Latest news with #L'OuvertureElementarySchool
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Wichita school board signals next steps after failed bond issue vote
The Wichita public school district has provided some insight into its next steps after last week's failed $450 million bond vote. The proposal lost by 1 percent of the vote. In a budget presentation to school board members Monday night, Chief Financial Officer Addi Lowell said the district will host a focus group this month with people who voted in the bond issue election and also distribute a survey for community members. That feedback will then be used when the school district creates a new financial oversight committee sometime in April. The committee will not focus exclusively on the bond issue, but the district's budget as a whole, revenue streams, and facilities needs. 'We do want to enact a focus group for constituents that cast a ballot on February 25 to help us get objective opinions on our education efforts to date and the facilities master plan,' Lowell told the board Monday. District Superintendent Kelly Bielefeld said the district had already planned to create the financial oversight committee before the bond vote. The district did not provide immediate details for people who would be interested in serving on the committee or being part of the focus group. It's likely the committee would begin being formed in April. Feedback from engagement efforts and the committee will help the district and school board decide its next steps, which some on the Vote Yes campaign signaled earlier could mean a smaller bond issue vote. 'We don't have the specifics of the makeup of this committee, but we'd like to include district leadership, Board of Education members, independent financial advisers, our municipal finance adviser, parents and students to help guide this work and help us figure out our path forward in funding those facilities needs,' Lowell said. More specifics on how the district will move forward after it gathers feedback aren't likely until later this summer. 'We will need to make more decisions down the road,' Bielefeld told the board, 'and that's April, May, June, July, somewhere later on.' Last week, the district continued to say it would still shutter L'Ouverture, OK, Pleasant Valley and Woodland elementary schools. Those students would have been moved to newer, larger schools if the bond issue were approved. Several members of the public pushed back on that idea at Monday's board meeting, including renowned architect Charles McAfee. McAfee asked the district to reconsider closing L'Ouverture Elementary School, which sits near the pool in McAdams Park that he designed and is now named after him. But that's not McAfee's only connection to the school. His wife, Gloria, also served as a principal there. 'What we want you to do is not do anything with L'Ouverture school without talking to a group of us sitting up there, over there and over there, because we're very interested,' McAfee said, pointing to supporters in attendance at the meeting. Two people also spoke in opposition to closing OK Elementary. 'Families have settled in the area expecting long term stability, and didn't expect closure talk and busing children elsewhere,' Dave Fish said.
Yahoo
15-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
L'Ouverture Elementary opened in 1912. Here's why Wichita district plans to close it
Editor's note: Before voters decide on a $450 million school bond issue on Feb. 25, The Eagle is profiling many of the schools affected. Read more profiles and find continuing coverage of the bond issue election here. The history of L'Ouverture Elementary School is the history of racial segregation in Wichita. In 1911, citing overcrowding in schools, the Wichita school district held a special election to issue $60,000 in bonds for two new schools for Black students only. By a 3-to-1 margin, Wichita voters approved the bond. The schools in the district had previously been open to all students. L'Ouverture, named after Toussaint Louverture, a Haitian general who led the Haitian Revolution, opened in fall 1912 at 13th and Mosley as a 'manual training center' for Black students, according to news reports at the time. The school board banned Black students from attending any of the district's other public schools, saying the bond issue gave the district authority to separate students by race. L'Ouverture was open to students in kindergarten through eighth grade. A new L'Ouverture that consisted of 17 classrooms, a library, health room and other facilities was built at 1539 N. Ohio in 1951. It was open to students kindergarten to sixth grade. In 1952, the school board voted to eliminate the all-Black designation at L'Ouverture. But, in reality, the school was attended only by Black students until 1970, when the federal government sued the Wichita school district to force it to integrate schools, past news reports say. That's 16 years after the Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. In 1971, the Wichita school district instituted mass busing following a complaint from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, sending Black children to schools outside of their segregated neighborhoods and white children to L'Ouverture and other schools that had previously been all-Black. In 2008, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to assign students to schools based on race, the Wichita school board ended its 37-year-old racial busing program. L'Ouverture's attendance immediately spiked, adding nearly 100 students in the 2008-2009 school year, as Black students from the neighborhood who had previously been bused across town decided to attend the science and technology magnet adjacent to McAdams Park, The Eagle reported. Address: 1539 N. Ohio Ave. Size: 44,493 square feet of building space on 3.833 acres. Built: 1951, expanded in 2006 with money from the 2000 bond issue. Enrollment: 234, with 95.3% economically disadvantaged, 27.4% English Language Learners (students who are not fluent in English language) and 15.4% students with disabilities. Racial demographics: 47% African American, 37% Hispanic, 9% American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian or white, 7.3% multiracial. Consultants targeted L'Ouverture for closure based on enrollment trends and its proximity to new or rebuilt schools. It reached a peak enrollment of 658 in the 1953-1954 school year, according to the school district's 'A History of Wichita Public School Buildings' compiled by Nina Davis in 1978 and updated by Sara Lomax in 1996. Although the end of busing for integration resulted in an enrollment spike, it appears the COVID pandemic dealt a major blow to enrollment. L'Ouverture's enrollment dropped from more than 350 students in 2019 to about 250 by 2021. This school year, enrollment is 232. The school was expanded through a 2000 bond issue that upgraded and replaced infrastructure, added five classrooms, built a new FEMA shelter multipurpose room and kitchen, renovated a student support area, built a new library, built a new parking lot, and converted the old library to student support and classrooms. The district was unable to provide a detailed cost breakdown of how much money went to L'Ouverture. The expansion helped add enough space for three classrooms for each grade, but a dip in enrollment means there are not enough students to justify splitting each grade level into three separate groups. The school offers two sections for each grade level now. A 2024 feasibility study found L'Ouverture had one of the lowest enrollments (234) and building utilization rates (58%) in the district but its building is in better condition than 20 out of the district's 54 elementary schools (0.62 FCI). The school could be closed by the end of the decade, according to a timeline in the district's master plan that's guiding the bond issue. It is expected to coincide with the completion of a tear-down and rebuild of Irving, which is expected to be completed in 2029. While Irving is being rebuilt, students from that school will be reassigned to other schools for at least one school year. L'Ouverture could take on some of those students before it's closed, district officials said. L'Ouverture is a neighborhood magnet school, meaning it accepts students from within its neighborhood boundaries and applicants from outside the boundaries through a 'magnet lottery.' Students from L'Ouverture would be reassigned to Irving, Mueller and Spaght, according to the facilities master plan approved by the Wichita school board in 2024. The school district plans to rebuild Irving if the 2025 bond issue passes. Mueller and Spaght were built in 2012 using money from the 2008 bond issue. Luke Newman, facilities director of Wichita Public Schools, indicated that the district plans to close L'Ouverture — and three other elementary schools — whether the bond passes or not. 'The master plan is the master plan, and we have to move forward with it, with or without a bond,' Newman said. 'And so what will happen is we'll still need to move forward with the building retirements, but we would just have to do it without the rebuilds on the other side of it.'
