After seeing its enrollment drop by roughly 1,600 students over the last decade, Lakewood City School District has established a task force to reconsider its building footprint.
Lakewood Schools Superintendent Maggie Niedzwiecki said in an interview Tuesday the district is looking at whether it needs to still operate seven elementary school buildings.
"We have an inequality of class sizes depending on what (elementary) building you're in. So we could be running a first grade class with 14 kids in it in one area, but 24 in another school," she explained. "And so it's really looking at ensuring that that we have equitable services, no matter what elementary you're at."
She said the enrollment drop is largely due to declining birth rates, which have decreased across the nation for decades.
The task force's analysis will be combined with community feedback from public meetings from October to January on how the district should best use its elementary school facilities, the superintendent said.
The district is not looking to close any school buildings, Niedzwiecki said. If an elementary school building isn't needed for that purpose, the district would use it for other means; expanded preschool offerings, for example. The district could use redistricting — shuffling where students go to school — to even out student numbers at the other buildings.
The task force, which is made up of more than 50 community members, will provide a final recommendation to the district by late spring 2025, Niedzwiecki said.
