If Tacoma must shutter some schools, an advisory committee has recommended four elementary buildings be considered for closure or consolidation with other schools.

Tuesday night, the 47-member committee of citizens and staff members voted to recommend for consolidation: Washington-Hoyt and Grant Center for the Expressive Arts in the North End, Downing in the West End, and McKinley on the East Side.

The committee also recommended that the district consider two other schools that received one fewer vote than the above schools: Roosevelt on the East Side and Wainwright in Fircrest.

Much of the reasoning for recommending McKinley and Grant, however, appeared to stem from proposals to keep those school staff members and students intact if their aging buildings are closed.

Tuesday night, some of the roughly 20 Grant parents and teachers in the audience suggested their school could move to Jefferson Elementary School, a two-year-old North End school with low enrollment.

Earlier in the process, district administrators floated the idea of moving McKinley to Gault Middle School, which could become a kindergarten through eighth-grade school.

A suggestion to temporarily close Roosevelt on the East Side and move students and staff to another school until the Salishan housing development is rebuilt likely contributed to its recommendation.

Enrollment at several East Side schools has fallen as residents move out of the development during construction, but student populations are expected to grow when homes in Salishan and other East Side sites are finished.

The committee recommendations will now go to Superintendent Jim Shoemake, who will share them with the school board.

But whether any schools will close won’t be decided for months.

Spurred by declining enrollment and budget shortfalls, district officials originally planned to close two elementary schools by next fall.

Last week, however, officials announced they would delay closing schools until the following year in response to citizen calls to slow down the process and look for alternatives.

District officials also said they wanted to focus efforts on passing the district’s four-year operations levy, which failed earlier this month.

If it fails again April 25, the district must slash $44 million from the 2006-07 operating budget.

In that case, the district might have to consider closing schools, along with slashing all athletics and extra-curricular activities, laying off staff, and reducing other services and programs.

District officials and the board have yet to set a timeline for studying the committee recommendations, but they likely won’t dig in to the issue until after the levy, board President Kurt Miller said Tuesday night in an interview.

“We’re so focused on the levy but this is so important we can’t just let this hang,” Miller said of the committee recommendations.

“We’ll take a long, hard look and listen to the community. There have been some great ideas suggested,” he said.

Besides studying the committee recommendations, the board and district will study additional information and explore alternatives to closure being suggested by the public.

“The recommendation is these are the schools the committee has debated and considered, using criteria we developed that would best fit the definition for closure,” Shoemake said.

“That will just be part of the study the board will do before making a final decision next year,” he said

Debby Abe: 253-597-8694

debby.abe@thenewstribune.com