L’Ouverture Elementary opened in 1912. Here’s why Wichita district plans to close it

Editor’s note: Before voters decide on a $450 million school bond issue on Feb. 25, The Eagle is profiling many of the schools affected. Read more profiles and find continuing coverage of the bond issue election here.

The history of L’Ouverture Elementary School is the history of racial segregation in Wichita.

In 1911, citing overcrowding in schools, the Wichita school district held a special election to issue $60,000 in bonds for two new schools for Black students only. By a 3-to-1 margin, Wichita voters approved the bond. The schools in the district had previously been open to all students.

L’Ouverture, named after Toussaint Louverture, a Haitian general who led the Haitian Revolution, opened in fall 1912 at 13th and Mosley as a “manual training center” for Black students, according to news reports at the time.

The school board banned Black students from attending any of the district’s other public schools, saying the bond issue gave the district authority to separate students by race. L’Ouverture was open to students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

A new L’Ouverture that consisted of 17 classrooms, a library, health room and other facilities was built at 1539 N. Ohio in 1951. It was open to students kindergarten to sixth grade.

In 1952, the school board voted to eliminate the all-Black designation at L’Ouverture. But, in reality, the school was attended only by Black students until 1970, when the federal government sued the Wichita school district to force it to integrate schools, past news reports say.

That’s 16 years after the Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

In 1971, the Wichita school district instituted mass busing following a complaint from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, sending Black children to schools outside of their segregated neighborhoods and white children to L’Ouverture and other schools that had previously been all-Black.

In 2008, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to assign students to schools based on race, the Wichita school board ended its 37-year-old racial busing program.

L’Ouverture’s attendance immediately spiked, adding nearly 100 students in the 2008-2009 school year, as Black students from the neighborhood who had previously been bused across town decided to attend the science and technology magnet adjacent to McAdams Park, The Eagle reported.

L’Ouverture at a glance

Address: 1539 N. Ohio Ave.

Size: 44,493 square feet of building space on 3.833 acres.

Built: 1951, expanded in 2006 with money from the 2000 bond issue.

Enrollment: 234, with 95.3% economically disadvantaged, 27.4% English Language Learners (students who are not fluent in English language) and 15.4% students with disabilities.

Racial demographics: 47% African American, 37% Hispanic, 9% American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian or white, 7.3% multiracial.

Why was L’Ouverture chosen for closure?

Consultants targeted L’Ouverture for closure based on enrollment trends and its proximity to new or rebuilt schools.

It reached a peak enrollment of 658 in the 1953-1954 school year, according to the school district’s “A History of Wichita Public School Buildings” compiled by Nina Davis in 1978 and updated by Sara Lomax in 1996.

Although the end of busing for integration resulted in an enrollment spike, it appears the COVID pandemic dealt a major blow to enrollment. L’Ouverture’s enrollment dropped from more than 350 students in 2019 to about 250 by 2021. This school year, enrollment is 232.

The school was expanded through a 2000 bond issue that upgraded and replaced infrastructure, added five classrooms, built a new FEMA shelter multipurpose room and kitchen, renovated a student support area, built a new library, built a new parking lot, and converted the old library to student support and classrooms. The district was unable to provide a detailed cost breakdown of how much money went to L’Ouverture.

The expansion helped add enough space for three classrooms for each grade, but a dip in enrollment means there are not enough students to justify splitting each grade level into three separate groups. The school offers two sections for each grade level now.

A 2024 feasibility study found L’Ouverture had one of the lowest enrollments (234) and building utilization rates (58%) in the district but its building is in better condition than 20 out of the district’s 54 elementary schools (0.62 FCI).

When would L’Ouverture be closed?

The school could be closed by the end of the decade, according to a timeline in the district’s master plan that’s guiding the bond issue. It is expected to coincide with the completion of a tear-down and rebuild of Irving, which is expected to be completed in 2029.

While Irving is being rebuilt, students from that school will be reassigned to other schools for at least one school year. L’Ouverture could take on some of those students before it’s closed, district officials said. L’Ouverture is a neighborhood magnet school, meaning it accepts students from within its neighborhood boundaries and applicants from outside the boundaries through a “magnet lottery.”

Where would students go?

Students from L’Ouverture would be reassigned to Irving, Mueller and Spaght, according to the facilities master plan approved by the Wichita school board in 2024.

The school district plans to rebuild Irving if the 2025 bond issue passes. Mueller and Spaght were built in 2012 using money from the 2008 bond issue.

What happens if bond issue is not approved?

Luke Newman, facilities director of Wichita Public Schools, indicated that the district plans to close L’Ouverture — and three other elementary schools — whether the bond passes or not.

“The master plan is the master plan, and we have to move forward with it, with or without a bond,” Newman said. “And so what will happen is we’ll still need to move forward with the building retirements, but we would just have to do it without the rebuilds on the other side of it.”