Kimberly Nicole Rials tacks on another birthday today, yet remains the youngest of six candidates running for Lawrence school board.
Rials, the last of a dozen siblings to go through Lawrence public schools, will spend the 29th anniversary of her birth as a social worker at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. It's a place, she said, that keeps her connected with the community's youth and the issues they face.
"It gives me a chance to be on the front line of working with children and families," she said.
Church, family and
a passion for schools
Rials is the only school board candidate who is a lifelong resident of Lawrence. Her life, she said, has been defined by this city a childhood in North Lawrence, her experiences in the community's public schools and a deep faith in God acquired in the neighborhood church.
Rials, who attends the Church of God in North Lawrence, is a self-taught pianist who leads the church's adult choir.
"Religion is the essence of what I am," she said. "It's always been a part of my life. As kids, we played church as we would play doctor, school or cops-and-robbers. It gives me a lot of strength."
Another pillar of strength has been her family, which originally included 13 children. A brother passed away in 1972, at age 10.
"We had a family-oriented environment. There was a sense of security," Rials said.
Nicole Rials, the youngest of the Lawrence school board candidates, is a lifelong Lawrence resident.
She grew up in a house on Locust Street with her siblings and parents, who are both retired from civil-service jobs at Kansas University. The children attended Woodlawn School.
"My mom was a block mother," she said. "It was for school kids. If they got in trouble, they could go there."
Rials, who is single, said it was at Woodlawn that she began to understand the importance of schools as an anchor for neighborhoods. She said she would hate to close any of Lawrence's 19 elementary schools and force children to go elsewhere.
"I'd like the community to set a higher value on schools as an asset to neighborhoods."
In 1990, Rials was the last in the family to graduate from Lawrence High School.
"I was the even dozen," she said.
Rials said the school district should explore new ways of meeting the needs of high school students who don't plan to attend a four-year college. She said the district's vocational and technical programs need upgrading.
Looks around the district, she said, reveal disparities in computers, libraries, staffing and playgrounds.
"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," she said. "We are a big enough community, with enough resources, that we should embrace all schools."
She said her other priorities include improving teacher salaries and hiring more minority staff.
A social conscience
After high school, Rials enrolled at Kansas University and earned a degree in psychology in 1995. She volunteered at CASA, an organization that works with juvenile offenders. She also worked at The Shelter Inc., a group home for adolescents. In 1997, she was a youth specialist at Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center.
"It was very good for me. It developed my interest in social work," she said.
These experiences led her back to KU in 1998. She earned a master's degree in social welfare, and in January accepted a position as a social worker at LMH. She works with patients and their families in the hospital's child-birth, pediatrics and surgical units. She is involved in assessments and counseling for grief, and helping people adjust to illness.
On the side
Rials' hobbies include a passion for fishing. She recalls fondly a trip to Maine she took with about 25 family members in a rented bus. Rials hauled in a massive striped bass, and has the pictures to prove it.
"It was a trip of a lifetime," she said.
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