An aerial view shows the construction site at New York Elementary School on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2015.

Four upcoming construction projects for the Lawrence Public School District will move forward largely unchanged by an incident at New York Elementary School where an 8-year-old boy was seriously injured, one board member says.

For the most part, this is because the projects’ plans were laid out long before the boy, Max McGill, was injured, said Lawrence Public School District Board Member Shannon Kimball.

McGill suffered collapsed lungs and broken bones after he wandered on to the school’s construction site and a 350-pound gate fell on top of him. He has since recovered and after a settlement agreement, the district has been released of its liability on the matter.

However, McGill’s injuries raised questions about whether the site was properly secured or whether other safety concerns were properly addressed.

The work at New York Elementary School — which is now complete — was funded by a $92.5 million bond passed in 2013. The bond was meant to fund the renovation of 20 schools and building of the College and Career Center.

Although Kimball declined to comment specifically on McGill’s injuries or the subsequent settlement, she said there are differences between the New York Elementary School project and the remaining work at Broken Arrow, Prairie Park, Sunflower and Pinckney elementary schools.

The work at New York Elementary began as a hard-bid project, Kimball said, essentially meaning the district accepted sealed bids on the work and selected the lowest bidder in accordance with state law.

The hard-bid process is less hands-on for the district than the alternative at-risk model, which is what the remaining projects used, Kimball said.

With the at-risk model, the district hires a contractor to handle a given project, Kimball said. That contractor then oversees the project’s bidding process and manages the work on behalf of the district.

“I think it’s beneficial to the district to use that model because it gives us a lot of advantages in making sure we’re getting the kind of product that we want at the price that is fair and it allows us to have the expertise to make sure the project is the way it’s supposed to be,” she said.

When asked whether the district would opt to use the at-risk model for future projects, Kimball said the board would only address that decision “if we decided to pursue another bond issue, which we are talking about doing in relation to our secondary schools.”

“So the next time the district would have to make a decision about how to handle construction projects on a larger scale would be if that bond issue is successful,” she added.

The potential for a new bond will likely be discussed mid-December, Kimball said.

One thing that has changed, however, is the way the district’s construction sites are inspected, Kimball said.

Initially the district asked the City of Lawrence to inspect their bond projects for free. But at an estimated cost of $280,000, the city said there was no way to make that money up and instead allowed the district to hire a third-party reviewer for the inspection process.

Site inspections were then conducted by Douglas County and a Kansas City company, however an investigation by the Journal-World discovered Jim Sherman, the county’s inspector in charge of examining a number of sites, was not authorized to enforce building codes for district projects.

Moving forward, Kimball said both the four remaining projects and future work will be inspected by the city. The decision to use city inspectors was approved in September 2015.

School district administrators had little to say about how the district approaches safety issues at school worksites. After multiple requests for interviews, district spokeswoman Julie Boyle issued the following statement: “The management and safety of construction sites are responsibilities of the construction managers the district has hired to oversee the projects. We have confidence in the oversight and inspection process that is in place.”

School board members Marcel Harmon, Kris Adair, Jessica Beeson, Jill Fincher, Rick Ingram and Vanessa Sanburn did not return phone calls seeking comment for this story.

On Nov. 18, a judge approved a settlement offer from Combes Construction, a Bucyrus company that was in charge of the New York Elementary School construction site where McGill was injured.

Only Combes Construction contributed to the settlement, and the dollar amount was not made public. The agreement released the company, the school district and the guardians of the babysitter — a minor who was supposed to be watching McGill — of all liability for his injuries. None of those three parties admitted liability in the settlement.

Kimball said Combes Construction is not involved in any of the district’s current or future projects.