs such as preschool and the diploma completion program.

Tom Bracciano, operations and facility planning director for the district, said more children are predicted to enter kindergarten in fall 2005 than several years ago.

Moving boundaries

A school district committee is studying possible boundary changes for Hillcrest and Deerfield schools to relieve crowding.

South Junior High School band director Scott Robinson rehearses with the woodwind section of the school's band. Because the band room is not big enough, two sections of the band practice on different days. The bands only practice together once in the gym before a concert. The Lawrence school district is considering changing school boundaries to relieve crowding.

School board members have asked the committee to find ways to move about 100 students out of Deerfield and 40 out of Hillcrest for the fall.

Bracciano said he hoped the committee would have Deerfield and Hillcrest boundary-change recommendations for the school board by the end of Tuesday’s boundary committee meeting.

Boundaries cannot be changed without school board approval, and the board has public hearings on proposed boundary changes.

One of the students leaving Deerfield may be Janet Glasnapp’sthird-grade daughter. Glasnapp lives in a neighborhood that the boundary committee may recommend be included in Quail Run School boundaries.

“She is not going to be very happy if that happens,” Glasnapp said of her daughter. “But we’ll work it out. We would prefer not to be moved out, but that’s always a possibility.”

‘Busting at the seams’

Glasnapp said she’s known for a couple years it could happen.

6News video: District weighing school boundary changes 6News video: Higher enrollment yielding financial benefit School Guide: Deerfield School

She said she knew the school was getting big. Deerfield has about 90 third-graders. That’s more than half the entire student body of the district’s smallest school, New York School, 936 N.Y.

“They’re busting at the seams,” she said of Deerfield.

Hillcrest School is also growing increasingly crowded. It’s the district’s only elementary school with an English as a Second Language program.

It can hold 366 to 408 students. The school is predicted to have about 430 students next year if the school board doesn’t change the boundaries.

The boundary committee is considering suggesting moving one neighborhood from Hillcrest to Sunset Hill School and another from Hillcrest to Schwegler or Cordley schools.

ESL concerns

But many Hillcrest parents and teachers oppose moving any students out of the school until Cordley School starts taking English as a Second Language students.

They say replacing an existing portable building with a larger one would fix space problems for next year.

They also say changing the boundaries would take too many native English speakers away from the school.

“There’s no reason to move anyone,” Hillcrest parent Sheila Al-Mulki said. “There’s really no reason.”

Meanwhile, Deerfield PTA president Cooper says she knows her daughter’s school does need smaller boundaries because the school is getting too big.

“We’re going to lose some good families no matter where they move the boundaries,” she said. “I don’t want it to happen, but it has to.”