It's show time in Willow Run Community Schools

District officials and staff members are preparing to launch a redesign plan they hope will increase student achievement and save the district hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Eventually, they hope the plan will lead to the district attracting new students and families and putting an end to the bad times the district has endured.

Willow Run's school closings will end the 'feeder school' system into the middle school, which the district believes will benefit students.

However, superintendent Laura Lisiscki said there is a “buzz in the air” around the district.

Lisiscki said teachers and staff members are working on figuring out the classroom and staff office configuration of the four district school buildings for next year. Staff will begin moving into the buildings in the near future.

Lisiscki said the reconfiguration of the district and redesign of Willow Run High School have energized school employees.

“The teachers seem excited — because we’re a smaller district, they know the buildings even if they’ve never worked there and once we get everything moved, they want to be able to get into their classrooms so they can start setting up early and they’re really excited,” Lisiscki said.

School district officials have estimated the redesign plan will save the district $700,000 annually. The Willow Run school board passed the district’s $19.1 million budget last week, which includes a $411,000 surplus to help reduce the district’s deficit, currently sitting at $2.4 million.

The reconfiguration will see grade levels consolidated into the four remaining school buildings after Kaiser Elementary School and Cheney Academy closed at the end of the school year.

Pre-kindergarten through first grade students will attend the Willow Run Primary Learning Center (formerly Henry Ford Elementary School); second through fourth grades will attend Willow Run Elementary Learning Center (formerly Holmes Elementary School); fifth through seventh grades will attend Willow Run Intermediate Learning Center (formerly Willow Run Middle School); and eighth through 12th grades will attend Willow Run Secondary Learning Center (formerly Willow Run High School).

Having one building each for elementary students, middle school students and high schoolers — who used to be spread among six facilities — will give teachers a much easier time collaborating and working together at school, Lisiscki said.

She said that’s only going to increase the quality of the student experience in Willow Run because teachers will have peers close by and available to give advice.

Another one of the major positives Lisiscki sees in the reconfiguration is the chance for students to be with the same group of peers through their school years.

She said having students that are familiar with each other from their childhood years until high school will improve the environment in the district.

“One thing we’re excited about is the consistent culture the students can have where you’re not flowing into a building and getting to know each other and already have cliques formed,” she said. “If you start off in preschool, you can have the same group of peers all through high school.”

The reconfiguration did result in some staffing changes for the coming school year, which will save the district thousands of dollars.

According to the budget approved by school board trustees last week, seven positions will be eliminated. Three other workers are retiring and those positions are not being filled.

The district will save: approximately $64,000 from the layoff of the district’s attendance director; more than $108,000 on social workers from the 2010-11 budget, with one social worker being laid off; more than $51,000 on secretaries, with two laid off; and more than $354,000 on custodians after two are set to be laid off and two more are retiring.

Five paraprofessionals are also set to be laid off, and one more is retiring.

Lisiscki said the reconfiguration of the district made some of the cuts necessary but was not an excuse to cut employees. No classroom teachers are among the cuts in the 2011-12 budget.

“We already have the least amount of people we can have to work,” Lisiscki said. “It’s not like we can go any lower.”

The layoffs were one of the most difficult decisions in the new budget for many trustees and officials.

Bert Emerson, director of business services for the district, said laying off employees when looking to cut costs is usually unavoidable simply because most of every school district’s expenses come in salaries and benefits.

“It’s not real popular but that’s what you’ve gotta do because that’s where most of your costs are,” Emerson said.

After the vote last week, trustee Dorothy Stewart said the layoffs and the 10 percent cut in compensation for all employees that were a part of the budget were not easy to come to grips with.

“These are trough decisions and they are very hard and it’s going to be hard on all of our personnel,” she said. “There’s no two ways about it.”

Among the changes coming for the 2011-12 school year will be the redesign of Willow Run High School, which will go from a traditional high school to a New Tech model. The New Tech model uses project-based learning and technology as its core, as opposed to the more traditional style of lectures, reading and exams.

Lisiscki said the 2011-12 school year would be used to transition students into project-based learning before implementing the Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM) theme in 2012-13. The STEMM theme will allow students to pick an area they would like to learn more about and potentially put them on a career path.

Lisiscki said some students were originally not too enthralled with the idea of a new school model but have slowly come around as their teachers and principals told them more about the new style of learning. One major breakthrough came when some students had a Skype chat session with students from an out-of-state school about the New Tech model.

“They actually Skyped in and the students were talking to our students about what they’re going to experience,” she said. “A lot of our students got excited about it after that.”

Due to Willow Run’s past, the district has had to run its reconfiguration and redesign plans past state officials.

Lisiscki and school board president Don Garrett Jr. were among the district officials who met with officials from the Michigan Department of Education in June about the redesign. Lisiscki said state superintendent Mike Flanagan is encouraged by the district’s reconfiguration and the high school’s redesign.

Garrett said he believed the meetings the district has had with state officials have been very positive.

“They spoke real highly of us when we went up there and they are excited about the direction Willow Run is headed in,” Garrett said last week.

Kyle Feldscher covers K-12 education for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at kylefeldscher@annarbor.com or you can follow him on Twitter.