photo by: Matt Resnick/Journal-World

Superintendent Anthony Lewis delivers his "State of the Schools" speech on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023 at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School.

In his first “State of the Schools” speech on Tuesday night, Lawrence Superintendent Anthony Lewis touted improvements in students’ performance and staff wages, but also said that district leaders had to make “tough decisions” over the past year to make the district’s finances work.

The address, which was intended to give the public an update on the district’s accomplishments in the past year, drew about 75 people to Liberty Memorial Central Middle School’s auditorium. And while Lewis did talk about state assessment scores and rising graduation rates, he also acknowledged some of the big challenges over the past several years — the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent budget cuts that drove the district to close Pinckney and Broken Arrow elementary schools.

“With COVID-19 and budget cuts, we have been through a lot together,” Lewis said.

Lewis told the audience that he “cannot stand before them without acknowledging the budget constraints that have certainly tested our resolve.” In addition to the school closures, the district eliminated 48 secondary teaching positions this year.

But because of “savings from the cuts and closures,” Lewis said, the district was able to allocate more than $6 million toward faculty and staff raises for the 2023-24 school year. He said the district had long needed to raise pay to recruit and retain staff.

“To put that in perspective, the year before we invested $1.7 million into staff wages,” he said, calling the raises “historic” and saying that “the likes of this had not been done in close to two decades.”

One challenge that Lewis’ address didn’t focus on was the district’s declining enrollment. As the Journal-World has reported, the school district’s initial headcount this year showed a decline of nearly 300 students since last year, which was roughly the amount a consulting firm had predicted the district would lose over five years.

However, while the number of students enrolled in the district might not have been the focus of Lewis’ speech, the numbers of students graduating and scoring on grade level on their assessments certainly were.

Lewis said that the district’s graduation rate increased by 5% over the past year compared to a statewide average increase of 1%.

“It was our highest graduation rate in 16 years,” he said, adding that he’d also seen the district “closing gaps” in graduation rates for minority groups.

The state assessment scores for students in third through eighth grades and 10th grade were more academic good news, Lewis said. He shared statistics for those grades in English language arts, where 69% of those students scored at grade level or above, and math, where 68% were at or above grade level.

Those scores are important because “about 94% of students who score (on grade level) go on to graduate high school,” Lewis said. He said that “more work still needs to be done” to get those proficiency rates even higher.

Lewis also took the opportunity to tout the district’s long-term strategic plan, which he said would help ensure that “students of all races, backgrounds and abilities, achieve at high levels, graduate on time, and are well-prepared for success in college and careers.”

Part of that work involves diversity and equity efforts, and he said the district still needed to improve at “recruiting more staff of color.”

“You can see the demographic makeup of our schools” in terms of students, Lewis said as he presented the racial and ethnic demographic data. He said about 35% of the district’s students were people of color, and that the district should have the same kind of diversity at all levels of its staff.

“This is something that I think should be reflected from the boardroom all the way down to the classroom,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to show that the enrollment headcount is an initial headcount.