Lawrence USD 497 school board

The Lawrence school board unanimously agreed Monday to hire a search firm to help identify candidates for the district’s next superintendent.

Board members agreed use of a search firm was a better option than doing the search internally, which was a second alternative David Cunningham, the district’s chief legal counsel and executive director of human resources, presented them. Board members agreed the goal would be to have a new superintendent hired in February 2018.

“I think we need to hire a firm,” board president Shannon Kimball said. “We learned something from our last experience, for sure, but I do think the work our staff has ahead of them day to day is ideally the work they should be doing.”

With the board’s direction, Cunningham said he would contact four search firms on Wednesday about submitting requests for information proposals. The board will screen responding firms at its Aug. 14 meeting.

The list of firms Cunningham will contact — the Kansas Association of School Boards, Ray and Associates, School Exec Connect and Hazzard, Young and Attea — does not include McPherson & Jacobson LLC, which conducted the $20,486 search that led to the promotion in March 2016 of Kyle Hayden from assistant superintendent of business and operations to superintendent. Hayden stepped down from that position in May to become the district’s chief operations officer.

With the board considering a timeline that would have board members screening potential candidates in November and December and interviewing finalists in January 2018, board member Vanessa Sanburn, who is not seeking re-election to her expiring term, said she would be willing to resign early after the November election so that the candidate elected to her seat could take an active role in the search. She noted her term would have ended in July had the Kansas Legislature not taken action in 2015 that moved city and school board elections from May to November. Her term now ends in January 2018.

After discussion, she agreed she would remain open to an early resignation depending on community feedback and the timeline the selected firm develops for the search. Board member Marcel Harmon, who also is not seeking re-election to his expiring term, said he, too, would consider resigning early based on community feedback.

The board also agreed Monday to apply district lost property fees to technology items. In presenting the policy, Jerri Kemble, assistant superintendent of leading, learning and technology, said it was similar to the district’s policy for textbooks and library books.

The board agreed a year ago to forgo charges for lost or damaged iPads and their accessories before the devices were introduced in district middle schools for the 2016-2017 school year, but agreed to revisit that decision when the district had a year of student experience with the devices and before MacBooks were made available to district high school students in the coming year.

The policy the board approved would require a $40 payment for the replacement of an intentionally lost or damaged iPad and $75 for a MacBook. Those charges represented 10 percent of the replacement value, Kemble said. Families would have the opportunity to apply for a hardship waiver to forgive the charge, Kemble said.

There would be no charge for devices unintentionally broken or misplaced. Families would be required to pay full replacement value if they took iPads or MacBooks with them when they moved from the district, she said.

Twenty-seven of the 5,000 iPads the district issued last year were lost or not returned, Kemble said. The $13,446 the district spent to replace the iPads were part of $44,794 spent to repair or replace the devices or replace accessories. Adding to that expense was the students frequently losing the devices’ electrical cords and “bricks” that recharge the iPads. Kemble said 1,008 of the cords and 986 of the bricks were missing when the iPads were checked in at the end of the school year. It cost the district $19,960 to replace the cords and bricks.

The policy approved would charge $5 to replace the iPad accessories and chargers, and $10 to replace those of MacBooks. Kemble said the fees were half the replacement value.

Sanburn said the adopted policy gives students and parents “skin” in the district’s 1-to-1 technology initiative but does not put added financial burden on students for getting a public education.