photo by: Journal-World

Lawrence Public Schools district offices pictured in April 2021.

The Lawrence school district is preparing to eliminate 50 middle and high school teaching positions ahead of next school year, resulting in increases in class sizes and the elimination of some courses and elective options for students.

The Lawrence school board approved the 50 position reductions, which will include secondary teachers at the district’s brick-and-mortar schools and its virtual school, in February. The board approved a plan for schedule and curriculum reductions at the middle schools at its meeting Monday. The district estimates that eliminating the 50 positions will save $3.25 million.

“To implement these cuts, the district will focus on a class size minimum, an average class size, program reductions, and creative scheduling,” district spokesperson Julie Boyle said in a news release this past week.

The middle school changes include increased middle school class sizes; changes to class schedules; the elimination of courses; reductions to physical education; and reductions to elective hours available to students, among other changes. Questions remain regarding how the schedule changes will impact extracurricular programs such as Future City, Model United Nations and zero-hour choir.

More details about the various changes, gathered from the district presentation Monday, the news release and some additional information provided by Boyle, are as follows.

Class size: The district will set a class size minimum, which has not yet been specified, and the average class size in core classes is expected to increase. The district has said the goal is to keep average class size around 25 students, but Chief Academic Officer Patrick Kelly told the board there will be some a little lower and some higher than that. Kristen Ryan, the district’s executive director of human resources, said that in her preliminary conversations with middle school principals, core class sizes are already high and principals are struggling to make the teacher reductions. Ryan said the teacher reductions would raise middle school core class sizes, but did not provide specific numbers.

Schedule changes: Changes include reducing the day from eight to seven periods and increasing the length of each class period. The reduction in the number of periods will eliminate zero hour and replace it with a morning plan period for teachers. Students’ advisory period and flexible intervention period, or “flex period,” will be combined into one period. Kelly told the board that currently advisory period is held four days per week for 30 minutes and flex period occurs every other day, alternating with physical education. The new combined period will be called the Student Success period and will be held around lunchtime. Kelly said the district anticipates teaching the district’s new social-emotional curriculum during this period, which he thinks would be beneficial because behavior issues tend to occur around lunch time.

Eliminating courses: The sixth-grade required health course, Healthy Living, will be eliminated and its content will be moved to students’ advisory period, science class, or physical education class. The seventh-grade Design and Modeling course will change from a required course to an elective course. The eighth-grade Career and Life Planning course will be eliminated and its content will be moved to students’ advisory period, science class, or physical education class.

Reducing physical education: Physical education will be reduced across all middle school grades from every other day all year to every day for a semester. Kelly said the district believed that if there were students who needed physical education every day for the entire year, they could take physical education as an elective course.

Reduction to electives: Though a couple more elective options will be offered, students will be provided fewer elective periods. Kelly said the number of elective credits available for students will be reduced from two credits to 1.5 credits, and that the district anticipates there could also be cross-grade electives. Ryan said whether specific elective courses are offered next year and how many sections will be offered, both of which could affect teacher positions, will depend on how many students request to enroll in the class. Boyle said Friday that middle school enrollment started that week and continues next week.

Other extracurricular programs: There were questions from the board and the public about whether the schedule changes would eliminate Future City, Model United Nations, zero-hour choir and other extracurricular programs. Kelly said he didn’t know that they would be eliminated, and that there were a couple of paths to retain those programs, including potentially submitting them as a course that any student could enroll in or building the program into students’ schedules during the Student Success period.

Following Monday’s meeting, the Journal-World sought to clarify how extracurricular programs would be impacted, requested more information about the various other reductions, and inquired about reductions at the high school level, but Boyle said Friday afternoon that a lot of the answers were unknown because planning is still in the works. Regarding middle school class sizes for core classes, the newspaper asked what the core class sizes were now and what they would be next year. Regarding the high-school-level cuts, the newspaper asked how the 50 cuts were being distributed between the middle and high school levels and when the board will consider curriculum and/or schedule changes at the high school level.

The board also approved the closure of Broken Arrow and Pinckney elementary schools on Monday, which are estimated to save the district $300,000 to $400,000 annually per school. District officials have said they plan to offer elementary teachers from closed schools opportunities to transfer to positions in new schools, and they hope to handle the 50 secondary cuts through attrition and transfers, rather than layoffs.

The school board’s next meeting will be April 10.