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Sonya Thomas clings to her mother's legs, hiding from the teacher behind the desk who tries to ask for her name.

It's enrollment for new families at Langston Hughes Elementary -- one of the district's 15 elementary schools -- and second-grader Sonya isn't too confident in her new surroundings.

Her mother, Sarah, encourages her to speak up, but Sonya remains crouched and hidden behind her mother's calves.

"Her brother was shy, but never like this," Sarah said.

Sonya's brother, Michael, will be a ninth-grader at Southwest Junior High this year. After going to middle school for three years in Idaho, Michael was looking forward to high school. But in Lawrence, Kansas' only remaining district with junior highs, Michael will have to wait another year for high school.

"He was pretty bummed out when I told him about it," Sarah said. "Honestly, I didn't know schools still had ninth-graders down a level."

That may change as Lawrence once again considers a grade reconfiguration that originally popped up in 1985. Despite 24 years to discuss and research the issue, the grade argument in Lawrence still boils down to parents' unwillingness to change despite evidence that suggests moving ninth-graders into high school benefits students.

History

Moving ninth-graders into high schools started gaining popularity in Kansas in 1979.

That's when the Topeka School District became the first multi-high school district to make the move. Kansas City, Kan., and Shawnee Mission followed in 1980.

By 1990 Olathe was the only district with more than one high school that hadn't moved its ninth-graders into high school buildings.

In 1985 the Lawrence Board of Education formed a committee and started looking into the issue for its district. From September 1985 to February 1986, the Middle Level Steering Committee met more than a dozen times.

The members discussed research, visited middle level schools in other districts and debated the issues that needed attention.

The Board of Education received the Committee's recommendations and passed all but one of them unanimously. The one they held stated that it was in the best interest of the kids to move ninth-graders into high school.

"It was the most controversial of the recommendations we made," said Tom Erb, a former professor of education at the University of Kansas and a member of the committee.

The Board approved the other recommendations on March 24, 1986, but it wanted to gather input from the community before making a decision on the grade reconfiguration.

On April 13, 1986, school board member Bob Palmateer was quoted in the Lawrence Journal World, saying "we found out...they like things the way they are."

"That, to me, was an overgeneralization that didn't fit the facts," Erb said.

Erb, who came to KU in 1978 as a specialist in middle school education, wrote a letter to the editor detailing his committee's findings. It found, among other things, that the curriculum and extra-curricular activities offered at the high school level were much more beneficial to ninth-graders than those they found at junior high.

Lawrence citizens tossed the issue back-and-forth for more than a year. On July 20, 1987, the Board approved the recommendation to move ninth-graders into high school buildings.

Twenty-two years later, it still hasn't happened.

"Practically, they couldn't implement the plan for their own recommendations until they had another facility," Erb said. "And that became a political issue that took 10 years to resolve."

The Board liked the idea, but the district's lone high school, Lawrence High, couldn't accommodate an additional class. Despite housing only grades 10-12, Lawrence High's enrollment (1,832 in 1990) was often the largest in the state.

From there most of the discussion turned from middle level education to whether Lawrence really needed another high school. Proponents argued for the benefits of two, smaller high schools where kids could more easily stand out.

"To sell that, they kind of had to soft pedal the idea that ninth-graders ought to be part of the picture," Erb said. "So that proposal kind of fell by the wayside."

Now Lawrence is the only school district in Kansas, and one of the few remaining in the country, that doesn't teach its ninth-graders in its high schools.

Effects

A bulk of the discussion on grade configuration revolves around the effects it would have on the students.

"It's not that there's a right way or a wrong way," Lawrence Superintendent Rick Doll said. "It's asking 'Where does research trend?'"

Most studies in the last 30 years suggest that ninth-graders mature more quickly and would benefit from a real high school experience. Also, the studies conclude that sixth-graders are more prepared for explorative classes, which take place at the middle school level.

 

Currently, Lawrence must shuttle band and orchestra teachers around the elementary schools. If they were at middle school it would be easier to offer those courses.

These findings are evident in the near extinction of junior highs (grades 7-9) across the country. According to the National Middle School Association, the number of public junior high schools dropped 83 percent between 1970 and 2001.

Likewise, a 2001 national survey of middle and junior high principals found that only three percent favored the junior high school setting. Sixty-five percent of them said that a 6-8 middle school is the best system for adolescents.

On the other hand, Doll hears plenty of arguments from Lawrencians for keeping ninth-graders in junior high.

"They get to be kind of top dog, and that's a good place for them to mature as they prepare for the high school setting," Doll said.

