photo by: Rochelle Valverde/Journal-World

About 150 people attended the Lawrence school board meeting on Feb. 27, 2023.

About 150 people showed up to share their thoughts with the Lawrence school board as it prepared to decide whether to take a step that will allow the district to consider closing as many as three elementary schools ahead of next school year.

The board’s meeting began at 6 p.m. on Monday and public comment did not begin until about 9:30 p.m., following the conclusion of district presentations and initial questions from the board. The board was set to vote on whether to hold public hearings on potential closures of three elementary schools, but the vote had not occurred by the Journal-World’s print deadline.

Superintendent Anthony Lewis recently released his budget recommendation, which calls for closing Broken Arrow, Pinckney and Woodlawn elementaries and repurposing Liberty Memorial Central Middle School ahead of next school year. It also recommends cutting dozens of teaching positions and increasing class sizes at the middle and high school levels. The district estimates the cuts would save the district between $4.475 million to $4.775 million. The district plans to use those dollars to increase staff pay across the district, cover annual cost increases, and increasing district cash balance.

Lewis said Monday that since he came to district in 2018, enrollment has decreased from around 12,000 to around 10,000 students, and the district needed to come to terms with the fact that more schools need to close. He said teachers are the district’s most important asset, and the district was not addressing its priority of raising their wages by avoiding school closures.

“Our people are more important than buildings,” Lewis said. “It’s our people that make the school district what it is.”

Board President Shannon Kimball was the only board member who said she was ready to support the district’s proposal as presented prior to the beginning of public comment. Kimball said that based on state funding, a district the size of Lawrence can operate the most efficiently if elementary schools have four sections in each grade and about 600 students. Kimball said she was supportive of the motion put forward by the district. She said the district is far from where it needs to be to operate efficiently with the funding the state provides, and currently doesn’t have any schools over 500 students and four elementary schools with less than 400 students,

“So year over year we are spending additional money to educate our students than what is supported by the way our state funding is set up,” Kimball said. “…So those are the factual reasons why we are here having this conversation this evening.”

The board heard from dozens of people ahead of the vote, many of whom called to the board to consider other cuts before resorting to school closures.

“If our ideas were more valued or pursued maybe we wouldn’t be sitting here still waiting for a better plan,” Erica Hunter said.

In a statement, the community group Save Our Schools said that it fully supports the district’s classified staff receiving a living wage and better compensation for teachers, but there are other ways to find savings to put toward those goals, in particular cuts to district administration.

“We know these objectives can be achieved through alternative means such as renewable energy, cutting positions and reducing salaries at district administration, and many other innovative avenues the district has not fully explored or considered,” Save Our Schools said in the statement.

The recommendation does not call for cutting any district administrators, which have an average cost of $127,662 per position (when excluding the superintendent’s salary). As part of $6.4 million in cuts ahead of this school year, the district cut 90 positions, including 72 teacher positions mostly at the elementary level, 11.5 classified staff positions and 6.5 district-level administrative positions.

The district estimates closing one elementary school would save $300,000 to $400,000 and closing a middle school would save $325,000. Those savings are based on cuts to principals, custodians, librarians and other positions, but a more specific breakdown has not been provided. The district calls for transitioning LMCMS to a “specialized curriculum” school, such as a fine arts school, to attract students in seventh and eighth grades throughout Lawrence and other areas.

As far as the rationale for considering particular schools for closure, a district presentation cited recently completed five-year enrollment projections and architectural reviews, which rated all four schools on the lower-end based on the number and/or size of their classrooms. Additional reasons the district provided for closing or repurposing each of the four schools are below:

Broken Arrow (2027-28 projected enrollment of 263, with 338 capacity, or 78%): Received the least bond issue improvements; requires $8.3 million in renovations to improve instructional environment (including construction of walls); “expands the neighborhood” and improves the utilization of nearby school. School could potentially be used to expand space for adjacent Billy Mills Middle School and support potential innovations with how the district serves sixth graders. There was not yet an estimate for how much it would cost were the district to renovate the school to serve middle school students.

Pinckney (2027-28 projected enrollment of 210, with 323 capacity, or 65%): To bring the building up to 80% of new condition would cost $500,000; five-year projections estimate the building will be well below capacity (65%). School could potentially be used to relocate programs currently operated at the former East Heights school.

Woodlawn (2027-28 projected enrollment of 183, with 300 capacity, or 61%): Building projected to be well below capacity in five years; to bring the building up to 80% new condition would cost $2.28 million. Potential use to be determined.

Liberty Memorial Central (2027-28 projected enrollment of 432, with 625 capacity, or 69%): To bring the building up to 80% new condition would cost $2.4 million and would not address the number and square footage of classrooms; five-year projections estimate the building will be well below capacity at 69%. Potential use as a “theme-based” school, such as fine arts, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math), dual language, or innovations.

The district presentation lists five questions and considerations regarding school closures: socioeconomic status of students; the number of IEPs; the impact on multi-grade classrooms; the effect on supplementary title funding; and class sizes. An estimated cost for repurposing LMCMS was not provided but listed as a consideration.

Regarding the enrollment projections, board member Kelly Jones asked the district-hired consultant whether closing a building in a certain neighborhood would impact how many families locate in the neighborhood, essentially making lower enrollment projections a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” Robert Schwarz, of RSP & Associates, said if a building were no longer online, it would continue to decrease enrollment in the surrounding area. Jones added that apart from enrollment, closing a neighborhood’s school would also likely contribute to disparities among neighborhoods.

The recommendation calls for cutting approximately 50 middle and high school teachers for a total savings of $3.25 million (based on the average cost of $65,000 for a teaching position). Kristen Ryan, executive director of human resources for Lawrence Public Schools, said the district did not want to go as far as the previously discussed increase in average class size to 28 at the middle school level and 30 at the high school level, and that the goal was to keep average class size at around 25. Ryan said the district would need to evaluate student enrollment in certain programs to see if the district will still have the staff to provide certain courses.

In a response to a question from Jones, Ryan said the district hires about 100 staff annually and hoped to cover the staff reductions through attrition rather than cutting filled positions. She said like last year, teachers would be asked to take different open positions if their position is eliminated.

“Everyone was offered a position, it was maybe not the position that they most desired, but a position was offered,” Ryan said.