photo by: Nick Krug

Lawrence Public Schools district offices, 110 McDonald Drive.

Negotiators from the Lawrence school district and the local teachers union will schedule a second meeting with a federal mediator after the first one failed to break their deadlock on the 2018-2019 teacher contract.

David Cunningham, the district’s legal counsel and executive director of human resources, and Laurie Folsom, Lawrence Education Association president, said the two sides did make some progress Wednesday on salary differences and issues involving staffing and student discipline. They did not share details about what that progress entailed.

Both Cunningham and Folsom said they were confident the next mediation would produce an agreement they could take to the union’s membership and the Lawrence school board. The next meeting with the mediator will be in early November, but an exact date has not been set.

“We wouldn’t ask the mediator back if we didn’t think we could reach agreement,” Folsom said.