Kansas City, Kansas ? Two works by one of the premier painters in the state’s history have created a dilemma for a northeast Kansas school board.

In 1922, the senior class at Wyandotte High School spent $300 to buy an oil painting by Birger Sandzen and presented it as the class gift to the school. Sixteen years later, the class of 1938 followed suit, again paying $300 for a Sandzen painting.

The paintings’ combined value today, according to a recent appraisal, is $195,000.

Stunned and delighted by the news, the Kansas City, Kan., school board has decided to leave the paintings in their current home – a bank vault – while members decide their ultimate fate.

Options include selling the paintings and using the proceeds for art scholarships. They could be loaned to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., which has several Sandzen pieces.

They could also be returned to the downtown Kansas City, Kan., library, where they had been displayed until being put in storage during a renovation. The district oversees the library.

“Of all the options we were given, I’m not inclined to hurry up and sell them,” said school board member George Breidenthal. “Certainly we could have a lot of uses for $195,000. But once some things are gone – they’re gone.”

The Kansas City, Kan., board isn’t the first school board to face such a dilemma. Fine art once was a popular class gift.

About 20 Kansas school districts own Sandzen pieces, said Ron Michael, curator of the Birger Sandzen Memorial Gallery in Lindsborg, where the Swedish-born artist arrived in 1894 to accept a teaching position at Bethany College.

Sandzen and his representative brokered many deals with schools, leaving lasting legacies in such places as McPherson, which is home to a large Sandzen collection.