The Wichita school board on Monday heard a plan for a proposed $450 million bond issue that would support the complete reconstruction of eight schools over the next five to six years.
The district would reduce its overall footprint by 11 buildings, consolidate programs in new and existing facilities and close four elementary schools, five special schools and two administrative buildings.
The draft proposal, presented by Ohio-based consultant Woolpert, comes three months after the school board voted to permanently close six schools as a cost-saving measure.
The board planned to take no binding action Monday evening, but planned to revisit the facilities master plan proposal June 27 after gathering community feedback on the recommendations.
Four elementary schools in north-central Wichita — L’Ouverture Magnet, OK, Pleasant Valley and Woodland — would be closed under the new plan, although district officials say many of the students and teachers would be moved into new buildings together.
“Not something we can promise every child and every community, but that would be the intention,” Superintendent Kelly Bielefeld said during a news briefing before the board meeting. “This is much more of a merger of schools than what we did in March, which was closing schools and then those kids got scattered all over the place.”
The plan provides for eight new buildings to replace existing schools of the same name. Coleman Magnet and Truesdell high schools would be rebuilt, as would Black Magnet, McLean Magnet, Adams, Caldwell and Irving elementary schools, and the Little Early Childhood Center, which houses pre-K and kindergarten programs.
Bielefeld said most schools would be rebuilt on the site where they are now, although that is not true in all cases. The new Little Early Childhood Center would be rebuilt on the site of the adjacent Chester Lewis Academic Learning Center, whose current programs would be moved off-site.
“There are a lot of dominoes in the plan,” Bielefeld said. “We have to rebuild this and then mix this up, and then put other things in here, so it will take a few years to get all of this done.”
An expansion would be built on Cessna Elementary School to turn it into a K-8 school, and Isely Magnet Elementary School, which was originally built to house a K-8 program, would also serve high school students contract.
The existing Coleman Magnet high school would be repurposed to house consolidated alternative programs, and Jardine Magnet, one of the recently closed high schools, would be renovated to accept new students from the specialty schools being consolidated.
Among the alternative programs that would be consolidated are Dunlap, a life skills program for 18-21 year olds; Gateway, an alternative school for high school students; and Bryant, Wells and Sowers, special day schools.
The plan calls for rebuilding a building on the East High campus, which currently houses WSU Tech programs. The rebuilt facility would serve as the district’s third future-ready center, preparing students for careers in HVAC/plumbing/electrical and other skilled workforce fields.
The district would also close two administrative buildings, the Dunbar and Joyce Support Centers.
In addition, just over a third of the $450 million supported by the bond issue would go toward addressing deferred maintenance needs throughout the district.
Bond issuance
The $259 local property tax caps at 33% of the general fund budget, meaning any major project to renovate existing schools or build new ones would have to be financed through a bond issue. That would require voters to approve a property tax increase to pay off bonds. The last school bond issue in Wichita was approved in 2008, when a narrow 2% margin of voters favored the $370 million renovation and expansion package.
“Most of the districts around us, whether suburban or rural, have seen multiple bond issues since 2008,” Bielefeld said.
He would not say whether he expects a bond proposal to be added to the November ballot. The deadline to submit a question about the Sedgwick County ballot is September 2.
“I think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves when we talk about community support for a bond, because that won’t come until the plan is finalized,” Bielefeld said.
He said the draft recommendations “clearly align with the data,” and that the scope was determined by consultant feedback collected during a round of public meetings and a survey in April.
“What our consultants have is essentially a heat map of the district’s footprint and the areas where the most students and the most anticipated students are. And that is where we are building the new schools,” Bielefeld said.
On Tuesday, the district will send out another survey through June 20 to gather public input on the draft recommendations. Bielefeld said it will largely be up to the board to determine how much that feedback shapes the final plan.
“I hope this is a process where people’s voice and agency come into play, and there’s also a chance that the plan doesn’t change at all based on the feedback,” Bielefeld said. “If the plan doesn’t change, it doesn’t mean we haven’t listened to the feedback. It could just mean that we received a lot of support for the plan.
“What I hope we hear from the community is both what they like and what they don’t like.”
