The mentoring program for new teachers in the Lawrence public school district was designed to keep the district’s best and brightest on the job.

The initiative, in which the district invested $100,000, worked well enough to draw national acclaim.

“We’ve had people from all over the country asking about it,” Janice Nicklaus, the district’s executive director of educational programming, said Friday.

But that praise didn’t prevent the school board from giving pink slips to all 15 of the newly mentored elementary classroom teachers, a result of the statewide budget crunch.

Lawrence school board members will meet at district headquarters Monday to receive a report on the mentoring program they authorized in 2000 to help young teachers make a smoother transition to district classrooms. It was the board’s belief that mentoring relationships developed between rookie educators and veteran teachers would help the district retain more of its best and brightest.

One of the educators the district invested in through the mentoring program  and then pink-slipped because of budget problems  was Bria Klotz, a sixth-grade teacher at Prairie Park School.

Klotz, described as an “incredible young teacher” by Sherry Nelson, one of two district administrators with the program, will go before the board Monday to offer her perspective on the program.

“It kept me focused on what I actually needed to do,” she said in an interview.

Under the program, 104 new Lawrence teachers hired by the district for the 2001-2002 school year were paired with a mentor at the school where they taught. All novice teachers also benefited from extra support from Nelson and the other peer assistant, Jackie Stafford.

“Sherry has been coming in my classroom on a weekly basis,” Klotz said. “She made me a better teacher. She can sit back and analyze so much. It’s just comforting to have someone on your side.”

Mentors and assistants helped newcomers become familiar with building procedures, resources, programs, curriculum and discipline expectations.

It remains to be seen whether the district can continue the mentoring program. Nelson and Stafford’s jobs would be eliminated if the district went into the second phase of $4.7 million in budget cuts and fee increases.

And it’s possible  though not assured  that with state or federal grants, the teacher firings could be rescinded.

Nelson, who has a quarter century of teaching experience, said demise of the mentoring program would be a setback for Lawrence schools. The general public doesn’t understand what a demanding job teaching has become in recent years, she said.

“Without support,” she said, “I feel it’s nearly an impossible job the first year. The expectations are incredible between curriculum and instruction, dealing with all the different kids in the classrooms, teaching to every kid, being where they need to be.”

Nelson also said dismissal of 15 young, energetic elementary teachers was a tragedy.

“I’ve seen them do all this growing and turn into incredible teachers,” she said.