It looks easy – like moving the pieces of the puzzle to make things fit just right.

But members of the Lawrence schools boundary committee have a tough job because these pieces also come with emotion attached – students and parents who may not want to be transferred to a new school.

The committee is keeping an eye on three elementary schools in western Lawrence – Deerfield, Sunflower and Langston Hughes – that are nearing capacity. But members have agreed to continue to study the issue and not make boundary shifts for the fall.

“I think it’s pretty clear that we’re going to have to make some changes, at least according to the projections the next couple of years,” said committee member Scott Morgan, a Lawrence school board member.

The trick will be figuring out how to manage the change, he said.

A consultant will report back to the committee this month about scenarios for possible study and discussion.

Deerfield, 101 Lawrence Ave., the district’s largest elementary school, has about 530 students this year, while Langston Hughes, 1101 George Williams Way, has close to 430. About 480 students attend Sunflower, 2521 Inverness Drive.

The buildings can hold different capacities, but administrators try to balance populations for staffing ratios. They also keep an eye on trends to keep overcrowding from occurring, said committee chairman Tom Bracciano, the district’s division director of operations and facility planning.

The biggest concern from current projections is that growth for those three schools doesn’t appear to be slowing down, he said.

Several elementary schools still have portable classrooms on their campuses, but the district made an effort to get rid of them at junior high schools through the 2005 bond construction. Among administrators and board members, “portable classroom” has become a dirty word because they say it involves safety concerns by having students leave the building to get to classes.

“That’s the whole thing we’ll look at: Can we make a change through the boundary move? And that way we don’t have to spend money to build a school or put (portable classrooms) in,” Bracciano said.

Morgan said the committee is obligated to complete a long-term planning study to show taxpayers the district is working to efficiently utilize existing capacity. But he also says it might not be that simple.

“I also know that nothing quite lights up this town like a boundary change,” Morgan said.

The committee has other issues on its plate. Members also are studying district lines and the socioeconomic populations of the junior high and high schools.