Before deciding where to expand libraries, reconfigure classrooms or overhaul heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems at elementary buildings in the Lawrence school district, officials are being urged to focus their attention on a more pressing need: installing smoke detectors.

Nine of the Lawrence school district’s elementary schools don’t have smoke detectors, a problem that should be “remedied immediately,” according to a report filed this week by the Physical Development Subcommittee of the district’s Elementary School Facility Vision Task Force.

“This is a comparatively inexpensive fix and the socially responsible thing to do,” the subcommittee concluded. “This is a recurring deficiency in this district and should be cured immediately.”

The lack of detector systems at Cordley, Deerfield, Hillcrest, Kennedy, Pinckney, Schwegler, Sunset Hill, Wakarusa Valley and Woodlawn schools — although Kennedy recently received a few, with the arrival of preschool programs — is among dozens of shortcomings listed and upgrades recommended among the district’s 15 elementary campuses.

Such work — at an estimated $10,000 per site — now will be considered for absorbing some of the $2.5 million normally set aside each year for larger jobs and, perhaps, lead to seeking voter support for a bond issue to address even bigger projects and issues.

“It may be something that needs to happen fairly quickly,” said Tom Waechter, the subcommittee’s chairman. “This is all subject to district review and public funding.”

Even without smoke detectors in all buildings, the district’s elementary schools all comply with appropriate fire codes, said Tom Bracciano, the district’s division director for facilities maintenance. The buildings are inspected regularly, and students, teachers and staffers conduct fire drills monthly.

While all such buildings indeed are safe, the ones lacking smoke detectors could be even safer, said Rich Barr, Lawrence fire marshal and division chief of Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical.

“I would say they ought to be fully alarmed and fully sprinkled,” Barr said. “That’s me. That’s the highest level of protection we can give our kids, and I think we should provide the highest level we can … but there’s a difference between what I can require and what I want.”

Rich Minder, president of the Lawrence school board and co-chair of the task force, said the subcommittee’s recommendations would be reviewed first by the task force, and then by the entire school board.

“Now that it’s come to my attention, now I can do something,” he said.