McKinley Elementary School, which is located at 611 N. 14th Street and currently serves grades K–5, is no longer large enough to meet the enrollment needs of its service area.
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| Here's a map that shows McKinley's current location (blue dot) and the area that McKinley currently serves (red lines). (Click any photo for a larger view) |
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| Here's the current McKinley School at 611 N. 14th Street. It's been at this location since 1924. The new school will be located two blocks north of this spot. |
The current McKinley School was built in 1924 and has a current enrollment of around 200 students. The building seven classrooms, one shared library/computer space and one multipurpose space that is for PE, lunch, art and music, plus a modular unit on the parking lot that has two more classrooms.
Unfortunately, those facilities won't hold all of the students who should be attending the school, so some students have been traveling to other nearby schools.
Clearly, a new school was needed, but district officials faced much the same challenge at McKinley as they had faced at the Mark Twain Elementary School just a couple of miles to the west... where do you put the students for the year it would take to demolish the existing school and construct a new one?
Luckily, there was a full square block of vacant land just over the hill to the north of the existing McKinley School. The vacant land was owned by Community Housing of Wyandotte County (CHWC). They were preparing to build new homes on that site (which, ironically, would most likely compound the space problem at the current McKinley School).
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| This map shows McKinley's current location (bottom of photo) and the site where the new school will be constructed (top of photo). |
Officials from CHWC and USD 500 began brainstorming about potential solutions that could be mutually beneficial. Ultimately, CHWC and USD 500 reached an agreement to exchange their respective parcels of land.
USD 500 will begin construction of a new elementary school on the vacant land that sits between 13th Street and 14th Street (east to west) and between Armstrong Avenue and Ann Avenue (north to south). The new school building will be just over 42,000 square feet in size and will be designed to hold up to 350 students. It will have 15 classrooms, a separate music and art room, a computer room and media center. It will also have a multipurpose room for PE and a separate kitchen area for food prep.
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| This is the new Mark Twain School that just opened this fall. Although the new McKinley School may not have the same design, this gives you an idea of what the newest school in the district looks like. |
The plan is to have the new school finished and ready to open in fall 2014. All the students who are currently attending (or should be attending) McKinley School will begin the 2014-2015 school year in the new building.
At that point, the school district will tear down the old school building and CHWC will build six new single-family homes on the site.
Dr. Kelli Mather, Chief Financial Officer for USD 500, said, "We are pleased to support [CHWC's] efforts in improving the housing as they support the concept of a new school in the community to draw more families in the area and support the existing families and students that must be transported to other schools due to meeting capacity levels."
Donny Smith, Executive Director for CHWC, said, "From CHWC’s perspective, we think the investment into the future of the neighborhoods (the children) is of extreme importance to the continued revitalization of downtown KCK. Without quality schools, families will not make a long-term commitment to the neighborhood. KCKPS is to be commended for making this significant investment. We are extremely excited to be able to work with the district on this project."
Thanks to both groups for their continuing efforts to make life better for families in District 2.
~ Brian
bmckiernan@wycokck.org
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