Westview Elementary school students will officially be attending Rolling Ridge next year, after Westview permanently closes next year and Olathe Public Schools repurposes the building.
On Thursday night, the Olathe Board of Education unanimously approved boundary changes for the Westview area, officially setting plans for where the roughly 150 students will attend school next fall.
Westview’s declining enrollment led to the district’s Boundary Study Group to make the recommendation to close the school. The committee reviews enrollment, building capacity, new developments and space needs.
In August, the board voted to repurpose the building as a K-8 alternative school and send the children elsewhere at the end of the school year.
Weighing boundary options
After the August vote, it was up to district staff to determine the options for where the current Westview Elementary School students would go next year.
Deputy Superintendent of Organizational Operations Jim McMullen presented the options to the board in last month’s board meeting, ultimately recommending sending the students to Rolling Ridge Elementary.
McMullen said that after meeting with parents, staff and community members and distributing feedback, staff was able to set priorities and determine the best path forward.
“Kind of the biggest blessing in Olathe is sometimes our biggest curse in that everybody loves their school,” McMullen said at last month’s meeting. “Nobody wants to leave their school. And it’s great until you’ve got to make some decisions or adjustments.”
What guided the decision
Staff looked for boundary changes that would keep all Westview students together, preserve the middle and high schools they would feed into and prevent overcrowding at receiving schools.
McMullen said families also preferred boundary options that wouldn’t greatly increase travel time and maintain strong academic performance.
Rolling Ridge, located about a mile from Westview, met those priorities. (Westview is near Parker Street, at 500 S Troost St., while Rolling Ridge is on the other side of Parker Street, at 1500 W Elm Terrace.)
Westview students will also receive free bus transportation to their new school for the next two school years.
Declining enrollment
Westview enrollment began declining in 2019 and has maintained enrollment of around 150 students for the past few years. McMullen said the average elementary school enrollment in the district is 340 students.
Staff projected that within five years, Westview’s enrollment would drop to just 123 students. After merging with Rolling Ridge, the new school’s projected enrollment will be about 479 students — still below the district’s largest elementary school, Manchester Park, which currently has 601 students.
Why numbers are falling
According to demographic data presented to the board, slowed birth rates are one of the main factors in declining enrollment — a trend affecting districts across the country. Other contributing factors include rising housing costs and aging populations in established neighborhoods.
Westview to be repurposed as K-8 alternative school
The Westview building will be repurposed into a new K-8 alternative education program.
District staff said this will be the only alternative school for younger students in the region. Olathe Public Schools has other alternative education programs, mostly housed at its Mill Creek Campus.
The district has not finalized the program, but Liz Harrison, executive director for elementary education, said the support will not be entirely new — just more frequent and intensive.
For example, it will have:
- 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
Preparing Rolling Ridge for transition
At this month’s meeting, Vice President of the Board Julie Steele said that as staff moves forward with the restructuring, that current Rolling Ridge students, families and staff are not overlooked.
“What I ask of the transition team is that there’s a commitment to the pre-work that’s going to happen at Rolling Ridge, shoring up that foundation, and making sure we really understand what their needs are, before, during and after this big transition,” she said.
