To the editor:

The Lawrence school district is served by extremely talented administrators who care deeply about our kids. Are they all perfect? No, but they are very good, and many of them are tremendous. Even a little bit of effort to determine the context of the salary figures splashed across the front page of the paper shows that we pay about $13 a student for our excellent superintendent while the neighboring, and much smaller, districts with which the Journal-World oddly chose to compare us pay around $75 per student for their superintendents. We are getting more than our money’s worth in this town.

Unfortunately, we will only discover what a bargain Randy Weseman is when we have to replace him. Not only will a suitable replacement cost more, I can’t imagine someone worth a darn coming into a job of this size and complexity without expecting an assistant superintendent. We are slowly killing our superintendent because this community busts a gut every time anyone even mentions spending a dime on administration.

We may want to fantasize that we are still a small town and that we only need a superintendent and a couple of secretaries, but the reality is that our size and the diverse needs of our students require the best professionals at all levels of education. Whether teachers, principals or central administrators, our kids deserve the best, and this community must be willing to make that investment. The enemy is not administration, the enemy is ignorance.

Scott Morgan,

Lawrence