In one way, the best selling point Bert Nash Chief Executive Officer David Johnson has for his organization’s student counseling program – dubbed WRAP – is that it has kept Lawrence out of the national news.

“There is no question in my mind that Lawrence would be on the list of schools across the country where students have committed murder, if WRAP wasn’t in place,” Johnson said. “There is no question in my mind that Lawrence would be on that list.”

There are plenty of questions, though, surrounding the future of the WRAP program – which puts 21 mental health counselors in area high schools, junior highs and elementary schools.

The program is run by the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, but is funded by the Lawrence City Commission, Douglas County Commission and the Lawrence school board. At a joint study session of the three groups, all three praised the work of the program. But only one – the county – committed to finding a way to fund the program at its current levels in 2008. The city and the school district stopped far short of any such commitment.

“I guarantee you that in the next four years there will be service cuts in the school district, and we may start with this one, even with it being as valuable as it is,” Superintendent Randy Weseman said. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it. That could happen.”

The school district provides about $350,000 in funding. The city provides roughly the same amount of money. City commissioners said a projected shortfall in sales tax revenues and a slowdown in property tax growth may cause them to cut back their funding levels in 2008.

“We’re kind of between a rock and a hard place,” Commissioner Mike Amyx said.

Johnson said he was concerned about future funding for the program, but said he was still holding out hope that the three entities would find a way to maintain current funding levels. He said even if funding was significantly cut that Bert Nash would work to find a way to keep the program operating, although it likely would mean a major reduction in the number of counselors.

The program works with students and their families on issues ranging from suicide prevention to social anxieties to family problems. Johnson said the value of programs like WRAP had been in the news following the shootings in April at Virginia Tech University.

“If that shooter had lived in Lawrence, we probably would have been working with him since the first grade,” Johnson said.

The city should make a decision on how much to fund the program by mid-July. The school district likely won’t know until August.

Weseman said the school district’s funding situation was complicated by a recent ruling from the state that said the district could not use its “at-risk” student money to fund the program because it did not provide direct instruction. Weseman said that left WRAP to compete with other general school district funding needs, such as teacher salaries. The only way for the school district to add to the budget is to increase its local option budget, which would require a public election. Weseman said he did not think that was probable.

“I’m not sure we can go out and get an election passed,” Weseman said, especially following a 6 mill increase in the district’s property tax rate last year.