Lawrence High School journalism leaders on Wednesday asked candidates running for school board about student bonds with teachers amid turnover and supporting students’ mental health needs.
All candidates who are actively running for board seats attended the LHS Student Voices at the Center forum.
Two candidates, Shannon Kimball and Ariel Miner, are running for a two-year term. That position will fill the final two years of the unexpired term of a board member who resigned in 2022. Voters can only vote for one of the two on their ballots.
Candidates running for the four four-year terms include Carole Cadue-Blackwood, Anne Costello, Yolanda Franklin, GR Gordon-Ross, Edward Gonzales, Jody Meyer, Brandon Moore and Rachel Stumblingbear. Voters will be able to vote for up to four of those candidates on their ballots.
The forum was moderated by editors-in-chief in the Lawrence High journalism program Natasha Torkzaban and Maya Smith. It was livestreamed on YouTube by the students’ colleagues in Room 308 Productions.
Classroom bonds despite turnover
Torkzaban asked candidates, “The lack of stability of classroom bonds has been a struggle with keeping students involved and interested in school. Those bonds are often built by experienced teachers who build relationships with students and colleagues over years, but higher turnover in some of our buildings has made it more difficult to create that foundation for students.
“How do you plan to support schools in keeping good teachers and support staff in place for long term?”
Gonzales said the district must first acknowledge that there’s a problem and allow teachers to have their voices heard at the board meetings. Secondly, he said the district is top-heavy, and he would like to evaluate administrators who are paid more than $100,000 annually and redistribute those funds.
Meyer said there are teachers who have left because of limited money for raises, but quality of work life is essential. Issues such as losing plan time and being asked to do things outside of their contracts have driven people out. She said sometimes it’s the intangibles that drive people away or keep people around, and the district needs to focus on making going to school a pleasant experience.
Moore said he’s been blessed to have good teams in the restaurants he’s managed, and employees need to feel important, understood, energized and supported. He said board members should be out talking to teachers and students individually, as he said he does if there are culture issues in one of his restaurants.
Stumblingbear said she agreed that the district needs to talk with teachers and staff as well as families and students to find out the barriers they’re experiencing and how to improve communication. She said it all comes back to communication and building a supportive work culture.
Kimball said she has made it a practice to regularly communicate with staff, parents, and students when appropriate, and that she uses data from informal interactions to help inform how she interprets information that’s provided to the board, such as staff survey data. She said the board has worked hard to make progress on the issue of wages, and some of the budget work has allowed the district to bring back some contingency positions to help ease up large class sizes.
Miner said it’s been heartbreaking to talk to teachers who don’t want to leave but “could not take it any longer,” and “I think there’s some serious, serious problems with leadership that we just gloss over, and it’s not going to get better until we get honest about it.”
Cadue-Blackwood said the district needs to listen more and be intentional about listening to teachers, going out to meet them where they are, but also to have a robust conversation about boundaries to work toward smaller classes because the district is losing some of its best educators to neighboring districts.
Costello said the district needs to look at tackling difficult working conditions for teachers, and that teachers need to feel that they can speak up without repercussions. She also wants to find out what is working to make teachers who are satisfied working in the district stick around and not feel like they need to quit and go somewhere else. “What are those factors, and how can we take that capture it and then spread it?” she said.
Franklin said she agreed with what other candidates had said. She said she had the best science teacher in high school, and that she had created a bond with him. Now at age 49, she still has a bond with that teacher. She said forming those bonds is going to help keep teachers because they will feel like they’re actually reaching students to be able to teach them, she said.
Gordon-Ross mentioned when a few years ago, the district surveyed students about which specific adults they trust in buildings. The district then asked the adults whose names came up frequently what they did to help build those bonds. He said he thinks the district needs to do that again. He also said the district should look at meaningful professional development that is worth staff’s time to attend, and ask staff for their expertise when there are problems to solve.
Anxiety, depression
Smith asked candidates: “Students in our district are struggling with the lingering impacts of COVID as well as school closures and a documented increase in anxiety and depression. What could be better done to meet students’ mental health needs?”
Costello said she thinks the district needs better support for student and staff mental health, and if money were no object, she would want more social workers in buildings. Absent that, she said teachers have to kind of play those roles as counselors, but the relationships teachers build with their students can make sure kids know they have a caring adult.
Franklin said she watched her grandson be upset because he thought his behavior was the reason he couldn’t go back to Broken Arrow Elementary, one of the two schools the board voted to close after last school year. She said the district should make free mental health services available to kids and teachers. “We have to also be an open and willing district, you know, to tackle this main issue that’s affecting a lot of our students,” she said.
Gordon-Ross said he thinks continuing to support and fund programs such as the WRAP (Wellness, Resources, Access and Prevention) program, which places Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center staff members in schools. He said he thinks the district will also see benefits over time of CharacterStrong, the new social-emotional learning curriculum, and that they need to allocate resources where they’re needed most.
Gonzales said none of the candidates could imagine what the students went through when COVID-19 suddenly shut down schools because they didn’t have that experience at that age, but he said the district needs students to be able to voice what they need.
Meyer said she thinks the district should focus on outreach to families. She said school counselors and school psychologists are a good tool, but they are not therapists. They’re not the ones who can help after hours, and the district needs to engage parents and caregivers to get kids the help they need for a more holistic approach.
Moore said the cost to provide mental health care for all teachers and students makes the idea unrealistic, but that the district needs to help people find the help they need. He also said he thinks the district needs to do a better job of teaching how to manage mental health issues.
Stumblingbear said that’s part of the point of CharacterStrong — to embed social-emotional learning into the curriculum. She said she thinks it’s wonderful that students of this generation understand mental health, and that we need to normalize that it’s OK to say you’re not OK. She said no one should tell anyone that how they’re feeling is wrong or that they need to “suck it up or get over it.”
Kimball said she is concerned about how legislative conversations at the state level are impacting LGBTQ+ youth, and as a district, “we need to be setting the tone that we are going to be there to support and protect all of our students.” She also said the district has been working to add more programs and options, such as the College and Career Center, for students who don’t do well in traditional high school settings.
Miner said she thinks the pandemic exacerbated a lot of issues that already existed. She said she thinks there are also a lot of undiagnosed issues and that we have to talk to each other more. She said she would look for creative solutions.
Cadue-Blackwood, who is a licensed social worker, said she would like to see the district build on what it already has and promote mental health first aid training for everybody. “We don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” she said.
Read the Lawrence High School student newspaper, The Budget, online at lhsbudget.com.
The general election is coming up Tuesday, Nov. 7.
Meet the candidates and find out how to request a mail ballot, where to vote in person and more via our election page, lawrencekstimes.com/election2023. Advance voting began Wednesday.
Read about other candidate forums:
Note: Natasha Torkzaban has freelanced for The Lawrence Times.
This article has been corrected to update the new name of the WRAP program.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark (at) lawrencekstimes (dot) com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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