Lawrence students dress the part when visiting Hiratsuka, Japan. The students — from left: Sadie McEniry, now a sophomore at Lawrence High School; Emily Ortiz, a junior at Lawrence High; and Anna Clayton, a freshman at Free State High School — were delegates on the trip this past summer to Hiratsuka, one of Lawrence's three sister cities.

Dozens of students have traversed the world’s largest ocean to bring two communities closer together during the past two decades.

But two Lawrencians are unequaled in their family approach to the sister city relationship between Lawrence and Hiratsuka, Japan.

Layla McEniry and her daughter Sadie are among a select number of relatives to take part in exchange programs, but even in the relatively exclusive group they stand out.

Sadie, now a sophomore at Lawrence High School, made the nearly two-week trip this past summer. Layla made the trip back in 1991 as Layla Schultz, then a sophomore at Lawrence High.

That makes Sadie the first second-generation participant in the program, which has been sending anywhere from a dozen to two dozen Lawrence students to Hiratsuka for 20 years now to share experiences and learn about a different culture, one becoming increasingly familiar as such exchanges draw the people and places closer to together.

“It’s great,” Layla said. “I went over there with the very first student delegation. It’s just great and it’s really neat to see that it’s continued on, and that there’s such support behind it.”

The Lawrence side of the program, sponsored through City Hall and donations, continues to support a variety of exchanges between communities. Lawrence has three official sister cities: Hiratsuka; Eutin, Germany; and Iniades, Greece.

Supporters of the programs are tickled with the generational achievement.

“It’s just exciting, to me, that a mother has been able to share with her daughter the experience of a new culture,” said Bob Moody, a former Lawrence mayor who serves on the Lawrence Sister Cities Advisory Board and has traveled to both Hiratsuka and Eutin.

Sadie enjoyed her visit to Hiratsuka so much that she plans to live there when she gets out of school, perhaps teaching English.

The two communities are more an ocean apart, but Layla can’t complain too much. Hiratsuka is a fine place to visit, after all.

“Twist my arm,” she said, with a laugh.

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With all this talk of freshmen on campus at the high schools and sixth-graders moving up into middle schools and all the other changes for students in the Lawrence school district this academic year, don’t forget another side of the equation.

Teachers and others working in the educational world are busy seeing that everything goes smoothly — often in new locations, at different grade levels, with new curriculum and any of the other seemingly endless changes planned for the past year and implemented for the coming one and beyond.

“What’s happening for kids is great, but we’re treading water as fast and as hard as we can,” said Deena Burnett, a language arts teacher at West Middle School and president of the Lawrence Education Association, which represents the interests of about 900 licensed educators in the district. “This is not Joplin (Missouri). We have physical space, those kinds of things. I don’t want to compare it in any way to what they’re going back to there this year … but this is as much as you can upset the apple cart as possible, for probably about 40 percent of the staff.”

I don’t doubt it for a minute. Lynn Harrod, assistant principal at South Middle School, noted the other day that all but three or four of the teachers at that school were in different rooms this year.

That’s not easy for anyone.

•••

Teachers have been working on the district reconfiguration for months, and during the past summer many teachers were called into extra duty to help get things in place and ready for the fall semester.

The district spent more than $100,000 to assemble teachers in planning teams, to make sure all the changes at the middle school level would be ready to go.

Their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed.

“The teachers have done a phenomenal job, along with the principals in the buildings and the classified staff,” said Kim Bodensteiner, the district’s chief academic officer. “We had a lot of moving parts this summer. I couldn’t be prouder of the job all of the staff did to make (all this) so successful for students.”