Central office administrators in the Lawrence district are taking a more active role in monitoring and supporting schools.
Direction of 26 schools in the Lawrence district has been divided between two central office staff members to strengthen administrative accountability.
Nettie Collins-Hart, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, and Doug Eicher, executive director of instruction and curriculum, will strive to improve monitoring and support of schools from the central office.
Collins-Hart and Eicher will be involved in decisions about student transfers, discipline and complaints. Both will work to improve delivery of the curriculum at schools under their direction.
In addition, a dozen of the district's curriculum supervisors and coordinators were assigned as liaisons to individual schools. Ideally, these staff members will develop a closer relationship with people at school buildings and serve as initial contact persons when issues arise.
"They meet face to face weekly with building principals," Collins-Hart said.
Each supervisor and coordinator was assigned to as few as one and as many as four schools.
The new arrangement should address concerns that administrators in the central office have been too removed from the front lines in schools, Collins-Hart said.
She will delegate responsibility for 14 schools on her list when the district hires a second executive director of curriculum and instruction.
For now, she will focus on Centennial, Cordley, East Heights, Grant, Hillcrest, Kennedy, New York, Pinckney, Riverside, Schwegler and Woodlawn schools; South and Southwest junior highs; and Lawrence High.
Eicher has jurisdiction over Broken Arrow, Deerfield, Prairie Park, Quail Run, Sunflower, Sunset Hill and Wakarusa Valley schools; the elementary under construction on West 15th Street; Central and West junior highs; Lawrence Alternative High; and Free State High.
-- Tim Carpenter's phone message number is 832-7155. His e-mail address is tcarpenter@ljworld.com.
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