photo by: Rochelle Valverde

The Futures Planning Committee meets at district offices on Nov. 2, 2022.

Last fall, a 39-member panel that included parents, teachers, staffers, students and other community members was charged with helping steer the Lawrence school district’s budget process. But for some people on the Futures Planning Committee, it’s felt more like the district has been steering them.

Throughout the process, they say, the district has not provided relevant data and meaningful discussion outside of district administrators’ proposal to close multiple schools and increase class sizes. One member said she asked the district multiple times for certain data and never received it. Another said that when members made suggestions that weren’t in the district’s plan, those were put in a “parking lot” and never brought up again. And still another said she didn’t realize that a mundane-looking activity — where members ranked budget options using stickers — would end up being the committee’s recommendation.

Now, as the school board prepares to decide on budget issues in the coming days and weeks, these deeply critical members of the committee are speaking up.

“This wasn’t a collaborative, hard-working process where we had the tough discussions,” said committee member Alicia Erickson. “This was a very led, stay on the rails, no deviation process from the beginning to the end.”

The process was led by a consultant, RSP & Associates, which facilitated the committee’s meetings and the activities largely used to arrive at the committee’s budget scenario. The board hired RSP, which has done the district’s enrollment projections for the past 12 years, at the recommendation of district administrators, paying it $120,000 to complete an enrollment analysis and to facilitate the meetings.

Not all of the committee members are dissatisfied with the process. But several who spoke to the Journal-World spoke of a litany of concerns, including unmet requests for information; the procedures used to develop the budget scenario; and the level of consideration given to equity issues.

The Journal-World also reached out to four school board members regarding these concerns, two of whom agreed to an interview.

Board President Shannon Kimball said she stands by the process. Kimball said she thought the committee fulfilled its role, which was to give space for the community to learn about the district’s budget challenges and provide input on possible solutions. She said she thought the concerns demonstrate that budget decisions put community values — such as paying staff competitive wages, doing what’s best for students, ensuring the district’s efficient operations, and neighborhood schools — in conflict.

“I don’t think that the concerns that were expressed devalue the results of the process and the committee work,” Kimball said. “I think what it shows is the level of difficulty that surrounds making these decisions. It demonstrates the level of conflict that there is amongst the competing values that our community holds, that I hold as a board member.”

Board member Kay Emerson said while she believed the process completed the tasks the board laid out, she also understood the frustrations and saw the committee as a missed opportunity.

“It’s definitely unfortunate that they were not able to engage at the level that they wanted to,” Emerson said. “I think it was a missed opportunity with our district, but we still have to move forward with these decisions.”

Data and details

The 39-member committee consists of four district administrators, four teachers or other certified employees, nine staff, two students, 15 parents, and six community members. Several members of the committee raised concerns a couple of months after meetings began, and requests for more information continued throughout the committee’s five-month process.

The committee’s meetings began in September, and in November, seven committee members signed a letter to district administrators and the school board asking for more detailed data about the district’s expenses, including a breakdown of teacher, staff and administrative salaries, as well as operating costs that could factor into the committee’s decisions.

“We have not been provided with enough relevant, detailed data to come to an informed decision about the budget,” the letter states.

The letter also asked for more time for substantive discussions and full transparency about the process. The Journal-World spoke to three of the letter’s seven signees, all of whom were parents or community members, as well as an eighth committee member who asked for information in separate letters. In addition to data about the district’s expenses initially requested, committee members have requested a breakdown of how the district arrived at its savings estimate for school closures, costs for different educational models and grade structures, as well as other information about the proposed cuts.

The budget scenario the committee developed includes the closure of two elementary schools and the repurposing of one middle school, as well as an increase in classroom sizes at the middle and high school levels.

The district estimated closing an elementary school would save $300,000 to $400,000 and closing a middle school would save $325,000. Those figures were based on cuts to “principals, custodians, librarians, etc.,” according to a committee handout. Some committee members requested a line-item breakdown regarding how the district made the estimates, including the number of employees who would be cut with each school closure.

“How did they come up with it?” asked Toni Clogston, one of the community members on the committee. “I spent 33 years in business, 10 years in the finance team doing mergers and acquisitions. I’ve never struggled so hard to get a straight answer to where do the numbers come from. Show me the due diligence that would make me feel confident making this recommendation.”

Clogston and other committee members said they asked for that breakdown before the budget scenario went out for public comment in January. Committee member Suzie Johannes, the parent of a Woodlawn student, said those details should have been included for the consideration of both the committee and the public.

“There is a level of detail like that I feel like I just needed to see, regardless of whether or not I supported it or not,” Johannes said. She said some committee members also asked for an estimate of the savings related to the use of solar power and other renewable energy, which was included in the committee’s scenario.

Erickson, the parent of students at Woodlawn Elementary and Liberty Memorial Central Middle School and an organizer with the community group Save Our Schools, said she felt the “vagueness” about the increases in classroom size and school closures affected the type of discussion that occurred. The proposals presented to the committee and the public also did not identify specific schools.

