Students at Wichita alternative high school moving to another building

Some Wichita school district staff will spend their winter break packing and moving classrooms after structural issues were found at Chester Lewis Academic Learning Center.

The center, now in northeast Wichita, will move to the former Cleaveland Elementary School site in far southwest Wichita. The school’s 109 students will start classes there at the beginning of the spring semester.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we’re moving forward with the vacation of this building,” USD 259 Chief Operations Officer Steve Noble said at a news conference.

The building that houses Chester Lewis, an alternative high school, was already slated to close as part of the district’s Facility Master Plan.

Cleaveland closed in 2024, mainly due to low enrollment.

If the district’s proposed bond issue had passed earlier this year, the district had planned to move the Chester Lewis program to the existing Coleman Middle School and a new middle school would have been built.

The district said the structural issues were found as part of a routine inspection of the building, which was triggered by structural issues found at Wichita North and Wichita East high schools. Those buildings are undergoing repairs.

“I think this does definitely highlight … that we have facilities needs in the district,” School District Superintendent Kelly Bielefeld said. “I don’t think we can argue that those needs are not going away, and so we continue to navigate problem solving and how to address those needs.”

Students who already receive transportation through the school district to get to school will continue to do so. The district also said it’s notifying parents if their children now qualify for transportation with the new location.

“The timing might be different because of the proximity to the school, but overall, the same kids that were being transported today will be transported after,” Bielefeld said.

Classroom sizes are also expected to remain about the same.

“A team of us have gone over, we’ve actually measured the classrooms, and in some cases, the classroom sizes are actually bigger than some of the spaces that we have here,” Principal Leroy Parks said.

Bielefeld said the move is temporary. The district is not sure how long students will be at the former Cleaveland Elementary site, and said it could be dependent on a future bond issue vote, which may come in November 2026.

“If we get a bond issue passed, then those dominoes will start to fall, and then we’ll kind of see what the timeline plays out then,” Bielefeld said.

The district is hosting a meeting for the neighborhood near Chester Lewis on Thursday. It starts at 5:30 p.m. at the nearby Tabernacle Bible Church.

The district said it’s also planning to announce details soon for a meeting for the neighborhood near the new location.