Board to Vote on Site for New School: The Next Wichita School Could Be on City Land Near 21st and I-135.

By Icess Fernandez, The Wichita Eagle, Kan.

May 8–The Wichita school board will decide tonight whether the district should lease land from the city for a new school.

The site sits on about six acres near 21st and Grove, where a new Boys & Girls Club and the Opportunity Project are being built.

Monday’s will be the first formal vote on the proposed school.

The Wichita school district asked the city for the land in a letter dated March 8. The school would be for about 600 students from kindergarten through eighth grade. The building would cost about $9 million.

The district has not released the terms of the proposed lease.

Another proposal on the table would secure Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey as the architect of the new school. The new school’s design will be based on the Horace Mann Dual Language Magnet School at 1243 N. Market, which was designed by the firm. By basing the school’s design on an existing design, the district will save money, said district spokeswoman Wendy Johnson.

If approved, the new school would open in August 2008.

The new school’s location would add more classrooms in the historically black neighborhood, a necessary step if the district wants to end busing for integration.

Building of the school wouldn’t mean the district will change the way it buses students for integration, according to Johnson.

“It doesn’t necessarily signify a change in the plan,” she said. “What it represents is a neighborhood school” in an area that doesn’t have one.

The district entered into a busing-for-integration agreement in 1971 with the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights. As a result, several schools were closed.

Discussions about ending mandatory busing are on hold. However, the district continues to talk with the Office of Civil Rights in Kansas City.

Reach Icess Fernandez at (316) 268-6544 or ifernandez@wichitaeagle.com [mailto:ifernandez@wichitaeagle.com].

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Wichita Eagle, Kan.

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