When Baltimore city schools and the Maryland Stadium Authority adopted a plan to update the city's aging school buildings in January 2013, they hoped to rebuild or restore 30 to 35 schools in the first phase of renovations.

But studies to identify the schools' needs determined that the $977 million in bond funding the system expects to receive would cover only 23 to 28 schools.

The city school commissioners at their board meeting Tuesday night reviewed a hotly contested recommendation to defer renovations to some of Baltimore's most dilapidated schools because they would be the costliest to renovate.

Other measures proposed by the school system and the stadium authority included increasing utilization rates to 90 percent, reconfiguring grade levels at one school and doing "strategic modernizations" where possible to create more flexible space.

Putting off the more expensive projects at Lake Clifton and Vivien T. Thomas Medical Arts Academy would free up money for renovations at more schools, said Alison Perkins-Cohen, executive director of the school system's Office of New Initiatives, and Gary McGuigan, project manager at the stadium authority.

If the recommendations are adopted, the 11 schools still set to be renovated by August 2018 would be Arlington, Forest Park, Frederick, Fort Worthington, John Eager Howard, Lyndhurst, Patterson, Pimlico, Robert Poole Building/ACCE/Independence, and the Arundel and Cherry Hill sites of Cherry Hill schools. Arlington would be reconfigured to an elementary school from an elementary-middle school.

Fort Worthington Elementary School in the Berea neighborhood and Frederick Elementary School in Millhill are in the design phase and are expected to open in the 2017-2018 school year.

Representatives of Lake Clifton alumni and neighborhood residents excoriated the proposal and the school board for considering it, saying the reason the building which houses Lake Clifton High School, Reach and Claremont would be so expensive is because it is desperately in need of updates.

Mark Washington and Richard McCoy of the Lake Clifton Alumni Association said they worried that the school's needs would continue to be ignored. They said they had been assured when new schools CEO Gregory Thornton was appointed that the Lake Clifton renovations would remain a priority.

"This is a stunning reversal of fortune for this community," McCoy said. "I asked specifically about it."

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Extra costs could delay renovations for city's most dilapidated schools