Six elementary schools have been identified as possibilities for closure, but following Thursday’s consolidation advisory committee meeting, it appears that won’t be feasible with at least two schools.

Lippitt, John Greene, Sherman, Oakland Beach, Park and Warwick Neck are being looked at, but based on presentations at Thursday’s meeting, it doesn’t appear Lippitt or Park could successfully be closed.

According to City Planner Mark Carruolo, it’s important to keep Lippitt open because it would be needed in the event airport expansion swallows up homes around John Wickes, forcing a rapid decline in student population in that area.

“We need an abutting school if Wickes sees a heavy decline in population,” he said. “Lippitt has very low [building] capacity, but it’s critical when airport expansion takes effect to place displaced students from Wickes, which will be substantial.”

Of the approximate 400 homes located in the proposed acquisition area of airport expansion, Carruolo said all but 12 are in the Wickes area.

Director of elementary education, Robert Bushell, said there are approximately 400 students currently at Wickes with four special education programs.

“If we closed Wickes, it would change the junior high lines,” he said, referring to the three junior high-high school feeder patterns in the city – Aldrich-Pilgrim, Winman-Toll Gate and Gorton-Vets. “We would have some kids going to Robertson and some Robertson kids going to Park.”

One of the directives from Superintendent Peter Horoschak for the committee is to make sure any consolidation that takes place this time around does not result in the change of feeder patterns.

According to Carruolo, the latest indications for airport expansion are that it will be in the southerly direction, requiring the relocation of Main Avenue. Ten homes would need to be taken in order to accomplish the roadway relocation. An additional 50 to 54 homes must be taken to make room for runway expansion, lighting and radar equipment. Hundreds of additional homes are expected to become part of a voluntary acquisition program with the Rhode Island Airport Corporation (RIAC).

“Usually 80 percent of people participate in a voluntary acquisition program, so 300 is a reasonable estimate,” Carruolo said.

Carruolo also said other homes are currently being acquired in the Wickes area through a separate program. He said airport expansion is expected to take place within the next six years.

In addition to recommending Lippitt stay open, a strong case was also made for Park School, which hosts the city’s only English Language Learners (ELL) program. There are currently 61 students that participate in that program, according to Bushell.

“We’ve spent a tremendous amount of money in professional development for the staff there over the last five years,” he said. “All staff at the school has been thoroughly trained using Title 3 grant money.”

When asked by Horoschak if it was feasible to move the entire ELL program, keeping the same staff intact, from one building to another if Park were to close, Bushell said it couldn’t be done.

“By contract, we would not be able to move that same group of staff and teachers and it wouldn’t work busing-wise either because these kids are coming from all over the district,” he said. “Even if we were able to move it, I don’t have another school that can accommodate the program; Park is the only one.”

Another issue being studied by the committee is the impact of potential residential development projects, which is one of the reasons why Warwick Neck and Greene, which initially were looked at last time for consolidation, were not closed. The two areas Carruolo highlighted were the former Rocky Point land and the Seaview Country Club, both of which had proposals last year for development but due to the hurting economy have been withdrawn.

Carruolo said the proposal for Rocky Point called for 350 residential units and the proposal for Seaview called for 60 to 65 single-family units.

“There are no proposed projects for either property today,” he said. “The Seaview buyers have sold the property back to the original owners, who are now using the property as a golf course.”

Carruolo said the city successfully acquired 40 acres of the Rocky Point land last fall, which in his opinion devalued the remaining land significantly.

“There has been some activity in the public sector to try and acquire that property to be used for open space, but we haven’t seen any activity with the Small Business Administration,” he said.

Carruolo said there are substantial costs associated with acquiring the property, one of which would be installing sewers.

“I do not see development for residential property in the foreseeable future, and if the public gets it, there never will be,” he said.

That goes for Seaview as well. Carruolo said he doesn’t expect to see any development there for at least five years.

Taking Park and Lippitt out of the picture, of the four remaining schools, Oakland Beach and Sherman have the highest enrollments with more than 300 students at each school. According to Leonard Flood, schools business affairs director, if a school that has more than 300 students closes, it would result in the addition of three full-size school buses to transport those kids to neighboring schools. Schools with enrollments lower than 300, such as Greene and Warwick Neck, would only require two additional buses.

“The estimated transportation cost for one bus next year is $59,630, which covers the bus rental and salary and benefits for the bus monitor,” Flood said.

Schools Construction Coordinator Paul Jansson also made a presentation at the meeting, detailing the costs for repairs and improvements at each school.

According to his findings, repairs and renovations costs range from $157,025 at Greene to $1.5 million at Sherman. Warwick Neck would require the most renovations, including sewer connection, a boiler replacement, fire code improvements and roofing, for a total cost of $687,821.

Flood said the savings generated by closing a school, which Bushell estimated to be between $800,000 and $1 million, would be relatively similar with respect to teacher salary and benefit savings generated by layoffs.

“We would not be laying off specific teachers at a school,” he said. “Teachers that get laid off would be at a lower step [pay scale] because the teachers with a higher step would bump them out.”

He estimated $530,000 in salary savings and $281,000 in benefit savings, for a total of $811,000.

Although it appears difficult to close Lippitt or Park, David Testa, the parent representative on the consolidation advisory committee, said all options should be explored.

“In order for us to make an intelligent decision, we need to know every scenario, even if it’s difficult like Park, we need to know what would happen if we closed it,” he said.

Horoschak asked the committee to look at all the information presented and directed Bushell to have scenarios for all six schools accounting for where students would go in the event of consolidation for the next meeting.

“We need to look at attendance and the bumping effect,” he said, referring to the possibility that students may be bumped out of their school if it becomes a receiving school for displaced students of a closure.

The Gorton auditorium where the meeting was held was hardly filled, with not more than 30 to 40 people in attendance. One reason for that may be the fact that the public is not allowed to comment or ask questions of the committee during the meeting, but an online forum has been set up for anyone to sign in and post comments, questions and opinions for the consolidation advisory committee. The Web site for that forum, www.warwickschools.11.forumer.com, can be found on the schools Web site at www.warwickschools.org.

The next meeting of the consolidation advisory committee will be held on Thursday, April 2 at 6:30 p.m. at Gorton.

“What we need to do is look at relative merits of closing each school and narrow it down to which are most feasible and make a recommendation to the School Committee,” Horoschak said yesterday when asked how the process will proceed.

The committee must present its recommendation to the School Committee by May 12.