A long-term plan for coping with Leopold Elementary's crowded classrooms would be delayed until June, and the school's fifth-graders would be shuttled to two middle schools for two years under a proposal released Friday by Madison schools Superintendent Daniel Nerad.

In a report to the Madison School Board, Nerad acknowledged that residents living

in the Leopold area on Madison's South Side would prefer that a school be built in the area.

School officials earlier had wanted to announce a long-term fix for the crowding problems this fall.

Under Nerad's plan, Leopold's fifth-graders would attend Cherokee and Wright middle schools in the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years. About three-fourths of the fifth-

graders would be sent to Cherokee.

School Board President Arlene Silveira said one strength of the plan is that it essentially would send those fifth-graders to the middle school that they otherwise would have begun attending as sixth-graders. Silveira said that before deciding whether to support Nerad's plan, "we'll have to hear what he has to say as to why this is delayed."

In an interview, Nerad said district officials need to more closely study the district's available classroom space

and enrollment projections before recommending what to do.

Options for easing Leopold's space crunch include building a second school in the area, which would require voters to approve a multimillion-dollar referendum, or implementing potentially controversial changes in school attendance boundaries.

A factor in seeking the delay, Nerad said, is that he's new to the district, having begun work on July 1.

In addition, he said, the nation's shaky economy "certainly warrants us being very deliberative at this point."

Jackie Cooper, co-president of Leopold's Parent Faculty Organization, said many parents may be upset because they want a new school to be built and they fear the fifth-graders at Wright will feel isolated. But with the ailing economy and tight district finances, she said, "this probably is the option that's the most fiscally responsible."

Leopold's enrollment numbers have fluctuated. Officials had expected 720 students, but the actual count this year is 684 students and it could rise to 826 by the 2012-13 school year.