The Torrance school board on Tuesday night will select one of four potential sites for its $15 million high school aquatic center, a major component of voter largesse from last November’s election.

School district officials are encouraging a large public turnout to give the Board of Education some guidance.

“I want people there,” said Don Lee, president of the Torrance Unified School District board. “I don’t want to do this in isolation.

“It’s basically going to be a world-class aquatic facility. It’s really the biggest piece of Measure U and we’re spending a ton of time on this trying to make it something the community can be really proud of.”

In addition to the aquatic center, trustees on Tuesday also will approve the placement of new gyms on the campuses of Casimir and Jefferson middle schools and new auditoriums at North, South and West high schools.

The special construction update meeting begins at 7 p.m. at Torrance City Hall, 3031 Torrance Blvd.

Voters approved two bond measures in the November election, paving the way for construction of the aquatic center — with a 50-meter competition pool and locker rooms for all four high schools — and several other major improvements.

The wider community stands to benefit, too.

During the school year, the city-owned Benstead Plunge is used by students from 3-6 p.m. weekdays.

Once the aquatic center is built, that will no longer be the case.

“Those are prime hours,” Community Services Director John Jones said. “We can grow our lap swimming programs, recreational swimming programs and, most importantly, our instructional swimming. … Kids must learn to swim.”

School officials had conferred with their municipal counterparts about putting the facility on city land — perhaps Columbia Park — which would presumably allow the general public to use the state-of-the-art facility, too.

But city officials turned down the idea.

In part, that was because Torrance is below the national average when it comes to open space — the city has 6 acres for every 1,000 residents, while the target is 10 acres — and building even a recreational facility on parkland would reduce that even more, Jones said.

The district is considering four sites it owns for the facility: Griffith Adult Center adjacent to Wilson Park; Hamilton Adult Center on 182nd Street in north Torrance; Sam Levy Adult School on 229th Place; and Shery Continuation High School immediately south of Wilson Park.

However, all but the latter location have serious drawbacks, district officials said.

The Griffith site is too small for the venue and has insufficient parking, meaning nearby city-owned lots would be needed and busy Wilson Park is often already overcrowded.

At Hamilton, four structures and three ball fields would need to be removed to make way for the aquatic center.

At Levy, a half-dozen buildings would require removal, as would a YMCA child-care facility and five ball fields — all in a residential neighborhood.

That leaves Shery, which would lose just one ball field.

That site also houses the Southern California Regional Occupational Center, which faces the threat of shutdown unless a state provides a permanent funding source.

Lee declined to see whether district officials favor one site over another, but it appears placing the aquatic facility on the Crenshaw Boulevard campus of Shery would cause minimal disruption compared with the other sites.