photo by: Journal-World File

The district will close Pinckney Elementary, top, and Broken Arrow Elementary, bottom, next school year.

Revised plans for potential boundary changes related to school closures in Lawrence call for dividing Broken Arrow students among four schools instead of five, nixing a plan to send some Deerfield students to Woodlawn, and sending more Pinckney students to Hillcrest instead of Deerfield. The committee working on the revisions will continue to refine its recommendation at its next meeting.

The Boundary Advisory Committee met Wednesday evening to begin discussing changes to its current recommendation following input from the Lawrence school board. Members of the board made about a dozen unique suggestions regarding the committee’s recommendation at a meeting Monday.

The committee proposed its original concept in March for adjusting boundaries related to the closure of Broken Arrow and Pinckney, which also shifted the boundaries of nine other schools in order to make room for incoming students and balance attendance. The committee was presented with a revised concept from district administration Wednesday that implemented several suggestions from the school board, and then voted on whether to move forward with additional discussion of each component.

In addition to sending more Pinckney students to Hillcrest than the original concept, the revised plan would divide Broken Arrow students among four schools instead of five: Cordley, Langston Hughes, Prairie Park and Schwegler. A summary of the suggested revisions from district administration, based on board input, and the committee’s direction regarding those revisions is as follows:

• That no current Deerfield students be transferred to Woodlawn. The original recommendation called for about 30 current Deerfield students to attend Woodlawn as a way to better utilize that building. The committee agreed with the revision of not shifting Deerfield’s boundary to send students to Woodlawn.

• That students living in the area south of Kansas Highway 10 and west of U.S. 59 who currently attend Broken Arrow should all attend the same school. The original recommendation called for those students to attend two schools, Sunflower and Langston Hughes, with the goal of having more efficient bus routes. The revised concept calls for all those students to attend Langston Hughes. The committee agreed with the revision.

• To move as many Pinckney students as possible to Hillcrest rather than Deerfield. The original recommendation had 124 Pinckney students attending Deerfield and 45 attending Hillcrest, which increased the capacity at Deerfield to 90% and required some current Pinckney students to have to cross McDonald Drive. To make room for more Pinckney students at Hillcrest, one recommendation from district administration called for moving about 60 students attending the English Language Learners (ELL) program at Hillcrest to Woodlawn, and making Woodlawn another site for that program. Committee members did not support that proposal and suggested alterations. They called for only the current Pinckney students who live north of Sixth Street to attend Deerfield and for the district to provide those students bus transportation to school. Current Pinckney students south of Sixth Street would attend Hillcrest. They also called for giving all Pinckney students priority if they want to transfer to New York. New York is in the midst of a multi-year transition to a public Montessori school, so preschool, kindergarten and first grade students entering New York next school year would be part of the Montessori program and students older than that would be in the traditional format.

• That no students should be required to cross McDonald Drive on foot in order to attend Deerfield. The original concept had 124 Pinckney students attending Deerfield. Currently there are limited sidewalks and crossings around McDonald Drive, which is an area with a high accident rate. A pedestrian tunnel under McDonald Drive that is part of the City of Lawrence’s citywide trail system, the Lawrence Loop, is located near the Kansas Turnpike Authority access terminal.

• That the committee should consider expanding the boundaries of New York school. The original recommendation did not change the boundaries for New York because of its ongoing transition to a public Montessori school. However, all students entering New York next year in grades 2 or above would be in a regular classroom. The committee called for moving New York’s current western boundary line about two or three blocks farther west, from Massachusetts Street to either Kentucky Street or Tennessee Street. The change would move students currently in the Hillcrest boundary area into the New York boundary area.

• The committee also expressed support for the board’s suggestion to provide families more transfer options. All transfers would still be done on a space-available basis. Transfer options include having an open transfer policy for Woodlawn, communicating to parents that they may request transfers based on preference, and exempting some students from having to transfer to a new school due solely to a boundary shift. Specifically, district administration recommends exempting current third and fourth graders and their younger siblings currently attending the same school. Those students could choose to stay at their current school or attend their new school.

Larry Englebrick, the district’s facilities and operations leader, also discussed input from Board President Shannon Kimball that the committee should consider the possibility of expanding some of the remaining elementary schools as those buildings approach their capacities in the coming years as a way to allay capacity concerns. Englebrick said district administration had taken some proactive steps in that regard. He said that a couple of months ago he got in touch with some architects and engineers about the possibility that the district might need additional space at some elementary buildings in a few years. He said he expressed a desire to have a flexible plan ready that would allow the district to quickly add two to four classrooms to those buildings.

The Boundary Advisory Committee will meet one more time, at 5:30 p.m. on April 19, before sending the revised boundary change recommendation to the school board for consideration. As part of its next meeting, the committee will discuss additional details regarding the revisions and receive input from a district-hired consultant that has been assisting with the boundary changes. District leaders have previously said the board will consider the revised recommendation in late April or early May.