Lawrence school board to elect new leaders at Monday meeting
Lawrence school board members were set to pick new leaders Monday, while a $45,590 furniture request and a $215,000 printing item also landed on the agenda.
The Lawrence Board of Education was to vote Monday on its 2026-27 president and vice president, a vote that will help determine who sets meeting priorities, leads discussion and speaks for Lawrence Public Schools in the year ahead.
The seven-member at-large board serves without pay and is responsible for setting educational policy, approving the district budget and hiring and evaluating the superintendent. If more than one person was nominated for either leadership post, members were to vote to decide who would take the role. GR Gordon-Ross is board president for 2025-26, with Bob Byers serving as vice president after the board elected both officers on July 14, 2025. Byers was sworn in Jan. 12, 2026, after Anne Costello resigned in October 2025.
The board’s organizational meeting also included several state-required appointments, including clerk of the board, district treasurer, deputy clerk and deputy treasurer. Members were also to designate Brad Finkeldei of Stevens & Brand LLP as the district’s legal counsel for the coming school year at a rate of $150 an hour.
The agenda also included the district’s ongoing push to open Choice Campus at Centennial, the flexible high school program planned for 2145 Louisiana St. The board was to consider a $45,590 furniture quote from Circadia for the first phase of the project, covering classrooms, instructional spaces and makerspaces. A second phase for collaboration and commons areas is still being designed.
Choice Campus at Centennial has been in development for months. In September 2025, Superintendent Jeanice Swift said Lawrence was unusual for a district its size in not having a flexible high school option and said the program could help improve graduation rates. The school is expected to open in August 2026. In February and March 2026, the board weighed a renovation package budgeted at no more than $3,503,603 to bring the building into safety, code and programmatic compliance, and it later considered architectural and engineering work tied to the project.
The board was meeting at the Educational Support Center, 110 McDonald Drive, with the session listed on the district calendar for 6 to 8 p.m. Regular board meetings begin at 6 p.m. on the second and fourth Mondays of each month, are livestreamed and archived on the district’s YouTube channel, and are shown on LPS TV 26. Public comment was not part of the Monday agenda, but residents could send written comments to schoolboard@usd497.org. A board meeting was also scheduled for July 27.
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