The Shawnee Mission School District is set to recommend that East Antioch Elementary, a small neighborhood school in Overland Park, be permanently closed in 2031.
Families at East Antioch, 7342 Lowell Street, found out about the district’s proposal in an email on Friday.
The email said the Shawnee Mission school board would hear the proposal to shutter East Antioch at its regularly scheduled meeting on Monday night, though a final vote was not expected.
“Administrators will recommend … that East Antioch Elementary School be retired as a student attendance center effective Fall 2031,” the email said.
If ultimately approved, East Antioch would be the first school that the Shawnee Mission district will approve shuttering since a wave of closures in the early 2010s. Back then, prospective school closures prompted emotional public meetings, tearful pleas from parents and at least one lawsuit.
Over the weekend, East Antioch parents were already organizing, with the school’s PTA urging families on Facebook to sign up for the board meeting’s public comment period to voice their opposition to a closure.
A website, SaveEastAntioch.com, also went live Saturday, with instructions on how families and members of the school community can contact school board members.
“An anchor in our community”
Ian Fannin-Hughes says he doesn’t know where his son Ollie would be without East Antioch.
Ollie has a lifelong disability that requires that he be on a ventilator. He also has a tracheostomy and uses a walker and an electric wheelchair. The family lives less than a quarter-mile from East Antioch in the Milburn Fields subdivision northeast of 75th Street and Antioch Road.
Ollie can navigate his way to school on the neighborhood’s sidewalks.
“We moved to the neighborhood [in 2020] because of East Antioch. It’s a smaller school — it’s probably one of the smallest schools in the district,” Fannin-Hughes acknowledges.
According to data from the Kansas Department of Education, East Antioch enrolled 282 students in the 2024-25 school year, making it one of three Shawnee Mission elementary schools with less than 300 students.
But it’s that smaller size, Fannin-Hughes said, that has allowed Ollie to thrive, getting the services and attention he needs.
Ollie, currently in fifth grade, will be long gone from East Antioch by the time it closes, if the board ultimately approves the move. Fannin-Hughes, however, says he’s thinking longer term.
“I’m looking out for that next kid, especially the kid like my son, Ollie, who needs extra support,” he said. “This is an anchor in our community. Without this anchor, we’re risking losing all sorts of families.”
Fannin-Hughes said he and Ollie have signed up to give public comment at Monday night’s board meeting.
SMSD facing enrollment headwinds
The recommendation to close East Antioch comes as the district is projecting a roughly 2% enrollment decline over the next decade.
In April, district officials presented a stark report to the board laying out the financial headwinds facing Shawnee Mission, driven in part by enrollment stagnation. (State funding is determined on a per-pupil basis, so the smaller a district’s enrollment, the less money it gets from the state.)
Kindergarten enrollment, which is often a trend predictor, was at its lowest point in the past ten years, according to the report. Total enrollment for the 2024-25 school year was at 26,248 for pre-K through 12, down nearly 300 students from the year before.
The report listed three elementary schools — Santa Fe Trails, Highlands and East Antioch — forecast to stay below 300 students for the next five years.
Santa Fe Trails and East Antioch are also two of the oldest buildings in the district, both built in the 1950s.
During that April meeting, district officials said enrollment trends could force some hard decisions.
“We need to ask some really hard questions of ourselves on what this tells us around decisions we need to make for the future,” Superintendent Michael Schumacher told board members then.
“I think we need to have that conversation about what’s a floor, what potentially is too few kids [at a school],” he said.
A new bond referendum on the table
East Antioch’s closure is part of a larger bond measure the district is preparing to present to voters as soon as next year.
On Monday, the school board will get a presentation about that still-preliminary proposal, which the district is calling a “minimal tax increase bond referendum.”
The plan calls for rebuilding Belinder and Rosehill elementaries, at a projected cost of $42 million each, as well as a new $113 million career and technical center.
As part of the bond measure, East Antioch and Santa Fe Trail elementaries — about 1.5 miles apart — would be combined and a new $46 million school built.
The bond also lays out more than $30 million in renovations at every middle school and high school in the district, as well as ongoing maintenance to facilities districtwide, including roof and HVAC replacements and upgrades to sports field turf and practice facility lighting.
All told, the projects laid out in Monday’s board presentation total roughly $370 million.
East Antioch parents organizing
Though they may have been shocked at Friday’s email proposing the eventual closure of their school, families at East Antioch are now ready to fight back, said Barnett Cardin, the school’s PTA president.
“We have nine weeks to make this thing go,” Cardin said in a phone interview. “And it starts tomorrow [Monday], so we’re gonna get after it.”
He admits the school’s low relative enrollment numbers are “not in our favor,” but, like Fannin-Hughes, believes East Antioch’s tight-knit, walkable community between two busy thoroughfares, Antioch and Metcalf, is worth preserving.
“That kind of community is a real gift, and I don’t want our neighborhood and I don’t want younger families to suffer the loss of that community,” he said.
Cardin said he had been in contact with board member Mario Garcia, who represents the SM North feeder pattern, of which East Antioch is a part. Those conversations, Cardin said, make him believe the closure is not a done deal and that their advocacy may help change minds.
For his part, Garcia said in a text to the Post, “These are always challenging conversations, but I believe we’ll collectively figure out the best path. I look forward to hearing from my constituents this week.”
What’s next
The district has scheduled a public meeting at East Antioch to talk about the school’s future on Sept. 17 at 6 p.m., according to the district email sent to families last week.
After that, the school board is tentatively scheduled to take a final vote on new boundary lines on Oct. 26.
