Westview Elementary School in Olathe will close its doors after the 2025-26 school year, making room for the building to house a first-of-its-kind alternative education program for elementary and middle school students.
The Olathe Board of Education voted 6-0 on Aug. 7 to approve a plan to repurpose the school, which serves kindergarten through 5th grade. Board Member Robert Kuhn was absent.
“To our Westview families, I want to speak to you directly: Please know that our care and concern for our students, for your family and for our staff has been and continues to be paramount,” said Vice President of the Board Julie Steele. “I also recognize that tonight, it may not feel that way and that is hard. This decision does not mark the end of a conversation, but a continuation. There are more decisions to come, and we want and need your ideas, your input and your voice at the table.”
Board President Stacey Yurkovich echoed some of Steele’s comments, noting that the building itself will remain.
“That history and people’s connection to that will not go away because we repurpose the building, but we do, as Ms. Steele has indicated, have a responsibility to the district as a whole, to all almost 30,000 students and to the future of our district as well,” Yurkovich said.
No one from the public spoke about Westview Elementary at the meeting.
The district’s Boundary Study Group — which meets quarterly and evaluates factors like the district’s enrollment, building usage, future development and space concerns — made the recommendation in April to repurpose the school as its enrollment declined after 2019 and flatlined around 150 students. The current total enrollment includes about 30 transfer students from outside the school’s residential boundaries.
Westview is the first elementary school to close in the district since Stuck Elementary School closed in 1972, according to the district website.
Through 2019, Olathe saw continuous growth that encouraged the opening of new schools. COVID played a role in the immediate enrollment decline seen in 2020, but other factors — like housing costs, aging populations and low birth rates — also contribute to the decline, according to the district.
“Across the United States, our replacement birth rate, the number we need to sustain our economic machine, is 2.1, and today we’re at 1.6, which is a 25%** drop,” Steele said. “So, what does that mean and why does it matter? Fewer births mean fewer students in our classroom, and it shows up in very real ways, such as tonight, but in staffing decisions, in building utilization, in budget planning.”
“We’re not the first district to face this,” she added.
**The replacement birth rate of 1.6 births per woman is a 23.8% drop from 2.1.
Meetings about the boundary change will start next month, said Jim McMullen, deputy superintendent of organizational operations. The goal is to move as many of the 120 students within Westview’s boundaries to the same school, he added.
The other 30 students that transferred to Westview will either revert back to the school whose boundaries they live within, or the families may be able to transfer their students to a different school.
The surrounding elementary schools are Rolling Ridge, Fairview, Central and Ridgeview.
District staff plan to make a boundary recommendation to the board by October, followed by a vote in November. Once the boundary changes are finalized, students and families will have opportunities to visit their new schools, meet teachers and staff, and go on tours.
About the K-8 Alternative Education Program
After Westview closes as an elementary school, it will reopen as a kindergarten through eighth grade alternative education program — the first of its kind in the region, according to the district.
While the district has other alternative education programs, many of which are housed at its Mill Creek Campus, they’re meant for older students.
While the K-8 program is still being built, Liz Harrison, executive director for elementary education, said many of the supports will not be new to the district, but they’ll be more frequent and intense for students in the program, for example:
- Positive behavior intervention and supports, PBIS, which is a school-wide framework that teaches and reinforces positive behaviors.
- Skillstreaming, an approach through modeling, role-playing, performance feedback and generalization to teach prosocial skills to students.
- Second Step, which helps teach students social-emotional skills.
“The alternative ed program … is extremely needed by this district,” said Board Member Will Babbit. “It will be a great next chapter in Westview’s future.”
Keep reading: Olathe may close this elementary school next year and repurpose it. Here’s how
