6,100 signatures can make Olathe vote again on Tomahawk

What you can do now

Sign in person, on paper, by November 14

The petition that counts is a paper one, signed in front of a trained circulator. It is being gathered by the 6,100 Voices campaign of Olathe Families United, a parent group working across all six closing schools. The online petition this site used to link to does not count toward a state review. If you signed it, please sign on paper too.

What signing does

What 6,100 signatures set in motion

Kansas's school-closure law, K.S.A. 72-1431, gives voters one check on a closure vote. It works in three steps.

The state's finding is advisory. It cannot overturn the vote on its own, and Kansas has used this process three times in 2026, in Emporia, Wilson and Garnett, finding each closure reasonable. What a review does guarantee is a second public hearing, a second vote, and an outside look at the record. The rest of this page is that record.

For reviewers: the case, in the district's own numbers

Every figure about Tomahawk below comes from Olathe Public Schools

Olathe's enrollment really is falling, and the district really does have more elementary buildings than it can fill. Its own task force said so unanimously, and this campaign does not dispute it. The question a review should ask is narrower: was closing five elementary schools necessary, and was Tomahawk a reasonable one to choose? On the district's own survey results, enrollment tables, capacity figures and building data, the answer to the second question is no.

1 · How many schools

The district's own task force asked for three or four. The board closed five.

Olathe built this process in two halves, and its consultant described the split to the board: the Facility Alignment Task Force took up how many schools should close, and a smaller steering committee then took up which ones. The task force was the broad body: 110 members, parents and staff from across the district, who sat through three sessions on district finances, enrollment forecasts and building capacity before they were asked anything.

Then they answered. All 110 agreed Olathe should reduce its number of elementary schools. Asked how far to go, 88 of the 110 recommended closing three or four. The board closed five. By the district's own design, the number was the task force's question, and a reconsideration vote can adopt the task force's answer without disowning a single step of the district's own process.

2 · Tomahawk's enrollment

Tomahawk is filling up, not emptying out

Tomahawk has added students in every one of the last five years, from 337 to 360 on the district's own enrollment table, while Olathe as a whole lost 2,159 from its 2019–20 peak. The district's own model then puts Tomahawk at 394 this school year (2026–27). That is 87% of the building's 452-seat functional capacity, past the 85% mark the district defines as the point where "the building will feel full." The district's own table shades this year and next as over that line. Tomahawk stays above 81% of capacity every year through 2031–32.

The model does turn down after that, and the chart shows it. Two things about that tail, both from the district's own materials. It is a forecast, not a fact: the district's consultant described the model to the board as "a set of if-then statements" whose assumptions "should be written down," and the district's own forecast-accuracy table shows its five-year projections drifting by 2.5% in the fourth year and 4.6% in the fifth. And even taken at face value, the model's lowest year still leaves Tomahawk at 74% of capacity, inside the band the district calls healthy for the 28 schools it plans to keep.

3 · The stated reasons

The four reasons the district gave for Tomahawk, against the district's own numbers

The closure presentation gives each recommended school a slide. Tomahawk's slide lists four reasons. Here they are in the district's own words, each set beside what the district's own published documents show.

4 · Tomahawk and its neighbors

In Tomahawk's area, the three fullest schools are closing. The three emptiest stay open.

The district's Elementary School Data Spreadsheet groups its elementary schools into planning areas. Tomahawk is in the Southeast, with Black Bob, Briarwood, Green Springs, Havencroft and Heritage. Three of the six are closing. On the spreadsheet's own enrollment and capacity columns, they are the three fullest buildings in the area, and the three that stay open are the three emptiest.

That matters because the closures were never going to remove all the empty space. The district told the Sept. 22 public hearing it expects to have about 2,400 empty elementary seats even after all six closures. So which building closes decides how much empty space actually goes away. Closing Tomahawk removes 91 empty seats and moves 361 children. Green Springs, which stays open, has 302 empty seats on its own.

This is not an argument for closing a neighbor's school instead. Families at every one of these schools love them. It is a question about whether the district applied its own criteria, which is what a review of "reasonableness" is for.

5 · What the closure buys

Two-thirds of the promised savings is staff attrition, and Tomahawk's share still hasn't been published

The district told the board its plan saves "in excess of $12 million" a year. Since the vote, its FAQ has broken that figure into categories. $8 million of it, two-thirds, is staff compensation and benefits reduced "through attrition and retirements." The cost of running the buildings themselves (operations, technology, and grounds maintenance) comes to $1.5 million a year across all six schools.

Attrition is a tool the district already uses with every building open. Its Sept. 22 hearing presentation reports 89 K–5 teaching positions reduced through attrition over six years. After the vote, the superintendent and board president told KCTV5 that no employees will lose jobs as a direct result of the closures, and that class-size guidelines will stay the same.

There is still no per-building breakdown, not for Tomahawk and not for any of the six. A state review can ask for it.

6 · What the record still doesn't show

Eight things a state review should ask Olathe for

Each of these is a number or document the district has, or can produce, that was not in front of the public before the October 1 vote.

Sources

Every figure about Tomahawk comes from the district's own documents

Every figure about the schools on this page (the task force survey, Tomahawk's enrollment and capacity, the ten-year estimate, the 85% definition, the stated reasons, the building data, the savings claim and its categories, and the fund balances) is printed in a document Olathe Public Schools published or filed. Petition rules come from the statute; signing details come from the organizers and local news coverage.