Ed West, principal at Lawrence Free State High School, disagrees with that assessment. West said sophomores should be acclimated with high school and prepared to fully take-on academics and athletics. In Lawrence, though, the sophomores are new to the high school and must readjust themselves before going forward.

Lawrence resident Marcia Riley has often come out to oppose moving ninth-graders into high school. In 2000, when the issue resurfaced, she and fellow parent Margy Rose organized a group that helped deter the school board from voting on reconfiguration.

"Our children's education shouldn't be sacrificed because of money, even in a recession," Riley said. "It's important for kids to get that leadership experience in ninth grade before going into high school."

The Shawnee Mission School District implemented its K-5, 6-8, 9-12 system in the 1986-87 school year. Erb studied the kids directly affected by the reconfiguration. His study disproved the suggestion that seniors corrupt ninth-graders in a high school environment.

"What we found was that the ninth-graders were far more corruptive themselves when they were in the three-year junior high schools," Erb said.

Short-term suspensions dropped 23 percent at the ninth-grade level once they were moved to high school. Teachers who were moved from junior high to high school also noticted how much better behaved the new freshmen were compared to how they acted in junior high.

Erb and Doll also believe that because ninth-graders grades count towards their high school GPAs, the students really need a high school setting.

"That was one of the problems that the junior high teachers in Lawrence were pointing out 20 years ago," Erb said. "The ninth-graders weren't taking ninth grade seriously, because they didn't realize that the screwing up they were doing was going on their high school transcripts."

"It's a little harder to impress that upon kids when they're physically in a different building," Doll said.

Last One Standing

In 2008 the Olathe School District approved a plan to create more room at its four high schools to accommodate shifting ninth-graders up a level.

That means Lawrence has no one left to play with, literally.

While the addition of a second high school was held up largely because of Lawrence High's success on the gridiron, athletics figure into the district's equation differently now.

No other junior highs in the state means that Lawrence ninth-graders have to compete against seventh- and eighth-graders.

Money also plays a large role in this decision, especially considering the district's recent budget crisis. On the surface moving ninth-graders into high school and replacing them with sixth-graders doesn't seem like a money-saving venture. But it creates a domino effect that could help alleviate some of the district's financial concerns.

"We have lots of small elementary schools, and if you pull sixth grade out of those elementary schools you have to ask the question, 'Are there some consolidations of elementary schools that we could do?'" Doll said. "I don't know if the community wants to do that or not, but that's where the real cost-savings would come in that regard."

The district could also save money by not having to shuttle teachers from school-to-school.

When Mrs. Thomas heard that the issue had come up more than 20 years ago, she asked her daughter's future teacher why it had not been resolved.

The teacher's response: "How long do you have?"

Because of all his studies on middle school education suggest one thing, Erb still can't understand what holds Lawrence back from reconfiguration.

"That's always baffled me about this community," he said. "In many ways it's open to new ideas, and so often on the other hand there can be some of these traditions that are pretty powerful and part of the public psyche."

The Board of Education will request community input on grade configuration at its goal-setting session on Aug. 17.

While a few factors remain unknown, Doll believes that there's enough evidence in support that the board will pass it to his office for further investigation.

"You want to make the decision on what's best for the kids, but if there were some cost-savings that go along with that, that would probably move along the process a little faster," Doll said.

So, Aug. 17 will likely be the first step in a multi-year plan to finally implement the plan that originally passed the school board 22 years ago.

Of course, enough opposition to change from parents like Riley may run the issue underground once again. In Lawrence, as Mrs. Thomas will learn, you just never know.

Jeff Eden just wants people to slow down.

Eden, who lives at 2104 New Hampshire Street, has two young sons. His neighborhood grows younger by the year but he says people are overly-cautious on the sidewalks because most cars whiz by at high speeds.

As drivers encounter backed-up traffic at 23^rd and Massachusetts Streets, they often take New Hampshire as an alternate and speed down its straight-away.

"We just thought that people should feel a bit safer with so many little kids playing near the street," Eden said.

So, Eden and his neighbors signed a petition for traffic calming devices, in this case speed humps, and the Traffic Safety Commission passed it. However, they didn't know that getting it passed only put them at the end of a long line.

Traffic calming has log jammed in Lawrence. What started with a few requests turned into a movement. As requests continue to pile up, the City Commission possesses a long list of projects without any idea how to start.

History

Source: Traffic Safety Commission

Traffic calming devices, which most often include traffic calming circles or speed humps but excludes roundabouts, grew out of safety concerns. If a citizen worried that traffic rushed too quickly through their street, they could plead their case to the Traffic Safety Commission.

