About 18 months after closing it to save money, the Lawrence school district is partly reopening Centennial School for its new virtual school.

The Lawrence Virtual School, which opened this fall, is moving from school district headquarters into the former elementary school at 2145 La. The move is to be complete by Wednesday or Thursday.

The district closed Centennial in May 2003 and moved its students to Cordley, Broken Arrow and Schwegler schools. Riverside and East Heights schools also closed in May 2003; the district was aiming to save money by closing the three small schools.

Virtual school parent Estella McCollum, of Lawrence, said she was happy she and other parents would be able to use rooms in Centennial. She and her husband home-school their 7- and 5-year-old daughters under guidance of the virtual school.

At Centennial, the online school will use some classrooms for optional special activities for its 163 students, and provide a meeting room for parents and an office for the school’s principal, Gary Lewis.

While the district closed Centennial to save money, opening part of it to house the virtual school makes sense, a district official said.

The virtual school’s offices have been in a small conference room in district headquarters, the only room available there, said Tom Bracciano, the district’s operations and facility planning director.

“Centennial is a school and it’s being used for educational purposes,” Bracciano said. “I think it’s a lot better than to have sold it and use it for something else.”

The district could reopen Centennial someday as a traditional public school, he said.

Building expenses

Lawrence Virtual School principal Gary Lewis is in the process of moving his online school into the former Centennial School building. The new location will give the school a place for students to meet for activities and events.

The virtual school would spend from $9,000 to $13,000 on electric, gas, water and sewer costs each year, estimated John Geist, the district’s energy manager.

When it was operating as an elementary school, Centennial spent about $26,000 on those utilities each year, Geist said.

After the district closed the school, the district kept utilities on so pipes wouldn’t freeze and to maintain the building, Geist said. That cost about $7,400 a year. Since the school closed, the building has been used for district storage.

Moving the virtual school to Centennial and opening the rooms for use will cost from $1,000 to $3,000, said Kathy Johnson, the school district’s division director of finance.

Now in its first year, the virtual school is the result of a $318,000 federal grant the district received to open a charter school. The school has students from across the state, including Paola, Manhattan, Kansas City and Wichita. It offers courses for students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Lewis said he’d always known the virtual school would have to move out of district headquarters in order to have more space for student and parent activities.

He’d rather have the virtual school use a building the district already owns instead of renting space.

School board decides to keep Centennial for district uses (9-29-04) 6News video: Centennial School building to stay in district hands (9-28-04) Audio: Supt. Randy Weseman, part 1 Audio: Supt. Randy Weseman, part 2 Students, teachers adjust well to school closings (05-21-04) 6News video: Student has adapted to new school (05-20-04) 6News video: Students adapt to new schools (05-19-04) See past stories on the closed schools

More than computers

The virtual school now will have an office, a meeting room for parents stocked with children’s books and a display of curriculum materials, three multipurpose rooms, a gym and small kitchen. Some rooms also are open to other groups.

“We were really excited about it because it gives us kind of a central meeting point,” McCollum said. “If we plan something, we don’t have to worry about where we’re going to do it.”

Virtual school parents hope to team to teach art, music and science Thursday afternoons in the multipurpose rooms instead of teaching the children separately at home. Parents who don’t help in the classrooms will watch younger children, McCollum said.

“There’s a misconception that a virtual school is taking a child and putting them in front of a computer and expecting that — how do I say it — learning by osmosis would occur,” said Lewis, the school’s principal. “They have this misconception, ‘Oh, the virtual school students do all their work online.'”

Moving the virtual school into Centennial doesn’t sit well with everyone.

Bob Blank, a member of the Centennial Neighborhood Assn., said the virtual school should not be there simply because Centennial should not have closed.

“When they closed Centennial they effectively closed this neighborhood,” the retiree said. “No young families are moving in; they’re all moving out because they’re so disgusted with the school system.”

The district should have closed nearby Cordley School instead, Blank said, because Centennial’s building is better.

“They’re trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear over at Cordley,” he said.

Virtual school parents pay $97 in fees a year for each student in first through eighth grade and $43.50 for a kindergartner.

The school will get $106,000 a year for three years through the federal grant. After that, Lewis estimates the school will attract enough students to support itself.

The virtual school also will get state money for each student. Each full-time virtual school student will generate the same amount of per-pupil funding as a traditional public school student.