photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

New York Elementary School, 936 New York St., is pictured on Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022.

The Lawrence school district is continuing to explore the option of converting New York Elementary School into a public Montessori school, and is hoping that pandemic relief aid could assist in the effort.

The district submitted a letter of interest to Douglas County for American Rescue Plan Act funding to help train teachers in the Montessori method. The request was one of four letters of interest the district submitted. Together the four requests total about $4.54 million, with $3.695 million of that amount to offset revenue loss associated with the pandemic.

The school district requested $176,493 to cover the Montessori training certification for 20 teachers. The request states the costs would be one-time startup costs and would go to help the district start a Montessori program in one of the district’s low socio-economic schools, though it does not specify which school.

District spokesperson Julie Boyle said Wednesday that while no decision or recommendation has been made, the district continues to “explore the possibility” of offering a free, public Montessori educational program at New York as a way to increase enrollment in the district. Boyle said that New York, which district reports indicate has 188 students, is the district’s lowest-enrollment school.

If Lawrence were to take that approach, the district has said it would use a multiyear plan that phased in the Montessori program while simultaneously phasing out the regular elementary program. However, New York was also among four elementary schools that the district proposed closing next school year to help address the district’s multimillion-dollar budget shortfall. On Monday, the Lawrence school board decided to take any school closings off the table for next year in favor of pursuing other budget reductions to immediately address the shortfall, but several board members said they still thought school closures would need to be considered going forward.

Boyle clarified that the idea of converting New York to a public Montessori school is separate from the school closures recently proposed to address the budget shortfall. Specifically, she said the idea was not a budget cut and not part of the proposals that have been discussed by the board’s Budget and Program Evaluation Committee, and is instead meant to be a long-term solution to grow enrollment by attracting new families to the district. The district has said enrollment declines at the elementary and middle school levels and the subsequent loss of state aid have been a key driver of the budget shortfall.

Boyle said Superintendent Anthony Lewis has shared the idea of creating the Montessori program with New York’s staff and site council and continues to discuss it with staff at the University of Kansas Center for Montessori Research, a national consultant who specializes in opening public Montessori schools, and others.

As the Journal-World previously reported, Lewis said if the district were to move forward with the idea, the plan would be to phase in the program over a period of six years. Under the Montessori method, children remain with the same teacher in multi-age classrooms for three years, and the district would begin by accepting students into the Montessori program at the kindergarten level. As the program expanded each year, the regular elementary program would be phased out.

The phasing plan would allow the school’s current elementary students to finish their education there, rather than moving them to different elementary schools in the district immediately. But future students in the neighborhood would need to attend a different elementary school if they chose not to attend the Montessori school.

The district has not made a formal recommendation regarding a Montessori program at New York, and the school board has not considered the topic. The district’s letters of interest for ARPA funds are among $77 million in requests submitted to the county. The county will receive $23.7 million in ARPA funding over the next two years, about $21.1 million of which is still available.

The Lawrence school district’s other ARPA letters of interest are as follows:

• $3.695 million to offset revenue loss due to enrollment declines that the district states were caused by COVID-19. The request states that the funding will be used as a “bridge” to allow the district and community time to conduct a program and facility evaluation and develop a strategic and sustainable budget plan.

• $495,000 for a districtwide fiber internet network. The request states the district is working with WANRack to provide engineering and installation of fiber optic cable infrastructure between the district hub(s) and 26 locations. The district is working with E-rate funding to pay for the majority of the installation, but the district’s portion of the fiber build is still $495,136.80.

• $176,000 to pay for degree training for paraprofessionals to become certified teachers. The request states that the project will help address the district’s current teacher shortage due to COVID-19 by providing an opportunity for paraprofessional staff to complete a yearlong program of study through Kansas State University.