The Natrona County School District needs to get moving for a new high school to be built and renovations made to Kelly Walsh and Natrona County high schools.

Design for the three projects is slated to begin in early 2010 but waits on a plan for the secondary school system. The plan will be driven by a long-term visioning process called Path to 2025, which has been researching the future of education in grades 6 through 12. The committee involved in the effort estimates that high school enrollment will reach 4,600 students in Natrona County by 2025.

The Path to 2025 committee identified 18 factors for education and multiple suggestions for what its members believe should happen. That work led to 12 models for the future high school configuration.

"We want to make sure instruction drives construction," Julia Collier Earl, the coordinator for Path to 2025, said during a school board meeting Tuesday.

All models except one include a new high school building south of the new CY Junior High School. In the models, the three high schools are organized by department, by small learning communities, academies that offer performing arts or career and technology courses, or some combination of configurations.

The models are "straw designs," according to Doreen McGlade, committee member and president of the Natrona County Education Association.

"At this point, we put in the things we want and have the flexibility of adding or removing design elements," she said.

One model increases students at Kelly Walsh and NCHS and uses the planned third site as a campus for performing arts and career training. Another model adds small learning communities, similar to the ninth grade house at NCHS, to the existing high schools, and the new high school would be smaller and host programs currently at Roosevelt High School and Star Lane Center. A few of the models expand enrollment at KW and NCHS beyond the ideal capacity defined by the committee's research.

The committee plans to narrow the list to three or four options for community input. School board members said the community should be involved as soon as possible and that the planning has taken too long.

"We won't understand where we're going until we have a very clear picture of what we're educating for," Trustee Audrey Cotherman said.

Reach education reporter Jackie Borchardt at (307) 266-0593 or at jackie.borchardt@trib.com. Read her education blog at tribtown.trib.com/reportcard