Students get a firsthand perspective of educational inequities in Lawrence public schools by simply walking in a school's front door, sitting down at a computer or playing outside at recess, candidates for school board say.
"What are you saying to that child?" asked candidate Nicole Rials, a social worker at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. "I've always thought it was unfortunate that in a town as small as Lawrence, you can go 10 miles and see such inequities between schools."
Visual contrasts include state-of-the-art Langston Hughes School on the city's west side and crumbling East Heights School on the east. Disparities among Lawrence schools also exist in the allocation of computer, library, playground and sports equipment. Some schools don't have a full-time principal, and others share nurses.
Parent-teacher groups at affluent schools raise far more money than schools in modest-income sections of the district. Their contributions to schools are welcomed by the district, but that hard work exacerbates the divide among schools.
The issue of balancing resources in the 10,300-student district has surfaced at forums and in interviews for the six candidates competing for three slots on the school board. On April 3, voters will choose among Linda Robinson, Leni Salkind, Kurt Thurmaier, Austin Turney, Dale Vestal and Nicole Rials.
Vestal, regional sales manager for a trophy company, said problems were most apparent at the district's 19 elementary schools.
"We need, as a district and community, to decide what the baseline is for schools and make sure each school has these things," Vestal said.
Salkind, a self-employed artist seeking re-election, said she was more concerned about academic differences in the classroom than inconsistencies in physical aspects of schools.
"We need to look at inequity of services," Salkind said. "I'm much more concerned about educational, than physical, resources."
She said allocation of technology is a long-standing problem in Lawrence schools that needs to be addressed during the next four years.
Another incumbent, retired accountant Austin Turney, said it was unrealistic to reconfigure or replace schools in Lawrence so that each fits a cookie-cutter mold.
Existing schools ought to be tweaked to improve delivery of services to students, he said. Such an endeavor should take place after a comprehensive facilities study by the board, he said.
"For example, what should an art room contain?" he said. "Many schools do not have small spaces they need. We will plan for that."
Robinson, who manages a faculty orientation program at Kansas University, said she was troubled by uneven delivery of curriculum in schools. Course content for fifth-graders in some schools is dramatically different than at other schools, which causes problems when students transfer to a new school.
"We need alignment to prepare them for junior high," she said.
Thurmaier, a KU faculty member in public administration, said he was aware of inequity in library resources. For example, he said, the Cordley School library is the district's smallest.
However, differences in the configuration or organization of a school shouldn't automatically prompt complaints about inequity, he said. An old, small school in eastern Lawrence isn't inferior to a new, big school in western Lawrence, he said.
"I don't think that necessarily means they're unequal," Thurmaier said.
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