About | Educate Lawrence

Educate Lawrence was created by a group of Lawrence parents from schools across the city with a shared goal of educating Lawrence citizens about legislation affecting public schools and advocating for full and fair funding to educate Lawrence children.

Early in 2012, Superintendent Rick Doll asked each school principal in the district to work with site councils to designate a parent volunteer interested in learning more about current legislation and its potential effect on Lawrence Public Schools. The parents, along with teacher representatives designated by the Lawrence Education Association, would serve on a citizen group for legislative education and advocacy.

“Community engagement is one of the school board’s goals,” Doll said. “This is an effort to keep a group of parents and teachers well-informed of school finance and other legislative issues affecting our schools, so they may build awareness and encourage advocacy among their respective school communities.”

In its first meeting in March 2012, the group learned about basics of school finance and the status of critical education funding bills under consideration in the current legislative session. The group became Educate Lawrence and quickly decided that its core purpose was to mobilize and share information with each individual school community—and eventually the broader Lawrence community—with the initial goal of convincing state lawmakers to provide more funding to school districts.

Join Educate Lawrence to get informed as we all work together to demand adequate funding for public education. This is our children’s future, our state’s future. We know Kansas can do better.