photo by: Chris Conde

Liberty Memorial Central Middle School is pictured in September 2018.

The Lawrence school board on Monday unanimously approved the repurposing of Liberty Memorial Central Middle School to a STEAM-based curricular focus beginning with the 2024-25 school year.

“I think our students are going to have an experience unlike anything else we have done in Lawrence,” LMCMS eighth-grade teacher Laura Leonard told the Journal-World.

Dialogue surrounding the STEAM curriculum, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics, emerged earlier this year as part of a broader discussion exploring ways to attract new students amid declining enrollment. As reported by the Journal-World in October, the district’s unofficial headcount showed a steep decline of 299 students compared to the 2022-23 school year. The one-year enrollment-drop was nearly the entire number predicted by a district consultant for a five-year period.

The board on Monday received a progress update from the district’s redesign committee, made up of working groups of middle school staff that have toured STEAM-focused schools, attended STEAM professional development activities and worked with potential partners.

The proposed STEAM curriculum, according to a presentation to board members on Monday, includes a schedule block of “flexible core time.” Core time, according to the presentation, is “comprised of a Humanities section that will integrate English Language Arts (ELA) skills and standards with science and social studies standards and themes.” The themes are student-driven, Leonard said.

“We are proposing having core time so that state standards are taught in a way that is flexible,” Leonard said. “So we may have a week where we talk about ancient Rome and read Greek myths. And the next week, it may be that we need to do a week and a half of writing or reading, or science lab. So the themes will change but the standards will not.”

Another proposed component of the LMCMS STEAM curriculum, dubbed the “inquiry block,” is designed to provide students with “authentic tasks to utilize problem-based learning.” Board member Bob Byers drew a parallel to the district’s Montessori program at New York Elementary School.

“That you have the involvement of experiences,” Byers said, “and that’s kind of exciting.”

A proposed mandatory requirement of the STEAM curriculum at LMCMS is that sixth-grade students take an introductory course in “Performing/Fine Arts” that includes two-week explorations in the areas of choir, orchestra, art, and theater. Students will then continue in one of those focus-areas during their seventh and eighth-grade years at LMCMS.

Patrick Kelly, the district’s chief academic officer, told the Journal-World that the school will still retain its extracurricular sports activities. And Kelly added that “we haven’t changed any boundaries for the school at this point.”

Amanda Peterson, a teacher at West Middle School who participated in Monday’s presentation, said that “a lot of considerations are still going into this,” including “staffing, enrollment, and schedules.”

“They’re all kind of puzzle pieces of the bigger picture,” she said. “So as we learn more information, we can put more of the puzzle together.”

The redesign committee is also potentially proposing a rebranding of the school to “STEAM Academy at LMCMS.”

In other business, the board:

• Approved, in the consent agenda, the purchase of 15 “Art of Education Flex Curriculum” licenses for the district’s K-8 visual arts curriculum. The five-year agreement for the 15 licenses totaled $59,334. According to a report from Denise Johnson, the district’s director of elementary curriculum, the visual arts curriculum team spent the past 10 months “analyzing student and teacher data, developing a mission and vision for K-12 visual arts for USD 497,” and “looking into a way to bridge art programming” for students.