Inconsistent delivery of gifted education services in Lawrence schools will be a key area of concern as the district conducts a review of that program, officials said Monday.

Bruce Passman, the district’s director of special services, said the evaluation would produce an action plan by August.

“What really matters is what kind of program you put together,” he told the school board. “Honestly, the program we have today is whatever is happening in any particular school.”

Board President Austin Turney said he sensed lack of uniformity when he visited schools.

“I don’t see ‘gifted education,'” he said. “It leads me to say that I don’t have a sense of how it works.”

About 6 percent of the district’s 9,800 students are classified as “gifted” under state law. The average for Kansas districts is 3 percent. Students in a gifted program receive enriched academic, mentoring or counseling services.

In addition to variable program delivery, Passman said other weaknesses included inadequate gifted facilities in schools, the large amount of required paperwork and heavy caseloads for gifted teachers, especially at the high school level.

Strengths of Lawrence’s program have been that students enjoy participating in gifted activities, teachers feel they’re making a difference in the lives of students and success has been achieved on a limited budget, Passman said.

He said a committee had been assembled to compare the district’s offerings with national benchmarks of effective gifted education programs.

That should lead to development of the new delivery model, Passman said.

Turney said there wasn’t a clear sense gifted education has been a priority in classrooms.

“The challenge for the district would be in getting gifted to the point in the system that special ed is, so when you have kids with special needs … that the general education folks will attend to those needs,” he said.

Board member Leonard Ortiz said he was troubled by the gifted label. A program by that name could cause children to feel inferior if not included in that elite circle, he said.

“I tend to feel all kids are gifted,” he said. “How about a name change?”