“It felt that the vagueness, I don’t want to say was intentional, but the details could have easily been given and would have sparked a much different conversation,” Erickson said.

Committee member Nikki Perry, the parent of students at Cordley and LMCMS, said she requested clarification about the increase in class sizes. When first selected by the committee, the proposal included a note from committee members to look at class minimums and maximums. However, she said in the final version of the budget scenario, the reduction only stated a “class ratio” of 28 students at the middle school level and 30 students at the high school level. She said if a class ratio represents an average class size, there could be classes over 28 and 30, but she was not sure and emailed that question, which was not answered.

“I think there’s a difference between giving high-level recommendations and just not having enough data to even know what you are voting on,” Perry said.

Kimball said she did not think the committee lacked the data it needed, and that she thought the conflict was actually about the committee’s role in the process. She said that while she understood the desire to “dig into every detail deeply when making a decision,” the committee’s role was to provide input on the options. She said when information was sought, the district had to evaluate what was readily available and whether it was necessary.

“There were some things I think people were asking for that they didn’t fully get, but that’s not because there’s a lack of transparency around the process or the decisions,” Kimball said. “It has more to do with that evaluation of what did the committee really need to do, the work that they were being asked to do.”

Emerson said though the board still needed to move forward with a decision, she understood the frustrations about not being able to receive all the additional data about the proposed cuts.

“As a board member I share a similar sentiment,” Emerson said. “I think in general that when we’re trying to make these types of decisions, the more information the better.”

It is not clear how many committee members have expressed concerns to the board. The committee members interviewed for this article provided comments about their concerns to the school board ahead of the board’s special meeting Feb. 21 and/or its meeting Monday. The newspaper asked the district whether all the written public comment submitted to the board will be included with Monday’s meeting agenda, noting that the city and county commissions include written public comment submitted ahead of meetings with their agendas as a matter of course. District spokesperson Julie Boyle said that the district has not had the practice of attaching public comments/feedback received by the superintendent and/or school board members to board agendas.

As the board prepares to make its budget decisions, more than 300 people have signed a petition organized by the group Save Our Schools calling for “transparent, data driven” budget proposals from the district.

The requests for information tie into concerns some committee members expressed about the overall process.

Process

Some committee members said the process felt designed to steer them toward the budget cuts supported by district administrators, which called for multiple school closures, teacher cuts and subsequent increases in class size, and no cuts to district administrators.

Perry said that before the meetings even began in September, she asked for a chart comparing costs for different elementary school models, such as different school sizes, traditional classrooms, mixed-grade classrooms and Montessori classrooms. Last year’s budget cuts included the creation of mixed-grade elementary classrooms, and, in an effort to increase enrollment, the district has begun a transition from a traditional elementary to a Montessori model at New York Elementary School.

Perry said when she didn’t get that information after a second request, she sent another request asking for just a cost comparison with the Montessori model, which she also did not receive. Multiple committee members raised the possibility of different education models or grade arrangements during meetings, and Perry said the lack of data and substantive discussion showed her the district’s focus was on controlling the process.

“And so for me I think it’s kind of an issue of the district being a lot more intent on controlling the message than actually trying to collaboratively problem solve,” Perry said.

Once the meetings began, committee members were directed to put their questions, comments and suggestions on a “parking lot” — a large paper pad where members could place sticky notes. While responses were ultimately provided to most of those questions and comments, Clogston said suggestions outside the district’s proposal did not get their due consideration by the committee.

“We were always told put it on the parking lot, and we never revisited the parking lot issues,” Clogston said.

The committee’s budget reduction scenario was based on a group activity in January where the committee, working from a list of options the school district provided, created a scenario that added or took away from district administrators’ proposed budget reduction package. Some of the groups decided to add options that did not come from the district’s list. After each group created their scenario, committee members voted using stickers for the proposals they supported most as a whole. The solar/renewable energy suggestion was the only item in the committee’s 10-item budget scenario that did not come from the district’s list.

A budget reduction package proposed by district administration, at left, is pictured alongside directions for an activity for the Futures Planning Committee.

Johannes said that by design the activity steered the committee toward the budget cuts put forward by the district and that the process allowed for limited discussion. She said if she had known that activity would become the basis for the committee’s recommendation, she would have come more prepared.

“Whatever had the most stickers, that was the budget package,” Johannes said. “And we didn’t go back and say, oh, there was a promising idea from this one, or a promising idea from that one.”

After requests for more open dialogue, a group discussion was held at the committee’s Feb. 2 meeting, two weeks before the committee had to finalize its recommendation. In the two minutes each member was given to speak, some expressed dissatisfaction with the process, while others indicated they were OK with the format, or that they came into the process ready to make the difficult choices about closing schools.

