For the Lawrence school district teachers union, administrators’ plan to nix early dismissal for middle and high school students for the rest of the year represented a bigger problem.
“This really does feel like — basically twice in a year, a decision gets made that kind of affects the master agreement that’s kind of made and made publicly,” said Joshua Spradlin, negotiations co-chair for LEA.
But a negotiations meeting Friday between the teachers union, the Lawrence Education Association, and district administrators only sought to address the immediate issue of how to make up inclement weather days.
Schools must meet a certain number of instructional hours per year in order to meet state minimums. With four inclement weather days in January, students in all grades will need to attend on April 15, which was the makeup day built into the calendar. But the district’s middle schools and high schools will still need to make up additional time.
Update:
• Transparency concerns loom at Lawrence school board meeting; district will follow new plan to make up snow days, March 8, 2024
The district announced Thursday that secondary students would not be dismissed early on Wednesdays for the remainder of the year. The plan immediately raised concerns for members of the teachers union, students and families.
School board President Kelly Jones began the conversation asking how many days would have to be added to the end of the year to resolve the issue. The district wanted to avoid that because “with the Memorial Day holiday, concerns include previous plans made by staff and school families, student attendance, and the availability of substitutes,” district spokesperson Julie Boyle wrote in an email about the plan.
“The board recognizes that we might have some absences,” Jones said.
District staff members said it was also complicated because the two high schools have different schedules and different numbers of minutes per day.
Administrators, school board members on the negotiations committee, and members of LEA ultimately came to a tentative agreement:
• Wednesdays will remain early dismissal days for all students, elementary and secondary.
• Middle and high school students will instead attend a full week, Monday through Friday, for the final week of school, May 20-24. Middle schools will release students at 11:30 a.m. on the last Friday, May 24.
• Middle schools will start five minutes earlier, at 8:10 a.m., every day for the rest of the year.
• Free State High School will add six minutes to the end of each school day for the rest of the year, including on Wednesdays.
Teachers will then be able to return the Tuesday or Wednesday after Memorial Day if they need to clean out their classrooms. They have the option of checking out on Friday, May 24.
Lawrence High School does not need to add six minutes to each day in order to meet the state minimum. Free State has released students 15 minutes earlier on Wednesdays than LHS. Without the changes, middle schools were short about 17.5 hours; Free State was short about 21 hours; and LHS was short about 13.5 hours.
LEA members and administrators agreed that the plan would meet the state requirements and remain within the contract between the union and the district.
Decision timeline
Earlier in the meeting, Kristen Ryan, executive director of human resources, walked through a timeline of how the decision was made. Initial plans were to add a few minutes to each day; the district then learned from a state auditor that it would not meet the required instructional minutes.
Parent-teacher conferences, which the district calls “Hopes and Dreams” meetings, held before the school year begins did not qualify as time that could count as part of the school term, according to the auditor.
“The auditor had questions about, ‘How can we talk about the progress of students before school started? They have not been in the classroom yet, so how can we talk about their progress?’” Ryan said.
Administrators communicated that issue to principals on Tuesday, Ryan said, and the auditor approved the schedule change that would have eliminated Wednesday early dismissal for the rest of the year Wednesday afternoon. LEA negotiations co-chairs were notified after that.
Ryan said the district had to meet expectations of the state auditor, and they were not able to go through the interest-based bargaining process with the union.
Jones said Superintendent Anthony Lewis called her to let her know about the schedule change around 5 p.m. Tuesday. She told board Vice President Bob Byers, “and we let other board members know,” she said.
Spradlin said he’d heard feedback from colleagues about the decision being made that violates the master agreement with no notification.
At the end of the meeting, Ryan said the district would need to submit the revised plan to the auditor for approval.
Jones said she planned to hold a brief school board meeting at 4:15 p.m. Friday to update the board on the situation. That meeting had not been formally announced and no agenda was available as of 1:45 p.m. Friday.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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