photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Members of the Lawrence school district's Boundary Advisory Committee meet on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025.

High school students in Lawrence don’t need to pack their moving bags quite yet.

Changes to the boundaries for Lawrence High and Free State aren’t likely to occur for the next school year, members of the district’s Boundary Advisory Committee were told at a meeting on Wednesday.

“We cannot make adjustments this year for enrollment next year,” Larry Englebrick, deputy superintendent for Lawrence public schools, told the group. “We really hit that point in November.”

Instead, the earliest boundary changes could come to the city’s two public high schools would be the 2026-2027 school year, due to the amount of time it takes the district to implement such a large change.

A new round of enrollment projections from the district’s consultants has created questions about whether boundary changes are needed for the high schools at all.

“It brought up the question of ‘is this move needed,'” Matt Renk, a member of the boundaries committee and an administrator at Free State High, said after committee members had broken into groups to discuss the new enrollment data. “We are not sure what we are gaining.”

Several other committee members made similar statements after reviewing the enrollment projections.

One big reason a need for boundary changes may be less is because overall growth in the Lawrence community has slowed, and particularly for families that produce school-age children. Consultants have told the district that isn’t likely to change soon.

“I kept saying we are going to have growth, we are going to have growth,” Englebrick said of a recent conversation he had with the district’s consultants, RSP & Associates. “They sat me down and politely told me I was wrong.”

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Larry Englebrick, deputy superintendent for Lawrence public schools, is pictured on Jan. 22, 2025.

The stakes of the growth debate could be high for local high school students. A previous idea being considered for boundary changes would change the traditional dividing line between Lawrence High and Free State from 15th Street/Bob Billings Parkway to a point northward. That plan would move much of North Lawrence and East Lawrence from Free State’s territory into LHS territory. That move could impact where several hundred students would attend high school in the future.

Declining enrollment, though, may make such a move less necessary. RSP is projecting that Lawrence will see significant enrollment declines during the next five years, mirroring a trend seen in many other communities that are being impacted by declining birth rates.

The consultants are now projecting that Lawrence public schools will have a total enrollment of 9,491 students in the 2025-2026 school year, down 137 students from current enrollment totals. By the 2029-2030 school year, overall enrollment is expected to fall to about 9,400 students.

More specifically, the consultants are projecting that high school enrollments will have the greatest rate of decline. High school enrollments are expected to fall by 133 students, or a 4.1% decline, by the 2029-2030 school year. Elementary enrollment during the time period is projected to fall by 144 students, or 3.4%. Middle school enrollment is the only category projected to grow by 2030, increasing by 61 or 2.8%.

The projected decline in high school enrollment relieves one concern that was putting pressure on the district to consider changes to the high school boundaries. Both high schools have capacities of about 2,000 students, and there was concern that Free State High enrollment was going to put that school near its capacity in future years, while Lawrence High would have enrollments significantly below its capacity.

Now, the latest projections show both schools with declining enrollments over the next five years, meaning neither school is at immediate risk of hitting its capacity. The consultants are projecting a 2029-2030 enrollment of 1,412 students at LHS and 1,703 students at Free State.

Committee members on Wednesday spent time talking about whether the district could change its policy related to transfer requests between the two high schools. Englebrick noted that if about 125 students at Free State voluntarily chose to go to LHS, the two school buildings would be nearly equal.

There also was discussion about how important equal enrollments are for the two buildings, given that neither would be approaching capacity. Instead, there was discussion about how the district could ensure that students at both high schools have access to the class offerings at both schools. For example, if Free State offered a class in a particular foreign language and LHS did not, there could be a system where the LHS student could take that particular class — perhaps in person or perhaps remotely.

Englebrick said he also thought Lawrence school enrollment could still grow in the future due to state regulations that will make it much easier for students to transfer from one district to another. Committee members mentioned that they thought the Lawrence district could successfully attract students from Baldwin, Eudora, Perry-Lecompton and other area districts due to Lawrence’s offerings in music, debate, forensics and other programs. But Englebrick said it will require the Lawrence district to be intentional about trying to attract those students.

“There is a way to grow our district, and it is to be entrepreneurial,” Englebrick said.

Lawrence school board members are expected to receive an update about the boundary committee discussion at their meeting on Monday. Ultimately the school board makes the final decisions on any boundary changes.

The Boundary Advisory Committee is expected to meet again in about four weeks, and likely will look at bigger picture issues that go beyond the high schools. For example, the latest projections show that Hillcrest and Schwegler elementary schools could exceed their capacities in coming years.