To the editor:

On Tuesday night, Lawrence school board members admirably created a consensus on how best to deal with the current Kansas Legislature-induced $5 million budgetary shortfall.

The recent challenging process of balancing the budget revealed that the district does not have a clear, documented vision for the future of educational facilities in USD497. In conjunction with balancing the budget the board wisely moved to form a task force to review the needs of existing buildings. In the future, we can avoid reactionary responses driven by crisis if the goal of the task force is to develop a comprehensive, coherent long-term facilities plan.

To accomplish this, the task force should be commissioned to look at the structural needs of our existing facilities in the context of the educational goals of our district. Contributing members must comprise a broad range of stakeholders including vested community members, teachers, school administrators, and others. Equitable representation and a transparent process will go a long way toward creating community buy-in, particularly if resulting recommendations are less palatable than Tuesday night’s decision to keep all existing elementary buildings open.

Whatever its path, may the task force end product build upon the budgetary consensus I marvel that board members were able to achieve. Perhaps we should send the board to Topeka to give state legislators a lesson in compromising?