The latest set of recommendations on school closures and realignments in Colorado Springs School District 11 came out Monday, and there are few changes from the draft issued last week.

There is, however, more detail on costs and savings, building alternations and how moves would take place, as well as a refined timetable for boundary changes.

The school board will take up the latest draft at a public hearing Wednesday and could vote on it the next week.

The plan calls for moving students from eight elementary schools before school starts in the fall, and possibly from Irving Middle School as well.

Last week's draft plan recommended closing Irving in 2011, but administrators said many people suggested that if the school is to close, it should be sooner rather than later. The new report suggests closing it this fall, but it leaves in an option of a later closing.

It also recommends converting Wasson High School to a smaller magnet school with no defined attendance boundaries.

A spreadsheet included in a presentation to the board last week estimated cost savings of more than $6 million a year if 10 buildings were not used for classes.

Generally, projections show the savings for closing an elementary school at around $400,000, a middle school at around
$1 million and a high school at around $2 million.

However, the recommendations call for some renovations and for moving different programs into some buildings and leasing others, so the bottom line is unclear.

The recommendations call for consolidating three west side elementary schools - Buena Vista, Whittier and Washington - at West Middle School this fall and within a couple of years converting that facility to a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school with an emphasis on SAIL, an interdisciplinary, project-based program.

The middle grades, fifth through eighth, would permit in for SAIL, and all middle schoolers on the west side who don't choose SAIL would attend Holmes Middle School.

Washington Elementary would house the Montessori program, and that school also would have no neighborhood boundaries.

The new recommendations also suggest moving the Bijou Alternative High School into the Whittier school rather than Pike, although Pike remains a secondary option.

Other recommendations include realigning various programs and creating K-8 programs at North Middle School and Trailblazer Elementary.