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FRIDAY • APRIL 25 • 2014
Hoping to change some hearts
TEACHERS
Group mulls legal challenge to tenure law ———
Union officials suggest property right is at stake; lawmakers say measure will stand up in court
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Street paper a longtime labor of love
By Peter Hancock phancock@ljworld.com
By Giles Bruce Twitter: @GilesBruce
Craig Sweets’ first experience with the homeless came when he was a student at Boston University in the early 1990s. He was walking down the street when he saw a family sitting by a heat grate, trying to stay warm. “It was a cold night, a snowy night,” Sweets said. “I felt moved to do something for them.” He brought them food that evening, but what that experience inspired him to do later, in his hometown of Lawrence, may have had an even greater impact. Sweets is the editor of Change of Heart, a Lawrence street newspaper founded in 1997 to raise awareness about issues facing the local homeless population. Its vendors, and many of its contributors, are home-
Officials at the state’s largest teachers union say the battle over tenure rights is far from over, and it may eventually have to be settled in court. At issue, according to the Kansas National Education Association, You is whether don’t tenure protection is a attract form of prop- teachers erty right and to teach whether the L e g i s l a t u r e in Kansas has authority by removto take away ing tenure. I’m sure we a property right that cur- will hear more in the rent veteran future.” teachers already have — Lawrence School Board earned. President Rick Ingram “We are looking at challenges on a variety of levels and that is one of them, whether the Legislature can, by fiat, take away an earned property right,” said Mark Disetti, director of legislative and political advocacy for the union. Such a challenge, however, would only
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Mike Yoder/Journal-World Photo
CRAIG SWEETS HAS EDITED the local street newspaper Change of Heart for 17 years to both help the homeless and to change people’s perceptions of the homeless. Lawanna Crow, who lives at the Lawrence Community Shelter, is one of the vendors.
less themselves and make money through their participation. The newspaper, which just released its spring issue, features news about local and national
homeless issues, as well as poetry, essays and art. A few years after the incident in Boston, Sweets went to see national homeless advocate
Michael Stoops speak on the Kansas University campus. During a conversation afterward, Stoops
Please see TEACHERS, page 2A
Please see HEARTS, page 2A
School district having kickoff celebration for bond issue projects By Peter Hancock phancock@ljworld.com
Lawrence school district officials will host a kickoff celebration Saturday to mark the start of districtwide construction and renovation projects that are being funded with the recent $92.5 million bond issue. Of that money, $84.1 million is going toward renovations and expansions
at the district’s 14 elementary sidering, then rejecting, earlier schools and two high schools. proposals to close and consoliThe package also includes condate some of the older elemenstruction of a new College and tary schools in central and east Career Center for vocational Lawrence. and technical education, which Voters approved the bond is scheduled to open in 2015 near SCHOOLS proposal, 72 percent to 28 per31st Street and Haskell Avenue. cent. The Lawrence school board put the Much of the construction money bond issue on the ballot in the April will focus on the older buildings in 2013 municipal election after first con- central and east Lawrence to bring
INSIDE
Sunny, warmer Business Classified Comics Deaths
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those facilities up to the same standards as the newer buildings and to expand some buildings in order to eliminate the use of mobile buildings as temporary classrooms. Some construction and renovation are also planned at Lawrence High School and Free State High School. The kickoff event begins at 10 a.m. Saturday at Sunset Hill Elementary, 901 Schwarz Road.
Vol.156/No.114 34 pages
Water forum Lawrence-area residents shared views on the long-term future of water in Kansas at a public forum. Page 3A
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