The Butler Residents for Quality Schools claims that Butler School District elementary school usage rates are about 80 percent, not the 67 percent that Thomas and Williamson Project Management has cited.

The usage rate is important because the school board is considering closing several elementary school to make the district run more efficiently.

The board is expected to take a preliminary vote Monday night on three school consolidation plans.

In each of the three proposed plans, several spaces such as teachers' lounges and special education rooms, are being converted, often changed back, into classrooms, changing current student capacity numbers.

Nina Teff of the residents quality group said, “The reason why we're saying now that we don't want any of the options … is because we're going under the premise that you're repurposing more rooms than you can repurpose, and where are those services going to be held?”

“If you're saying we're not compromising the education of the kids, and we're especially not compromising special education, then how do you justify repurposing all of those rooms?”

But Jon Thomas of Thomas and Williamson stands by the 67 percent elementary use rate.

“If it's a room that has been commandeered to be used as a learning support room as a full-sized classroom, that's really a full-sized classroom,” Thomas said. “You shouldn't be designing a full-size classroom to support learning support because you have a much lower number of students in those rooms.”

Thomas was hired by the district in 2013 to do a districtwide consolidation study.