Miranda: Fifty percent of everyone at Free State and LHS are new to their schools this year. It doesn’t matter if you are a freshman, senior or somewhere in-between; everyone has had to deal with a lot of changes. With ninth-graders moving up, this year has gotten off to a bumpy start.

Though I can’t speak for LHS, the chaotic parking, winding lunch lines and crowded hallways have become areas for frustration for all of the Free State students, and I imagine there are similar problems south of 15th Street as well. Freshmen and sophomores are overwhelmed, while many upperclassmen feel deprived of experiences they watched the classes before them have These problems won’t resolve themselves overnight and will take a lot of cooperation from students who are still confused by the situation.

For two years I attended multiple school board meetings where they discussed moving the freshmen up. It seemed very unrealistic at the time, like it would ever come to fruition. They put it off for a year of planning, and now that freshmen are in my classes and walking next to me in the hallways, it all seems like it happened too soon. I realize that budgetary constraints and population growth made this necessary, and I firmly believe in the long run it will be a better arrangement. School administrators did the best they could, but there seems there was no way to adequately prepare for this year.

My suggestion for every student is to be patient. It will take awhile for new kids to learn the lay of the land. Parents, teachers and students are going to have to make the best of a difficult situation, and by the end of the year, Lawrence will have 2 four-year schools that are better for the changes after the many adjustments students have to make now.

Wes: Miranda echoes the frustration I’m hearing from my teenage sources as well as parents and teachers. The reality is that Lawrence is way behind on this issue. All other schools in Kansas promoted their ninth-graders already, most of them a long time ago. It’s not really a budgetary issue. It has to do with making the schools compliant with federal and state mandates. In fact, the topic goes back to the early 1990s when the voters turned down a bond issue to build a second high school as a ninth/10th grade facility, allowing all kids to matriculate together through two levels of high school on two different campuses. Sounds pretty cool to me right now.

But I also agree with Miranda’s hopeful perspective, even if you can sort of hear the sigh in her voice as she shares it. Teachers and students will have to maintain that same patient stance for much of the year as new challenges emerge and the schools learn to deal with them. This is all an adventure, and not every obstacle can be anticipated.

Parents can be particularly helpful by limiting their own angst and negative feedback. As exasperating as it all may seem, particularly for parents who openly resisted this move for years, now is the time to pull together and not apart. Adding fuel to a frustrated teen’s fire won’t move that process forward or help him cope with the new situation. I always see parents as a child’s best advocate in school, but for the next few months advocacy will need to be tempered and reasoned as we all get used to this new way of being.