photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

New York Elementary School, 936 New York St., is pictured Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2021. The sign in front says "Est. 1869."

Just months after the Lawrence school district closed an eastern Lawrence elementary school to help address a budget shortfall in its budget, the district appears set to recommend another to be closed and repurposed.

Residents in the East Lawrence neighborhood told the Journal-World on Tuesday that they have heard rumblings the district is considering changing its neighborhood school, New York Elementary, into a Montessori school, which would be an alternative school in the district that uses a different teaching approach than standard K-12 education.

How the Montessori school would work remains to be seen. But to establish it at the building that is now New York Elementary, the district may need to move the school’s current students to other elementary schools in the district before it began enrolling students for the Montessori program, which is what the district did when it recently closed Kennedy Elementary. It’s a prospect that parents of those students may not support.

The district may also consider a multiyear phasing plan, which could allow current students to stay in its school building to finish their elementary education there over the next several years, but not enter any new neighborhood students in the future unless they attend the Montessori program.

As of Tuesday afternoon, district spokeswoman Julie Boyle did not respond to the Journal-World’s request for information regarding the plan. However, a source close to the school district told the Journal-World on Tuesday that the district is considering closing the school for it to be repurposed as a Montessori school.

The source said the district was considering the Montessori school as an opportunity to attract students to enroll in the Lawrence school district and to help counteract declining enrollment in recent years, which has led to budget woes for the district. The source also said Superintendent Anthony Lewis has already informed the elementary school’s staff about the proposal.

The district’s budget is likely a major cause for the proposal. As the Journal-World reported last month, the district estimated at the time to see a drop between $2 million and $3.3 million because of recent enrollment drops in the district.

On Monday, however, Lewis said the shortfall is now expected to be on the higher end of that estimate because the state has recently informed the district that it cannot use a declining enrollment provision to soften the blow — a drop of $3.3 million in its state funding next school year. Additionally, board member Shannon Kimball said the district needed to cut $1.7 million from the district’s current school year budget.

To respond to those shortfalls, the district’s budget and program evaluation committee and its nine subcommittees are working on proposals that would be recommended to the school board for consideration. One such recommendation that has come from those discussions is the plan to discontinue high school gymnastics, which has already led to outcries from students and parents.

As for the New York Elementary proposal, at least one parent appears to have already expressed frustration with the district. Melinda Lavon spoke to the board during the public comment part of the board’s meeting on Monday, suggesting the district appears to be acting secretly about its discussions to address the funding shortfalls.

Lavon, who has four children currently in the district, said parents held a “Save Our Schools” campaign about 10 years ago in response to the district’s discussions to close schools to save money. She said the district was more forthcoming with information back then. She also suggested the district administration look into cutting its salaries before making other types of cuts to the budget.

“We feel things have been really secretive,” Lavon said of the current budget process. “We want to see more leadership on the budget process.”

However, Lavon did not specifically mention any plan to close New York Elementary. Lavon did not respond to a call from the Journal-World on Tuesday to clarify her statements. But New York Elementary had been on the chopping block, along with Cordley Elementary School, in 2010.

As the Journal-World reported in 2010, the district was facing a $4 million to $5 million shortfall and explored closing those schools. But parents demonstrated against the plans with the Save Our Neighborhood Schools campaign.

One of the parents who participated is now a school board member: Kelly Jones. Jones, who had two children attending Cordley, told the Journal-World at the time that neighborhood schools, including New York Elementary, were important to the community.

“Schools are the focal points of our neighborhoods. They are what keep our communities together,” Jones said in 2010.

Additionally, Barry Shalinsky, president for the East Lawrence Neighborhood Association, told the Journal-World Tuesday that the organization and the neighborhood’s residents are monitoring the budgeting process “to make sure that any negative impacts to New York School are minimal.”

“ELNA would vigorously oppose any proposal to close our school, just as we have done in the past,” Shalinsky said in an email.

The district appears set to begin working more publicly on the budgeting process. During the meeting on Monday, Lewis said the district plans to have a meeting next week related to the budget and program evaluation committees work to allow for the public to get a better understanding of what it is doing.

Meanwhile, a change to New York Elementary would be the second reorganization of the elementary education in Lawrence in the last year. In April, the Lawrence school board approved a plan to close Kennedy Elementary, which is also located in eastern Lawrence, for the purposes of changing it into an early childhood education community center.

The students who were learning at the school were placed at three area elementary schools, including New York. The district would likely need to follow a similar protocol for the New York students if it chooses to close and repurpose the school as a Montessori school.

New York Elementary currently has the lowest enrollment among elementary schools in Lawrence, with about 188 students, according to the district’s recent enrollment reports.