GAME ON
the practice field. to rn tu re es et hl at High school Sports, 1D
Bangkok bomb kills 18, injures more than 100. 1B
L A W R E NC E
Journal-World
®
$1.00
LJWorld.com
TUESDAY • AUGUST 18 • 2015
‘It’s the human element that drives this school’
Ex-mayor faced legal troubles as candidate ——
Jeremy Farmer failed to disclose tax issues during run for city seat By Chad Lawhorn Twitter: @clawhorn_ljw
Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo
LAWRENCE VIRTUAL SCHOOL SIXTH- THROUGH EIGHTH-GRADE TEACHERS POSE as Amy Mispagel, also a Virtual School teacher, shoots a group photo on Monday at the school, 1104 East 1000 Road, south of Lawrence. In addition to the group photos, educators for the school, who come from all over the state, were present Monday for training exercises with regard for the curriculum and also communication exercises to assist students in ways other than in-person communication. The school recently was granted NCAA accreditation, the first such school in the state to earn the designation.
Lawrence Virtual School becomes first in state to gain NCAA accreditation By Rochelle Valverde Twitter: @RochelleVerde
The Lawrence Virtual School has been granted NCAA accreditation, making it the only NCAA accredited virtual school in the state of Kansas and one of only a few in the Midwest. The accreditation, while most directly benefiting student-athletes, has much broader implications about the level of education offered to students through LVS, said Keith Wilson, the school’s principal. “It definitely sends a message to everybody that this school is the quality we are looking for and that we expect,” said Wilson, who
“
What Lawrence Virtual School offers is great flexibility for our families, but it doesn’t provide freedom from responsibility and accountability.” — Keith Wilson, the principal of Lawrence Virtual School learned about the accreditation late last week. The comprehensive review, which took a year and a half, involved review of the school curriculum, student expectations and the level of teacher involvement, Wilson said. “It’s a great compliment to the work that the staff and the district are doing,” Wilson said, noting that it is the same review a brick-andmortar school would undergo. “It involved thousands of
pages of documents that exemplify what we do and how we do it.” The Lawrence school district took over full control of all grades of the virtual school in early 2014, marking this school year as the second year in which district employees will teach all courses at the school. The change stemmed in part from concerns over low graduation rates from Lawrence Virtual High School, which was previously
under the management of a for-profit company. One of the key components involved in the NCAA accreditation was verifying that LVS has a process for monitoring student progress, Wilson said. Students in LVS have regular due dates, quizzes and tests, and much of their work is graded by their teachers. “What Lawrence Virtual School offers is great flexibility for our families, but it doesn’t provide freedom from responsibility and accountability,” Wilson said. Another component reviewed for the NCAA accreditation was teacher engagement, to ensure that the student is not learning in isolation, Wilson said.
Twitter: @saramarieshep
A group of state university faculty members says Art Hall is not one of them but rather an administrator, so — at least at Kansas University — he’s not entitled to academic freedom to hide his emails. The Kansas Conference of the American Association of University Professors states its position in an amicus brief in the case of Art Hall v. the University of Kansas. Hall is a lecturer and director of the Center for Applied Economics in the KU School
of Business. He previously was chief economist for the Public Sector Group of Koch Industries Inc. “There are some ranks of administrators Hall who hold no academic status, are neither tenured nor tenuretrack faculty, and have neither been nor are ever expected to be vetted by academic peers,” the Kansas AAUP’s brief says. “...it is abundantly clear that he (Hall) is an administrator and not a rank-and-file faculty member.”
After a KU student organization called Students for a Sustainable Future and its president, Schuyler Kraus, filed an Barrett-Gonzalez open records request for Hall’s email correspondence, among other documents, Hall sued KU in late 2014 to temporarily block the university from releasing the records. It’s now up to the court to decide whether the records should be public. The case is set for trial in November.
Please see FARMER, page 6A
Commission to consider sponsorship for Sports Pavilion By Peter Hancock Twitter: @LJWpqhancock
Please see SCHOOL, page 2A
Group says KU lecturer not entitled to academic freedom By Sara Shepherd
During his 2013 campaign for the Lawrence City Commission, Jeremy Farmer failed to disclose that officials in Arkansas were taking legal action against him to pay nearly $2,200 in past due income taxes. Court records from Garland County, Ark., show the state filed a tax lien against Farmer and his now ex-wife in March of 2012, which was about 10 months before Farmer Farmer filed for a seat on the Lawrence City Commission. The records show the $2,190.20 tax lien wasn’t paid off until March 18, 2013, which was just weeks before voters elected him to one of five seats on the Lawrence City Commission.
In higher education, the American Association of University Professors is generally considered the last word on academic freedom. In short, the association’s stance is that teachers must remain free to discuss, teach and research in their respective subject areas free from institutional censorship. Ron Barrett-Gonzalez, KU aerospace engineering professor and immediate past president of the Kansas AUUP, said even though Hall does teach classes, he is different from faculty and Please see HALL, page 2A
Lawrence Memorial Hospital is proposing to pay the city $100,000 per year to be a “presenting sponsor” of Sports Pavilion Lawrence, the city-owned recreation center in the Rock Chalk Park complex, and to lease space in the facility where it can offer a variety of fitness, health and wellness programs. Those items are part of a lengthy CITY agenda for today’s COMMISSION City Commission meeting that will begin with the selection of a new mayor and discussion of how the commission plans to fill the vacant seat created by last week’s resignation of former Mayor Jeremy Farmer. Please see PAVILION, page 4A l Cultural plan to be presented
to city leaders tonight. Page 3A
INSIDE
Afternoon storm Business Classified Comics Deaths
High: 77
Low: 57
Today’s forecast, page 6A
2A 5D-10D 4C 2A
Events listings Horoscope Opinion Puzzles
2A, 2D Sports 1D-4D 3C Television 6A, 3C, 2D 5A USA Today 1B-8B 3C WellCommons 1C-2C
Join us at Facebook.com/LJWorld and Twitter.com/LJWorld
A different take Meet Bishop Seabury Academy senior Gabe Magee, the newest teen co-author of the Double Take advice column. In WellCommons, 1C
Vol.157/No.230 28 pages