photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

The Lawrence school district offices building, located at 110 McDonald Dr., is pictured in May 2025.

The Lawrence school district is looking to gain feedback this winter on its strategic plan and how its efforts are affecting students, staff and families.

In the 2024-2025 school year, the district held multiple community conversations and asked people to participate in a survey to engage hundreds of staff and community members. The purpose of the feedback was to understand what the district is doing well, where it needs to improve and what the priorities should be moving forward.

As the Journal-World reported, respondents frequently called for stronger safety measures and stricter enforcement of discipline, alongside criticism of administrative transparency, accountability and spending, with many urging that resources be shifted from district offices to classrooms and teacher pay. Instructional concerns included overcrowded classrooms, uneven academic rigor and the overuse of electronic devices, with general support for limiting noneducational cellphone use. Families also emphasized the need for clearer, quicker communication from the district.

At the same time, the community praised the dedication of teachers and staff, inclusion efforts and extracurricular and career readiness programs, and expressed hope that the feedback would lead to concrete improvements through planning.

Since the public feedback and establishing the district’s strategic plan, district staff have made several efforts to tackle some of the public’s concerns. For example, in December 2024, the district implemented a ban on cellphones during instructional time in high school classrooms.

Superintendent Jeanice Kerr Swift has also been working on reducing the number of positions in the district, including administrative positions, as the Journal-World reported. In December 2025, Swift announced that as a part of this work, eight positions in the administrator group were eliminated within the last 14 months. Now, there are 24 administrative positions.

Board members have said they are continuing to look for opportunities to increase pay to staff and teachers. While board members did not approve the pay increases the teachers union wanted for its education support professionals for the 2025-2026 school year, board member Kelly Jones said she hoped to see future increases and wants to see plans to get education support professionals to a livable wage in 2026-2027. The board approved an increase in their base hourly wages by $1 for the 2025-2026 school year.

Board members also approved an increase to the salary pool for certified staff – including teachers, counselors, librarians and other education specialists – which increased by 3.162%, or about $1.6 million for the 2025-2026 school year. Administrative staff received a 3% increase to the salary pool for the 2025-2026 school year, a total increase of $194,258.

When elementary class sizes were discussed in December 2025, board member Shannon Kimball said that while there were some larger classrooms, this was the best that the elementary class sizes had looked in years.

To improve communication, the district implemented ParentSquare – a school-to-home communication platform – during the 2025-2026 school year. It acts as a central hub for all school, classroom and group communications and enables parents to interact with teachers and staff.

In January and February, the district will be launching more community conversations to check back in on the progress, share updates and hear about how the work is showing up in the experience of students, staff and families.

Three different surveys are available for people to submit input to the district. The district is encouraging community members to pick the survey(s) that work best for them:

• A traditional survey, which will give people the opportunity to share detailed feedback on how the schools are doing well and what to focus on next. This survey will take about 15 minutes to complete. Take this survey at https://survey.sogolytics.com/survey/form?k=SsSRYVWRsRRsPsPsP&lang=0.

• A quick “pulse” survey, which is for people who are short on time. This survey will take around 5 minutes and give people enough time to share their perspective with a few key questions. Take this survey at https://survey.sogolytics.com/survey/form?k=SsSRYVWRsQXsPsPsP&lang=0.

• A set of open-ended questions, which will give people the chance to share more ideas if they weren’t covered in the other surveys. People can share their general thoughts by responding to three open-ended questions. Fill out those questions at https://survey.sogolytics.com/survey/form?k=SsSRYVWRsRQsPsPsP&lang=0.

Four community engagement events are also scheduled in January and February. These will be hosted at district sites across Lawrence:

• Wednesday, Jan. 28, at 6 p.m. – Educational Support Center, 110 McDonald Drive.

• Thursday, Feb. 5, at 6 p.m. – Hillcrest Elementary School, 1045 Hilltop Drive.

• Tuesday, Feb. 10, at 5:30 p.m. – Woodlawn Elementary School, 508 Elm St.

• Tuesday, Feb. 17, at 6 p.m. – Billy Mills Middle School, 2734 Louisiana St.