Kansas City school board balks at sale of Westport High

When it comes to selling historic Westport High School, it turns out too many Kansas City school board members don’t want to let it go.

The board — at least for now — has denied the administration’s recommendation to sell the building to Foutch Brothers Real Estate, which had teamed up with Academie Lafayette charter school to create an International Baccalaureate high school.

The board, according to sources in position to know, voted 4-3 against the proposal despite heavy support from neighborhood groups and some civic leaders who had cheered the idea of Westport reopening with the popular charter school.

“I’m confused and extremely disappointed,” said Southmoreland Neighborhood Association President Greg Corwin. “The community has always been crystal clear that the best re-use is a well-managed school … and now that got all blown up.”

The vote came during a closed session Wednesday night. The state’s Sunshine Law allows public boards to keep real estate matters behind closed doors until a sale is approved.

“We are not disclosing or confirming any details,” board president Airick Leonard West said Monday. “The matter remains under negotiation.”

Circumstances around the building at 315 E. 39th St. are in flux. In particular, a possible streetcar line near the school could change the dynamics around its reuse.

The board’s decision to at least delay a decision on Westport High School frustrated Steve Foutch and Academie Lafayette. The developers have spent close to $150,000 preparing the proposal, Foutch said.

“We have been working on this for so long … and now they want to pull it back,” Foutch said in an email to The Star. “Now Academie Lafayette’s plans to open their high school are in jeopardy for another year. Trying to help solve the inner city problems just got worse.”

This dance between the school district and Academie Lafayette has been going on more than three years — wrapped in the complicated politics between the school district and charter schools.

Both the district and the charter school have been eying an international-themed high school to build on their popular foreign language specialty schools. Two of the Kansas City school district’s most popular schools are Foreign Language Academy and Carver Dual Language Elementary School.

Academie Lafayette opened as a K-8 French language immersion school in 1999 and quickly filled and began expanding. It worked with the district and its repurposing process at the outset in 2011 when the district began a community program to seek preferred reuses for some 30 closed schools.

Academie Lafayette was the first buyer to secure a new building when it bought Longan Elementary School, 3421 Cherry St., to expand its K-8 program at 69th and Oak streets. The charter, which admits new children mostly only into kindergarten, uses a lottery selection that turns away three families for every one that gets in.

It currently serves 830 students. Its long-range plan envisions serving about 2,000 students, with a high school with 400 to 600 students and another elementary school, possibly a Spanish- or Mandarin-language immersion program, Academy Lafayette board president Dave Cozad said.

Academie Lafayette wants to open a high school by the fall of 2015.

“We are committed to launching an international high school,” Cozad said Monday. “We are actively looking at partnerships and facilities to make that happen. Our plans haven’t changed and we’re moving forward.”

Original conversations with former Superintendent John Covington about an international high school ran aground. Covington’s desire to maintain control over charter school collaborations surfaced in May 2011 when he opposed a proposed board policy that would have given the board the ability to enter into agreements with charter schools without the superintendent’s approval.

The repurposing office has since been placed under the control of the district administration. The recommendation to sell to Foutch Brothers came from the administration.

The vote against Westport’s sale was the first time in the three-year repurposing process that the board rejected an administration recommendation. Previously, seven buildings have been sold, including three for charter schools.

Superintendent Steve Green said previously that the district overall is taking a new approach to be more cooperative with charter schools.

“We have been and continue to be open to exploring designs featuring a collaborative partnership,” Green said.

Space for a high school makes up just part of the developer’s plans for Westport High School, Foutch said.

The plan includes 70 apartments, office spaces and performance art program space in the auditorium. Community fitness club spaces would be indoors and outdoors, using two gymnasiums, an indoor pool, athletic fields and tennis courts, even sand volleyball.

The school would rent the spaces as needed, and the amenities would be available to the community at other times.

“All of these ideas came from the community,” Foutch said.

Foutch Brothers also had hoped to redevelop Westport Middle School across the street. That building, however, was sold in August to green-design expert Bob Berkebile’s Kansas City Sustainable Partners. Both developers had sought both buildings.

Berkebile’s group is partnering with several nonprofit organizations in designing space on the middle school campus for healthy living programs and urban farming.

Sustainable Partners also was interested in creating school programs, but Berkebile said he was having conversations with multiple potential partners, public and private, to develop ideas for innovative approaches to education. Academie Lafayette was not interested in sharing space with another school, Berkebile said.

The prospect of adding Academy Lafayette expansion into the highly visible development plans at Westport had been an exciting prospect to City Councilman Jim Glover.

“It’s good for Midtown in so many different ways,” he said before the closed board meeting. “Our population is coming back. We’re bringing people back to the apartments on Union Hill, and we want them to buy houses.”

He would like to see both the middle and high school buildings and other Midtown district buildings preserved with space for schools. If the district wants to put a school back into the high school, that could also be good for the community, he said Monday.

“I’m excited to see what the district wants to do (with Westport), too,” Glover said. “They have to give some assurance it will be a well-managed school.”

If Academy Lafayette establishes an International Baccalaureate high school, it would be joining a global network of more than 3,700 schools in 147 countries in internationally focused college prep programming.

The school would not be a language immersion program, Cozad said, though foreign language classes would be an important part of its offerings.

This story was originally published March 31, 2014 at 8:34 PM with the headline "Kansas City school board balks at sale of Westport High."