None of the six candidates for Lawrence school board Monday supported moving the district away from its traditional policy of operating three-year high schools.
While concerns were raised about the academic wisdom of keeping students in junior high school for three years before advancing to high school, the unanimous opinion among candidates was that the Lawrence community had no interest in changing the system.
"My personal opinion?" candidate Leni Salkind said during a campaign forum shown by Sunflower Cablevision. "I think children benefit from curriculum in a four-year high school. The community is not ready to make that change."
A majority of Kansas high schools serve students from their freshman through senior years.
Candidate Dale Vestal said it wouldn't be prudent to place ninth-graders with students at Free State High School and Lawrence High School.
"I don't think it's going to allow the students to mature at a normal rate," Vestal said.
Candidate Linda Robinson said the school board didn't have any business tinkering with a system that wasn't broken and hadn't drawn the wrath of the district patrons. "We need to respect the wishes of the community," she said.
Subjecting the district's 10,300 students and their families to the transition from a three-year to a four-year model would be too difficult, candidate Nicole Rials said.
Candidate Austin Turney said he believed that either a three-year or a four-year high school model could be successful if the right curriculum plans were in place. He said that meant a school board should focus on making certain students' educational experience was unbroken when moving from elementary school to junior high to high school.
Candidate Kurt Thurmaier, while not recommending a policy change, said he was worried ninth-graders in Lawrence junior highs were having difficulty scheduling classes taken for high-school credit.
"There are issues that have to be dealt with," he said.
Three seats on the board are being contested in the April 3 election. Salkind and Turney are seeking re-election.
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