As the Journal-World reported earlier this month, discussion about alternatives beyond the 10 cuts ended up taking place in email exchanges, and a group of committee members compiled a list of other possible cuts based on those conversations. The group sent the list — which also included estimated savings for the various cuts — to district administrators and committee members with a request to discuss those options as a group at the committee’s last meeting, but that discussion did not occur.

Some of those alternatives were ultimately provided to the school board in the form of comments attached to the 10-item budget reduction list, but Clogston said that format lacked transparency and the necessary level of detail.

The final recommendation included what percentage of the committee supported each item and a summarized list of “qualitative comments.” A note on the list states some comments were made more than once, but the list does not indicate how many times each comment was made or whether the comment came from an administrator, teacher, staff member, parent or community member. Clogston said a simple count in parentheses would have shown how strongly the committee as a whole felt about the various items.

“Our qualitative comments were combined and then given one presence,” Clogston said. “What if 30 of us made the same comment? Shouldn’t that bear some weight versus one comment from one person?”

The comments were varied and contradictory, including a comment that two or three administrators should be cut and another that the district should not consider cutting more than one. Other comments proposed that the district consider a salary reduction for district administrators; not provide administrators a pay raise in the upcoming year; or tie all staffing levels, including district administrators, to student enrollment. Some comments called for considering grade centers or other educational structures instead of school closures, while another said the district should consider closing even more elementary schools.

Kimball said the process met the standard she was hoping for when the board approved the committee, and that she thought it was reasonable considering the committee’s size and the objective of education and input.

“When you are working with a group of 35 to 40 people, not everybody is going to like everything about all the pieces of that process, but from the big picture it seemed to be a reasonable process that made sense,” Kimball said.

Regarding the alternative budget suggestions that some felt did not get enough consideration, Kimball said the district has been dealing with budget issues for years, and she thought there was an incorrect assumption that the district had not already reviewed some of those ideas. She added that the additional comments provided by committee members would be considered as the district continued budget discussions this year and in years to come.

Emerson said that she’d had hope in “the very expensive process” of hiring the consultant and having the facilitated discussions, and that while she thought it followed the outline requested, she was disappointed in how it played out. She added that she saw the results as one piece of the board’s overall consideration.

“This has been a discussion that as a district we have been talking about pretty actively for three years now, so this should not be the only data point that we’re looking at,” Emerson said. “But I think we can all say that the outcome of this process was disappointing in a lot of different ways, but again we still have to move forward with our decisions.”

Equity

There was another component some committee members felt was not duly considered — equity issues related to the proposed budget cuts.

An activity to analyze the equity impact of the 10 budget reductions was the last action taken by the committee in its final meeting, completed after members voted individually on the reductions and provided their additional comments. The committee was broken into groups of four or five, and each group analyzed one of the proposed reductions. Some committee members expressed concern that the results were based on the opinions of those four or five people rather than the committee as a whole. They also noted that the equity review was conducted on closing an elementary or middle school in general, as opposed to looking at specific schools.

Erickson said she wanted the limitations of the activity to be understood, and that she thinks the considerations would be different if specific schools had been reviewed because closing a school with more low-income families or more students with behavior issues, for example, would present additional challenges.

“I need the board to understand the limited scope that the equity tool was used,” Erickson said. “It was less than 30 minutes and one table got one line item and there wasn’t any instruction or real learning to make sure we are examining our personal bias and our personal privilege.”

Clogston said she felt the equity review “checked a box,” but was not thorough and did not represent the committee as a whole.

“Again, I felt like it was a checklist,” she said. “We discussed equity: check, we let the committee vote: check. It really wasn’t a true meaningful discussion on any of it and as a group.”

When the committee’s budget scenario was provided to the school board on Feb. 21, some board members asked about its format. Cynthia Johnson, the district’s executive director of inclusion, engagement and belonging, said that had the whole committee evaluated each option, it would have taken three or four hours. Multiple board members requested an equity review be completed for the specific schools administrators put forward for possible closures.

Kimball said she expected to see equity considerations for the closures and ways to mitigate concerns, though she recognized that may differ from what some committee members want.

“What are the ways that we can address those equity concerns?” Kimball said. “And that’s different than the committee doing an equity evaluation on each building and saying you must not close this building because of this, you must not close this building because of that.”

Emerson said she was also hopeful that the board would receive additional equity information, and that plans to help mitigate negative impacts on teachers’ working environment were a high priority for her.

“I am hopeful that we do have additional information on a variety of different points,” Emerson said. “Not just what are we doing, but why are we doing it and how is this in the best interest of our district.”

Lawrence schools Superintendent Anthony Lewis released his recommendation to consider closing Broken Arrow, Pinckney and Woodlawn elementaries and repurpose Liberty Memorial Central Middle School on Friday. The board will vote regarding which budget cuts to pursue, including whether to conduct public hearings regarding specific school closures, on Monday. The board will not vote on whether to close specific schools until after the public hearings are held.