District creates vision for LAHS

Mike Holladay says his two years at Lawrence Alternative High School have kept him from being a troubling statistic.

“I was so far behind at Free State High School that I was going to drop out,” he said.

Now, he’s making plans to go to college or enter military service.

As Holladay prepares to graduate, he’s excited about ideas for improving the 120-student alternative school in Holcom Park, 2700 W. 27th St.

“We need a new building,” he said. “This one is inadequate.”

No official decision has been made by the school board on an expansion project, but a clear majority of the board has said the time has come to invest in infrastructure at the alternative high school.

Funding for a project would have to be approved by voters in the school district, and that bond-issue election won’t occur until 2003.

Three prongs

Supt. Randy Weseman is pushing a three-prong approach to upgrading the district’s alternative education facilities.

The first objective is to expand basic academic spaces at the alternative school, he said. That would include replacement of portable classroom trailers with real buildings.

It’s important to open space for more students from LHS and Free State, struggling to fit in at schools with at least 1,200 students, to be part of the school’s intimate academic atmosphere.

Ninth-graders also would be eligible to enroll for the first time, he said.

A second phase of the project would add a vocational-educational facility.

“It’s a real weakness that we have in the community,” he said. “We don’t have a vocational-technical training program in Lawrence that really reaches out to business and industry and that prepares kids to enter the work force after high school.”

He said the final piece of the puzzle would be an academy open to a wide range of secondary students. It could offer, for example, unusual foreign language courses or applied engineering classes.

These would appeal to the “high-flier” students bored by basic courses, Weseman said.

“It would attract kids who need to be challenged beyond what we are able to offer in our secondary schools,” he said.

Overall, he said, the cost might be about $10 million. No timeline has been set, but if a bond issue were to pass, it would be a minimum of 18 months before the basic improvements to the new alternative high school would be finished.

But not too big

The single brick building and collection of portables at the alternative school have been a haven for LaTisha Fouch, a 17-year-old senior.

She nearly quit LHS three years ago because the school was too big.

“In my sophomore year, the first semester I was so stressed out and skipped so many classes at LHS,” she said during a break from classes at the alternative school. “I’ve been here since. It’s been good for me. I needed extra help.”

It’s that familiar, insulated environment that Fouch said she hopes doesn’t get lost in a new building with larger enrollment.

“We’re basically like a big family,” said Fouch, who plans to attend cosmetology school.

Judy Juneau, principal of the alternative high school, said maintaining that balance would be the driving force in renovation planning.

“We cannot grow this program so big that we can no longer be effective with the population that we’re here to serve,” she said.

Juneau said she was confident that could be done even with infusion of about 60 junior high students at an expanded facility. She said she’s long thought ninth-graders, who are in junior high schools but taking high school-credit courses, needed to be part of the alternative education mix.

‘Second chance’ programs

Juneau also thinks the new facility could be a good place for several programs targeting at-risk students.

The district’s suspension-alternative program, currently at the Douglas County Juvenile Detention Center in North Lawrence, could be moved to the alternative high school, she said.

Same is true of a program known as First Stop, which allows for a period of assessment of students in custody of the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services. Staff working with the children often must travel all over the district to meet with students.

“Having some of these things in the same building would allow us to provide better and more comprehensive services,” she said.

A program that gives students a “second chance” before expulsion also could be started at the expanded alternative high school. These secondary students wouldn’t be integrated with others at the facility, but staff would be available to give them the kind of structured program that keeps them in school.

These supplemental programs might add about 20 students to the school, making the total around 200.

Juneau said it made sense to keep the alternative school in Holcom Park.

“I like this location,” she said. “This is where we’ve always been and we’re not taking over someone else’s site.”