In 2001 Lawrence created its first traffic calming device, a partial diverter that prevented drivers from turning from Sixth Street onto Schwarz Road. The city's street division absorbed the low-cost project. Requests remained small and quiet for the first couple of years.

"We had some isolated requests here and there," Lawrence Traffic Engineer David Woosley said. "They weren't too extensive and most could be taken care of within the existing budget."

Requests became steadier in 2003, with the neighborhoods of University Place, Breezedale and Carmel Road all getting in line. But Woosley points to the extensive 2005 project along Harvard Road as the one that kick-started the calming craze in Lawrence.

"At that point we started getting more and more requests for traffic calming throughout the city," he said.

The city tore up much of Harvard Road from Wakarusa Drive to Monterey Way, placing in speed humps and traffic calming circles. A general obligations bond funded the project, which cost nearly $300,000.

Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods President Gwen Klingenberg helped propel the project.

Source: Traffic Safety Commission
This is the Traffic Calming Project Ranking System, which was enabled in 2005. A strike means it's been completed and red means it has been tabled.

"We were tired of people avoiding traffic congestion and speeding through our neighborhood," Klingenberg said. "The city's street design created the problem so we just asked them to fix it."

People most often request traffic calming devices if their street has become an escape route for cars to avoid congestion at major intersections. Neighborhoods with an abundance of children also often get together and decide that slower equals safer.

A study by the American Journal of Public Health found that kids who live within a block of a speed hump were 53-60 percent less likely to be struck by a vehicle.

"I don't think there's any problem with people wanting to feel safe," Klingenberg said.

As it became swamped with traffic calming requests in 2005, the Traffic Safety Commission decided to create a policy to judge the validity of each request.

They decided that local streets, which make up most of the city, had to meet one of three conditions while collector streets, which have higher traffic because of their proximity to popular destinations, had to meet one of four conditions.

Most requests met the policy guidelines. Thus, ranking the projects became the next major step for the Traffic Safety Commission.

"We had to come up with some plan of action as funding became available," said commission member John Ziegelmeyer. "The ranking system seemed to appease most people."

It only takes one citizen to make a request for traffic calming. The rankings, which factor in crashes, volume of cars and average speed, prioritize those requests on a points system. However, projects from as far back as 2004 remain on the list.

"The City Commission kept approving them, knowing that they didn't have any money that year and they would have to get to it some point in the future," Woosley said.

'What does 15 mean?'

When the Traffic Safety Commission put together its initial rankings in 2005, it had seven projects on the list. Four years later and the list has more than doubled. At least two more projects will likely tack on by the end of summer.

The City Commission originally expected to draw from the city budget to pay for the projects. In fact, in 2005 the commission made a special designation in the budget for traffic calming. That money evaporated quickly and the commission couldn't afford to set that money aside again in 2006.

Now it takes a stroke of luck to get a project completed.

When the Lawrence Avenue project passed in 2005 it ranked second on the list. However, the city slated the area for street and curb repair in the summer of 2008. While doing that work, contractors also placed two speed humps along the road.

"Anytime a project street is also set for repair we just kill two birds with one stone," Woosley said. "That's happened a few times in the past couple years."

But for projects that lack future plans for road work it could be a long wait. 

"I guess I didn't really think about how long it would take," Jeff Eden said. "Yeah we're in line, 15 back, but what does that really mean? What does 15 mean?"

The long wait counters the idea that the traffic calming benefits little kids in the neighborhood. The kids that parents worried about during the requests may be driving by the time it's completed.

However, that argument doesn't deter the Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods.

"Traffic calming has done a lot of good for Lawrence," Klingenberg said. "The city won't always be hurting so much financially and eventually these and more projects will get done."

On the other hand, Robin Smith doesn't mind the quasi-work stoppage in traffic calming. As a member of the Traffic Safety Commission, Smith recently voted against Eden's New Hampshire project.

"The problem I have is that too often traffic calming devices are used to slow down traffic to an unreasonable level," Smith said.

Smith proposed that the commission revisit its policy at its June meeting. At that meeting Smith hashed out that his problem isn't with the policy but the implementation of it by the Public Works Department.

Smith jabbed Woosley with a few questions about the practices of the public works staff before deciding that he was fighting a losing battle.

Likewise, Eden believed he stood on the losing end of his request.

Data collected on New Hampshire in early February failed to meet policy standards, but the committee pushed it back to March in order to include University of Kansas students. The second data collection met the requirements and the Traffic Safety Commission passed it in March.

"I didn't think, frankly, that anything would happen," Eden said. "I just thought we'd bring awareness to the neighborhood."

'Get creative'

Vice Mayor Mike Amyx can see the problems ahead in traffic calming.

