Lawrence high school boundary lines will not change next year after a district committee decided Wednesday it wants to do a longer-term analysis of elementary, middle and high school boundaries altogether.
The Boundary Advisory Committee was charged this school year with making a recommendation to the board with the goal of balancing enrollment more evenly between Free State and Lawrence high schools. The district hasn’t touched high school boundary lines in more than 20 years.
Wednesday was the BAC’s first meeting back from a break. Members voted in November to defer public input meetings as well as further committee meetings while they waited for more data to proceed.
The meeting began with small group discussions over a 74-page packet provided by consulting group RSP & Associates. The committee did not request any data for the two options it was previously considering — only on the current boundaries.
After discussion, the group decided that whatever boundaries they ultimately recommend to the board will not be applied to the 2025-26 school year.
“We have to do what’s best for the district in the long run,” Deputy Superintendent Larry Englebrick said.
Most members said it may be unnecessary to change the current boundaries at all. With the projections on the current boundaries supplied by RSP, the difference between Free State and Lawrence High enrollment would decrease to 235 from the current 316 over five years.
The committee discussed other considerations if they were to pursue boundary changes in the future, including transfers. School board member Anne Costello said the district currently denies regular transfer requests more often than it accepts, mostly because full-time funding does not follow students from school to school, which can cause imbalances.
“We probably have more transfers denied than accepted,” Englebrick said.
One small group suggested just moving the line up for LHS to gain some students — for example, the current 15th Street boundary line could be moved up to 13th or 14th street.
The idea of feeder schools, which Englebrick said would keep “students together from the time they enter elementary schools to the time of graduation,” was a point of interest among committee members Wednesday. Initially, they suggested that it would be middle schools “feeding into” high schools.
However, RSP’s five-year projections show that some elementary schools will likely reach their building capacities.
BAC member Matt Renk shared his hesitation that the district is not currently set up to accommodate a feeder school model, geographically.
“That’s the only problem I have saying that (feeder school) recommendation came out of here,” Renk said. “We have been very intentional about not being disruptive.”
Englebrick plans to share the BAC’s recommendations with the school board on Monday. Committee members plan to reconvene in four weeks.
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Emilia (Mimi) Rosado Schmitt (she/her) is a junior at Lawrence High School and a co-editor in chief for the LHS Budget, where she edits stories and makes graphics and reports.
See more of her work for the Times here.
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