After public meetings, passionate testimony and enough maps to cover two large walls, a Lincoln Board of Education subcommitee will recommend attendance area changes that include closing two schools.

The recommendations, which the full board will discuss at Tuesday’s meeting, closely mirror two of three proposals the committee brought to the full board this summer.

 The recommendations — one for elementary school attendance areas and the other for middle schools — would close  Dawes Middle School and Hawthorne Elementary. The district would keep the  buildings and use them for other purposes.

The proposals redraw attendance areas districtwide, especially in the outer areas where three new schools are being built. But the most controversy has surrounded the proposed closings.

Not surprisingly, the committee vote was divided. Ed Zimmer and Richard Meginnis voted to recommend boundary changes that included the school closings; Kathy Danek did not.

“I am going to vigorously oppose the committee recommendations,” said Danek, who represents northeast Lincoln. “I believe it disenfranchises one area of the city without taking into consideration significant projected growth.”

District officials have predicted that future growth in the northeast part of town will amount to about 180 new middle school students. Those students, they say, can be absorbed by Mickle and Culler.

Danek believes it will be difficult for Dawes students to walk to other schools under the recommended boundaries and says eliminating Dawes doesn’t create room for growth in the area.

“I believe we need to fight to keep neighborhood schools,” she said.

Ed Zimmer, chair of the committee, said he thinks the recommendations make the best use of the district’s resources.

The relatively few number of students living in both the Dawes and Hawthorne attendance areas can be served just as well at nearby schools, he said, and that allows  the district to examine better ways to use those buildings.

“To me, that’s what we promised we would do,” he said. “This puts it in front of the board.”

The committee also organized the full board’s upcoming discussion by bringing four other maps and three possible amendments to the table — all of which board members have discussed.

Among those maps is one that, at Danek’s request, drew students from Culler, Mickle, Goodrich and Schoo into Dawes.

Two other middle school maps take those changes and attempt to equalize attendance at all the middle schools, changing virtually all middle school boundaries.

Danek said those maps actually come closer to doing what the board promised. But Zimmer said such changes would affect many more people.

 “It’s a balance between the potential benefit and what it takes to get there,” he said.

Superintendent Susan Gourley said the committee’s  recommendations reflect where students live.

School districts must make tough decisions in the city’s core, including closing schools that don’t have enough students living within their boundaries. That keeps other schools in the core strong, she said.

Danek said she plans to offer an amendment at Tuesday’s meeting and hopes the board can reach a compromise.  Buildings should at least remain open until the new schools are finished and it is clear where students will attend, she said.

The committees recommendations include minor changes from the original proposals including:

n Adjusting an area that runs from 27th Street east to Salt Creek in northeast Lincoln, which was originally in the Mickle area. It would now be divided between the Schoo and Goodrich areas. The change affects 11 middle school students currently in the Dawes area.

n Adjustments along single borders of Cavett and Randolph attendance areas to better align the areas along property lines.

The recommendations don’t include two requests by board member Don Mayhew. He wanted to move a portion of the Southwood neighborhood in southeast Lincoln back into the Scott Middle School district and to include all of Beattie Elementary in the Irving Middle School attendance area.

 The board, which hopes to vote on the changes at its Oct. 23 meeting, could amend the recommendations or leave them as they are.

Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.