photo by: Rochelle Valverde

The Futures Planning Committee meets at district offices on Nov. 2, 2022.

The committee tasked with coming up with budget recommendations for the Lawrence school district received some preliminary information about building conditions that will inform recommendations about potential school closures.

The Futures Planning Committee met for the fourth time Wednesday evening at district offices and received some aggregated cost estimates — totaling about $30 million — for improvements to the district’s elementary and middle schools. Larry Englebrick, the district’s chief operations officer for facilities and operations, said the district has been taking an in-depth look at the condition of its buildings, and while they are generally in good condition, facility needs and funding must be planned.

“We look at available funding, the facility needs, and then we have to balance what available funding do we have each year based with the projection of when we’re going to hit specific building improvement needs and maintenance needs,” Englebrick said.

Englebrick said the district’s target is to have all schools at 80% overall condition — he said a brand-new building would be at 100% — and he provided an aggregated breakdown of what it would cost to attain that goal for the district’s 13 elementary schools and four middle schools. The cost to get schools to 80% condition was $16.92 million for the elementary schools and $12.32 million for the middle schools. A lesser number, the cost to return only the schools’ “priority systems” to 80% condition, was also given, and was $12.78 million for the elementary schools and $10.38 million for the middle schools.

The overall condition of each school and the condition of their priority systems were also provided, but the specific improvement costs for each school were not. Only four elementary schools were below 80% in overall condition — Prairie Park, Woodlawn, Deerfield and Langston Hughes — and all four were above 75%. Only the condition of Prairie Park’s priority systems was below 80%, and only barely, at 79.9%. Among the middle schools, only Billy Mills fell below 80% for overall condition and the condition of its priority systems, at 77.2% and 77.5%, respectively.

A few committee members questioned why the specific improvement costs for each school were not provided Wednesday, given the timeframe for making a recommendation. One teacher noted she had 35 kids in one of her classrooms, and some asked whether other issues — such as classroom size, classroom staffing, administrative staffing and costs that come from the district’s troubled general fund rather than its capital fund — should instead be the priority for discussion.

“We can do them in tandem, but right now what’s happening is we’re kind of getting information that I feel is maybe secondary to what’s important for us to have, which is how much staff, what is the class size situation, what is capacity, what are the boundaries, what are we able to do with boundary changes,” one committee member said.

Robert Schwarz, of RSP & Associates, the consultant the district hired to lead the process, responded that the conditions of buildings are very important should a decision need to be made to close a school and move those students elsewhere.

“The buildings are very important to this component because the condition of the building, if we start exploring that there’s going to be a reduction in our inventory or a reuse of that inventory, that condition is definitely going to set some things in motion,” Schwarz said.

Doug Loveland, an architect working with the district, said that in addition to the condition and improvement costs being presented Wednesday, the facilities study would be looking at building capacity at each of the schools and the accessibility or “ease of use” of each building. Loveland said that study was ongoing and that ultimately, that data would help inform the committee’s recommendation.

“The goal here is to try to put a number to buildings and have that number represent valuable information,” Loveland said. “Be it dollars, be it some sort of weighted rating, but have it represent valuable information, because eventually you have to make difficult decisions.”

Loveland also recognized the investment Lawrence residents have made in the district’s schools and that they are in relatively good condition. He said 80% is where the district aspires to get to, but that 70% is “in pretty good shape.”

“We did not see horrible buildings when we walked the district,” Loveland said. “We saw well-maintained buildings that have received recent investments from the community.”

Lawrence voters approved a $92.5 million bond issue in 2013 to improve all the district’s schools, a debt that Lawrence taxpayers will continue paying on until 2035, as the Journal-World previously reported. About $80 million was allocated to upgrades and renovations to the district’s 14 elementary schools and two high schools, with the focus on six older elementary schools in central and eastern Lawrence: Cordley, Hillcrest, Kennedy, New York, Pinckney and Sunset Hill.

In August, the school board hired RSP to use enrollment projections, housing analyses, school boundaries and other data to help plan how the district uses its school buildings. The district’s $120,000 contract with RSP includes an enrollment analysis and a facility master plan process for the district. RSP will also guide the committee in using enrollment, facility information and other data to create budget recommendations for the school board.

Due in part to enrollment declines, the school board approved $6.4 million in program and staff cuts for this school year. Those reductions resulted in the creation of multi-grade classrooms and some increases in class sizes. The cuts included $4.27 million to cover a projected shortfall due to enrollment declines; $1.72 million to increase pay for district employees; $218,654 to cover increases in insurance benefits; and $200,000 for the district’s contingency fund, according to a previous presentation to the committee. The exact shortfall will not be known until this year’s enrollment numbers are audited, but preliminary head counts indicate that the district’s enrollment held steady from last school year to this school year, dropping by only one student.

Toward the end of the meeting, Schwarz said the consultants had prepared an online survey to collect community input on the committee’s process and objectives and the community’s financial priorities. He said the survey would go out on Nov. 8 and be available until Nov. 18. A few committee members wanted to know how the survey would be distributed, and consultants and district staff said that information would be communicated later.

The committee’s meetings began in September and are scheduled to conclude in February.