Post updated at 6:53 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 12:
Eight Lawrence middle and high schoolers spent Saturday afternoon dancing, learning and playing games in preparation for a trip to Hiratsuka, Japan this summer.
Hiratsuka is one of Lawrence’s four sister cities and the two cities have participated in a youth exchange for decades. This year is the 35th anniversary of the cities’ partnership.
In past years, the number of traveling students was closer to 20. But it has been harder to get applications since COVID-19 because of the district prohibiting advertising in schools and price increases, said Katie Trumble, one of the trip’s chaperones.
Trumble was first exposed to the Sister Cities Lawrence exchange trips when she was a high schooler thanks to promotion on the daily announcements and flyers on the walls. But she said the program has been told by the district it is no longer allowed to advertise in schools.

The sister city trip is not school-sponsored, but Trumble said the opportunities for students are valuable to their education.
“Sister Cities Lawrence is a very well rounded program and I don’t want to see it fade away with less and less students each year,” Trumble said. “I’d like to get back to having 20 kids each year. It’s too bad. It’s sad, disappointing, really, that we can’t advertise it to the kids that this trip is cool.”
District spokesperson Julie Boyle said outside organizations are allowed to place flyers about activities in “community information areas,” which are public areas maintained by building administrators.
“We do not disseminate nonschool-related materials directly to staff, students, or parents,” she said. “We also do not have direct oversight or knowledge of nonschool-related activities, so we must consistently exercise our due diligence in this way.”
Boyle said a representative of the trip contacted the district in the fall, and the district provided information about the program in the staff e-newsletter.
“We encourage interested families to educate themselves, evaluate, and take advantage of, as they are able, community opportunities they find appropriate to enrich their child’s education,” she said. “Unfortunately, our schools are unable to use our limited instructional time for teachers and staff to distribute nonschool-related marketing materials.”
James Hilliard is the chairperson for the Hiratsuka section of the sister city board. He said the partnership offers a valuable chance for students to learn about Japanese culture and language, especially since it is not taught in Lawrence schools.
He said for years, the program had an unofficial relationship with the district and would take traveling students to school board meetings.
The trip costs around $3,000, but Hilliard said they use scholarships to ensure the trip is accessible to anyone.
“We make the trip affordable to any kid we feel like is really going to be a great representative to our schools,” he said. “We make sure that they can go regardless; we don’t discriminate because you don’t have the money.”
Hiratsuka has the longest-running relationship of Lawrence’s four sister cities. The partnership was formed in the late 1980s, with the first official delegations travelling between the two cities in 1990.
The eight students spent Saturday learning about Japanese culture during the first of multiple monthly meetings that will prepare them for their trip, coming up in late June.
West Middle School eighth grader Adelaide Boedeker said she hopes to travel in her future career and is excited to learn about a new culture and make new friends.

“I just really love meeting new people and I’m very much like an extroverted person, but just seeing how people can be different but still be friends,” Boedeker said.
Lawrence High School junior Juliet Outka said the trip offers a unique chance to learn by immersion in a new country.
“There’s only so far you can go with, like, presentations and writing papers and things like that,” she said. “So being able to actually go into another culture that’s not Western, I think it really can be eye-opening.”
Lawrence’s three other sister cities are Eutin, Germany; Iniades, Greece; and most recently, Tocopilla, Chile.
Find more information at sistercitieslawrence.org.

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Cuyler Dunn (he/him), a contributor to The Lawrence Times since April 2022, is a student at the University of Kansas School of Journalism. He is a graduate of Lawrence High School where he was the editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper, The Budget, and was named the 2022 Kansas High School Journalist of the Year. Read his complete bio here. Read more of his work for the Times here.