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LJWorld.com
MONDAY • DECEMBER 27 • 2010
Retailers bask in holiday afterglow Texting law
takes full effect Jan. 1
By Christine Metz cmetz@ljworld.com
Come Jan. 1, Kansas motorists might want to think twice before picking up a cell phone to send or read a text message. If they are spotted by a law enforcement officer, that action could cost them a $60 ticket and in Douglas County another $93.50 in court fines. Following a six-month warning period, the state’s ban on texting goes into effect at the start of 2011. “It will be enforced like any other Kansas law. You see it, you take care of the problem,” said Lt. Robert Baker with the Kansas Highway Patrol. Technically, the state law extends beyond texting to instant messages and e-mails. The law states that drivers are prohibited from using a “wireless device to write, send or read a written communication” while driving. Exceptions are provided to law enforcement officers and emergency service personnel using their phone on the job. Texts messages also can be read for emergency, traffic and weather related alerts, and for receiving information related to operating or navigating the vehicle. Texting is allowed if it would prevent injury to a person or damage to property and to report a Please see TEXTING, page 2A
John Young/Journal-World Photos
NICK RAUSTEN, LEFT, AND MIKE BERGMAN, both of Lawrence, load a newly purchased dishwasher into the bed of Rausten’s truck Sunday afternoon at Best Buy. Many shoppers braved the cold weather in search of specials and bargains as stores around Lawrence opened for business the day after Christmas.
Road work Shoppers return in full force seeking deals ahead in 2011
By Aleese Kopf
akopf@ljworld.com
After remaining bare for a day, retail parking lots filled up Sunday as shoppers hit the streets for after-Christmas sales and returns. Stores around town saw steady business throughout the day as residents started spending grandma’s Christmas money or exchanging the sweater mom picked out. Erin Besson, a Best Buy shopper, spent part of her morning testing out different cameras and laptops. Besson said she isn’t usually a big after-Christmas shopper, but this year she had some motivation. “Part of the reason why is from getting money for Christmas,” Besson said. Other residents had planned on shopping anyway. Randy Haeffner, a shopper at Kohl’s, said he went to the store specifically looking for a vacuum. “We didn’t necessarily go
TRACIE HOWELL, LEFT, Lawrence, stops with her mother, Page Massey, Lago Vista, Texas, to browse the sweaters on the clearance rack at Weaver’s Department Store in downtown Lawrence. Sales, returns, exchanges and gift cards enticed shoppers back to stores on Sunday. looking for a deal,” Haeffner said. “There was some stuff we knew we needed to get.” However, Debbie Green, another Kohl’s shopper, did specifically go for the deals. Green said each year she usually does a little after-Christmas shopping because of the
great prices on items. She walked out of the store Sunday with a bag full of halfprice picture frames. “The holiday stuff is super cheap,” Green said. “I always need frames and you always take pictures at Christmas, so it’s a good buy.”
Still, some after-Christmas shoppers treat the day more like Black Friday. Missy Stirling, manager at Target, said there were around 30 or so people lined up outside the entrances by 7 a.m. when the store opened. Stirling said the store opened an hour early, would close an hour later and added extra employees to the staff to accommodate customers. In terms of buying versus returning/exchanging, Stirling said she expected business to be about even. “A lot of times customers will bring in clothes that were the wrong size or items like movies that they got more than one of,” Stirling said. For Tanya Treadway, it was the wrong size of gloves. Treadway went to Weaver’s Department Store to exchange some gloves she had bought her husband. Luckily for her, she said, the gloves are the only Christmas
Many of the road construction projects that had motorists sitting in traffic this year will return in 2011. And expect some additional projects. Short lived will be the joy that many commuters had when construction ended on a three-mile stretch of Interstate 70 this fall. Starting in March, crews will return to I-70 to begin reconstruction of a threemile stretch of road just east of the Lawrence service area. The entire $23 million project funded by the Kansas Turnpike Authority replaces six miles of 50-year-old concrete Part 3 in a series: road with a 10-inch rock base and 18 inches of asphalt. TRANSPORTATION The first half of the project began last summer and ended in November. Crews rebuilt a three-mile stretch of road from the East Lawrence interchange to the Lawrence service area. The road closure, which squeezed four lanes of traffic down to two, translated into major traffic headaches, especially during busy summer weekends and at rush hour on Friday afternoons.
Please see SHOPPERS, page 2A
Please see ROAD, page 2A
By Christine Metz cmetz@ljworld.com
2011
A look ahead
Implementing full-day kindergarten not as simple as A-B-C, 1-2-3 By Mark Fagan mfagan@ljworld.com
Full-day kindergarten gives students more time to learn in class, more chances to get along with others, and more exposure to their school’s building, responsibilities and routines that will become part of their academic lives for the next 12 years and, perhaps, beyond. And that’s not all. “There’s a lot less crying,” reports Jeanne Fridell, principal at Woodlawn School, one of eight elementaries in the Lawrence school district
with full-day kindergarten. “We don’t have that anymore. It’s a lot less crying, and a lot more laughter.” Yet while administrators, school board members and many parents agree that offering full-day kindergarten throughout the entire Lawrence school district would be a great idea, few — if any — see much chance of getting the job done anytime soon. Welcome to the world of financial reality: The program now costs the district about $500,000, all of it financed through revenues
trators will be forced to endure another round of cuts when compiling their budgets, just as they did this past year when they eliminated jobs and cut programs to prevent closing schools while reducing expenses by $4.6 million.
Difficult balance This upcoming budget season, administrators foresee a reduction in revenues that “easily could be another $3 Mike Yoder/Journal-World Photo million to $4 million,” said Frank Harwood, the district’s BARBIE GOSSETT, a kindergarten teacher at Woodlawn School, works with her class during a reading exercise. From left are Luke Poloncheck, Please see FULL-DAY, page 2A Riley Honeyman, Danny Reagan, Joe Schmidt and Abi Krise.
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restricted to be spent on helping so-called “at-risk” students because of their f inancial or other demographic characteristics. Adding full-day kindergarten at the other seven elementary schools where halfday classes are offered would cost another $450,000 on teachers alone, plus another $200,000 or so for materials and furnishings. That’s real money, at a time when the district doesn’t expect to receive any more money for the next academic year. The standing fear is that board members and adminis-
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