The Lawrence school board will make plenty of people unhappy this year.

An unprecedented state budget crunch and the district’s consultant-prepared facilities study, both of which could precipitate controversial elementary school closings, will make it impossible for the seven-member board to avoid conflict.

“We’re going to be faced with decisions we’ve never had to face before,” said Sue Morgan, school board member. “Where we’re making these choices, people will see them and feel them a lot more.”

She said a key to preventing an unmanageable ruckus will be to concentrate on pieces of the budget that best serve the interests of students. It will be an emotional bloodbath if feuds pit teacher salaries against athletics funding, or music and art versus school nurses, or bus transportation against teacher-student ratios.

“We need to be careful not to dismantle the systems that have led to success for our kids,” Morgan said.

Other board members agree with Morgan that the comprehensive facilities study, due to be finished in June, and this spring’s development of the 2002-2003 district budget will consume the bulk of their time in the short term.

Rounding up sacred cows

School board members also say it’s inevitable board action will leave some people thinking sacred cows were harmed.

“It’s about what are we going to cut and what are we going to try to keep?” said board member Jack Davidson. “We’ll just check our knives and guns at the door.”

Another member of the board, Austin Turney, said the facilities review will have long-term benefits. It will determine the size and shape of a bond issue likely to go before voters in November.

There has been discussion about a bond issue in the $30 million range that would finance years of renovation or construction projects. It also could lead eventually to elementary school consolidation.

“We hope out of that to prepare a plan which will not only cover what I certainly believe will be an initial bond issue, but cover things to accomplish over the next few years,” Turney said.

In an odd way, pressure to cut deeply into the district’s budget staggering sums from $2.5 million to $5 million have been tossed around and to evaluate school facilities could compel the board to concentrate more on the fundamentals of public education.

“So many good things will flow if we’re focused,” said Scott Morgan, the board’s vice president. “We’ll be forced to do it.”

Measuring achievement

Scott Morgan said the district needs to focus on setting academic achievement standards. Principals and teachers should be held accountable for attaining specific goals, he said.

“What is our whole point of existence? It’s to educate kids. More to the point: read, write and add. We can’t lose sight of the primary point,” Scott Morgan said.

On the other hand, board members are worried budget limitations may undermine all that is good in the district.

“My goal would be that we can balance our budget without destroying the integrity of our curriculum,” said board member Linda Robinson.

Board member Leni Salkind said a lack of resources could make it difficult to accomplish goals established through the facilities study. Research demonstrates that organizing schools in a way that keeps primary-grade class sizes at fewer than 18 students leads to measurable academic gains, she said.

“It’s disappointing to me to see that the budget may force us to raise class sizes even in the first grade,” Salkind said. “We’ll do some things that will definitely affect kids.”

Board member Mary Loveland said the financial predicament might remind patrons that the Lawrence board has maximized its ability to generate more money for school operating budgets.

Enlightening opportunity

The reality is that the Legislature holds the purse strings, Loveland said.

“That’s not well understood,” she said.

In the Lawrence district, Loveland said, the school system has to become more efficient. The district has 19 elementary schools, four junior high schools and two high schools. There are underutilized elementary schools and crowded junior highs, she said.

“I’m hoping the general public will get enlightened in terms of attendance centers,” said Loveland, an advocate of elementary school consolidation.

Turney said the Legislature won’t decide what to appropriate to public school districts for 2002-2003 until this month or next. That’s long after the Lawrence district prefers to offer contracts to teachers. If lawmakers wait until the end of the session to settle school finance, the best teachers may have been hired away by more financially secure districts.

Sue Morgan said the year won’t be exclusively the domain of gloom and doom.

“I would like to see us still have every student in the district improving,” she said. “However we measure it we can keep kids moving forward.”