With the search for a new district superintendent over, the South Whidbey School Board will turn its attention back to its controversial consolidation effort.

Board members will meet tonight to revisit their unpopular decision to close Langley Middle School and move middle schoolers to the high school campus.

School Board Member Jill Engstrom said she wants to restart talk about combining schools on Maxwelton Road.

But Engstrom is not asking that the middle school stay open, or that the timeline for closing it be adjusted. She said district officials need to talk again about the estimated $445,000 that would be saved by closing LMS.

“I just want to see a conversation started,” Engstrom said. “And I want people to start thinking creatively about how we can use our resources the best way possible.”

The move to close Langley Middle School and expand South Whidbey High School hit a roadblock last November when voters rejected a $25 million bond proposal that would have paid for improvements on the SWHS campus to accommodate the move. Superintendent Fred McCarthy asked the school board to reconsider its September 2012 deadline to close the middle school, and while board members agreed to not try to rerun the bond measure, they did not adjust the consolidation timeline. School officials have noted that without the improvements at the high school, the facility will be hard-pressed to house all students in grades six through 12 at SWHS.

Engstrom had offered a motion before the board in March to talk about school consolidation, but that proposal — which would have LMS close by September 2012 and the students shifted to other schools in the district — was tabled.

The school board will resume the discussion tonight, but Engstrom said she wasn’t thinking of making any changes to the timeline that’s been adopted for closing LMS.

“I would hate to put it off any further,” she said.

More important is a discussion of the district’s next steps in light of its continuing financial difficulties, and Engstrom said she wants to focus on ways that would save the jobs of teachers and programs for students. That may mean a discussion of different grade configurations in the schools on Maxwelton Road.

“There’s a lot of options out there and I have no forgone conclusions about what it’s going to look like,” she said.

“We really have to look at and a make a conscious decision on what we want to do as a district; what we want to do as an organization and where we want to put our money,” Engstrom added. “What I want to do is get a conversation going.”

The school board will meet in a workshop setting starting at 6:30 p.m. tonight in the board room on the primary school campus.