When the discussion of the New Hampshire project came to the City Commission in July, Amyx laid out the issue.

"Gentlemen, one of these days we're going to have to have a discussion about funding for this," Amyx said. "We're going to end up with a back log of 25 (projects) with expectations of residents, thinking, 'It's going to be our turn.'"

The commissioners admitted they realized what waiting residents have known for years: The system, in its current state, is flawed.

Tough economic times don't have much room for extra road work. Almost every project that reaches the Traffic Safety Commission passes, but none have ever had a plan for funding.

Designated money in the budget only lasted one year and the budget hasn't gotten any bigger since then.

"People care about the calming, not the approach," Mayor Robert Chestnut said. "We may need to take a more comprehensive approach and maybe we can get at a bunch of these if we just get creative."

The City Commission set a future agenda item to discuss the possible ways to fund traffic calming. Suggestions included researching different technologies for creating the devices or somehow packaging them together.

Woosley believes that item No. 6 on the traffic calming policy will become the focus of discussions. It states that the City Commission "may require 0-100% of the costs to be paid by the group of neighborhood making the request."

The City Commission first brought up this idea in 2005 to test how much people really cared about traffic calming. No neighborhood in Lawrence has ever been asked to fund a traffic calming device, but that could soon change.

Eden said he's confident the New Hampshire neighborhood would fund whatever percentage the city asked.

While completion dates and funding remain completely unknown, one thing is clear; the desire for these devices isn't going away.

All signs point to a calm road ahead.

When he heard the news about Michael Jackson's death on June 25, recent KU graduate Kouri Linder was stunned. After the initial shock wore off, Linder had a hunch.

He went to EBay.com and, sure enough, in the hours following the sad news, a flood of Jackson's music was being added to the auction Web site. More than that, the prices were soaring.

Photo by Taylor Bern
Recent KU graduate Kouri Linder examines EBay.com.

So, Linder went to Kief's Downtown Music and lucked out, buying the last copy of Jackson's "Thriller" on LP. Linder included a 'buy it now' option with his listing on EBay, and the next day it sold for $70, which was $50 more than he had paid.

"It was a strange circumstance," Linder said. "I saw the huge interest in buying his music and figured, why not?"

In the week following his death, the King of Pop set several records as three of his albums ("Number Ones," "The Essential Michael Jackson" and "Thriller") topped the Billboard charts, each with more than 100,000 records sold. Lawrence was no exception to the trend as locally owned stores and chains saw Jackson's tunes fly off the shelves.

Clark Morton manages both CD Tradepost locations in Lawrence. After the third customer of the day came in asking for a Michael Jackson CD, he said, Morton turned on the news and realized why the interest had peaked. He called other CD Tradepost locations across Kansas and was told that they, too, were seeing an abnormal number of people coming in specifically for Jackson's work.

"That day we ran out of everything, at both places," Morton said.

At the Iowa Street store, Morton estimates that he had more than 20 Jackson items, including CDs and DVDs. And as each patron purchased one of those, Morton said he had a good idea where it would end up.

"I'm sure they turned around and sold it on EBay or something similar," Morton said. "That seems to be the thing to do these days."

Indeed, that's a popular route to take in strange circumstances such as this.

Other Jackson collectibles were being bought up right and left and re-sold on auction Web sites.

Jeff Sutter, an employee at Game Nut Entertainment, said Michael Jackson's "Moonwalker" for Sega Genesis was a fairly rare game that just two weeks ago would sell for $30. Right after Jackson's death, Sutter said he saw prices sky to as much as $220. Sutter sold his copy for $80.

While Sutter and Linder both came out with a profit, it didn't take long for the Jackson memorabilia market to flood. That means prices in secondary on-line markets have dropped significantly, yet the supply hasn't caught up with in-store demand.

Target had temporary price cuts for Jackson's "Essential" ($19.98) and "Number Ones" ($9.99) albums and it hasn't been able to keep them in stock. Ditto for Wal-Mart and Hastings.

Used music stores have a uniquely different problem.

As of July 1, both CD Tradeposts, Game Nut and Kief's Downtown were completely out of Jackson music, while Love Garden Sounds only had a couple of his lesser known albums left.

Since the albums are still selling so well at retail stores, used music stores don't expect to see much of his work on their shelves in the near future as people think they can make more money selling it elsewhere.

"His good stuff would always move fast," said Kelly Corcoran, an employee at Love Garden Sounds. "I don't expect we'll get too much of that for awhile now."

Quick-hit entrepreneurs like Sutter and Linder have helped alter the local market for Jackson's music for the months to follow.