The Journal-World sent a seven-question survey to each school board candidate running for the four seats worth a four-year term. Seven people filed for those seats. The four winners will be determined in the April 7, 2015 general election. Read candidate profiles and questionnaires here.

• Rick Ingram, 60, was elected to the board in 2011 and spent the 2013-14 school year as its president. He works as a professor of clinical psychology at KU. He also sits on the district’s Boundary Advisory Committee, which recommends changes to school attendance zones.

What makes you the right candidate for the school board?

I have been a board member for four years and board president for one year. The knowledge and experience I have gained during this time will be helpful in meeting the challenges that lie ahead. I have served on a number of board committees, am a site council member for several schools, and served on the Yes for Lawrence committee to help pass the bond. I will continue to bring an evidence-based approach to board decision making and will continue to seek out ways to maximize community participation in education. I will continue to consider issues with an open mind.

What issues should the school board focus on in the coming years?

We have made progress in closing achievement gaps, but there is more to be done and I will fully support the continuation of the district’s equity work to help close this gap. We have implemented several initiatives to promote excellence, and must continue to do so. We have made progress on our engagement goals, but the board must continue to work toward better ways of providing information and seeking input. The goals of excellence, equity and engagement should be, and I believe will be, the focus of the school board in the coming years, even in a difficult budget climate.

How should the board address the budget issues it faces because of state cuts?

A mid-year cut may require using contingency funds. Questions about continuing cuts are hypothetical because we don’t yet know the degree of the cut and we don’t know the funding mechanism; block grant funding may require different solutions than formula-based funding. Rather than answer hypothetical questions, I will note that my priority will be to protect core educational programming and to protect teachers and staff. We will need community involvement; we formed a community budget advisory committee during my first year on the board for precisely this kind of situation. We will need additional community involvement as we consider funding reductions.

Are Lawrence students shortchanged in any aspect of their education?

I do not believe that Lawrence students are shortchanged in any aspect of their education. In the last four years we implemented full-day kindergarten, blended learning, and the AVID program. We are now investigating the high school AP Capstone program that grew out of my idea to implement more coordinated advanced study opportunities. These are examples of excellence in education, but this excellence is threatened by some legislators who want to reduce funding, take control of local elections, promote charter schools, eliminate common core and remove sex education from local control. If this happens students may very well be shortchanged.

Do you support Common Core standards? Why or why not?

I fully support the implementation of Common Core, now known as the Kansas College and Career Ready Standards. Instead of different states using different educational benchmarks, states that have adopted Common Core now have a consistent set of standards. These standards also align well with international standards. The standards are rigorous and promote critical thinking, and the teachers and staff in Lawrence have worked hard to design the curricula that will allow children to meet these standards. Moves to abolish Common Core are misguided and misinformed, and such a move at this point will harm the education of our children.

Should teachers have tenure rights? Is it “too hard” to fire teachers with tenure?

The idea that it is “too hard” to fire teachers with tenure is simply an excuse to break unions, diminish public education and promote for-profit education at the taxpayers’ expense. Such efforts are part of a broader effort to severely restrict educator bargaining rights. Within the last two weeks the Kansas House Education Committee ignored a bargaining rights agreement, negotiated over 18 months by various education groups, in favor of a bill written by the Koch-backed Kansas Policy Institute. Making it harder to bargain, and to earn and retain tenure, demoralizes our educators, and does nothing to improve learning.

Do you support moving school board elections to November in even numbered years and/or making the elections partisan?

This is an exceptionally bad idea that few Kansans are asking for and that over 170 Kansas schools boards have opposed. Moving elections means that new members will be seated in the middle of the academic and fiscal year. Goals will have been set, budgets determined and a myriad of other decisions made without the input of some board members. The move for partisanship is not even a thinly veiled attempt by one political party to gain control of local government. Partisanship rarely makes anything better and in this case will make governing at the local level worse.

More 2015 Lawrence school board election coverage

• Candidate profiles and questionnaires