photo by: Mike Yoder

Broken Arrow Elementary, 2704 Louisiana St.

The Lawrence school district’s Boundary Advisory Committee now has several more school closure scenarios to consider — but it could also be poised to eliminate a proposal that would involve closing multiple school buildings.

At its meeting on Wednesday, the committee received information about a handful of new and updated cost-saving scenarios, many of which still involve closing some neighborhood elementary schools and would involve shuffling students among multiple other buildings. With the new options, the number of scenarios that would close one or multiple neighborhood school buildings has now ballooned to 10.

Much of the conversation later in the meeting, however, revolved around possibly paring the list down. Committee members expressed interest in eliminating a scenario that the board had previously discussed — one that would involve closing Broken Arrow, New York, Woodlawn and Pinckney elementary schools and consolidating those students at what is now Liberty Memorial Central Middle School.

No formal action to strike that option from the list was taken by the end of Wednesday’s meeting. Zach Conrad, the district’s director for data, said that he’d send out a form allowing committee members to vote on whether to eliminate the option involving Liberty Memorial and other options prior to the group’s next meeting. However, some committee members said they wanted such votes to be made public in some capacity in the interest of transparency.

Unlike the proposal involving Liberty Memorial, many of the new proposals brought before the committee on Wednesday would shutter only one school. However, the impact of those closings would ripple outward and touch multiple other school buildings.

Four of the new scenarios presented to committee members involved closing a single elementary building, rather than the combinations of simultaneous school closures that have been presented at other recent meetings. The students displaced by the closures would then move to other elementary schools.

One option — closing Broken Arrow Elementary School — would set off a domino effect among four additional schools. The students from Broken Arrow would move to Schwegler Elementary, but that would also displace some Schwegler students. Those students would move to Sunflower Elementary School, which would in turn cause some students at Sunflower to move to Quail Run Elementary, and would cause some Quail Run students to be displaced to Langston Hughes Elementary.

Three other scenarios would create similar domino effects. One would start by closing Woodlawn Elementary School, another by closing Pinckney Elementary School and yet another by closing New York Elementary School. The other schools that would be affected vary from one proposal to another.

The committee also heard about a new proposal that would close Hillcrest Elementary School. This one wouldn’t set off much of a domino effect; instead, it would spread those students among four “cluster sites” — Schwegler, Sunset Hill, Sunflower and Cordley elementary schools. The district previously said that closing Hillcrest would require the school’s English language learning program to migrate to several other schools.

Another new option would involve shuttering both Broken Arrow and Pinckney elementary schools. However, Conrad told the committee that option would result in some “messy” boundary revisions. The committee also heard about a proposal that would shuffle students from Liberty Memorial Central Middle School to West Middle School and then shuffle some West students to Southwest Middle School.

In addition, the committee briefly discussed an option that would create “grade centers” that would serve only a couple of grade levels each — kindergarten through second; third through fifth; ninth and 10th; and 11th and 12th. The committee decided not to consider that plan any further.

The district’s school closure proposals have been a controversial topic, dating back to the district’s decision to close Kennedy Elementary last year and its proposal to close New York Elementary and turn it into a Montessori school. Earlier this week, a crowd rallied outside of the Lawrence school board’s meeting to protest the potential closures of neighborhood schools.