A resolution for a mill levy to fund adult basic education and a bid for asbestos removal at William Allen White School passed unanimously at the Emporia board of education meeting on Wednesday. The board also hired a new principal for Walnut Elementary School.
Benjamin T. Coltrane, who will begin work on July 1, will replace Barbara Fabert, who was appointed director of elementary education for the Manhattan School District.
Coltrane taught for two years at Emporia Middle School and currently is a math teacher at Atchison Middle School. He has a bachelor of science degree in mathematics from Emporia State University and a master’s degree in administration from Benedictine College. He also has an ESL endorsement from Kansas State University.
The board awarded the asbestos removal contract to the B & R Insulation of Lenexa, which submitted a low bid of $59,395. The district staff discovered an error in the company’s original bid of $60,395 and, with the downward correction, it remained the low bid. A second company, ARMI (Asbestos Removal and Maintenance Inc.) of Wichita, had submitted a bid of $64,975.
The work will be done during the summer, when students are not in the building, and should be completed by Aug. 1 or before, according to Susan Hernandez, associate superintendent of finance.
Hernandez had told the board at an earlier meeting that the asbestos was safely contained at the moment; however, if maintenance needed to be done in the area containing asbestos, it could pose problems for those around it. The board had approved calling for bids to eliminate the potential problem.
The mill-levy resolution approved Wednesday night is required by state law to be passed at least every five years, and can be no more than one-half mill of the assessed taxable tangible property in the district. The last resolution went into effect in November 2002. Wednesday night’s resolution will be published in The Gazette once weekly for three weeks and will take effect after final publication. If 5 percent of the qualified electors in the district file a qualified petition within 90 days of the last publication, the county will be ordered to hold an election on the mill levy, according to information provided by the school district.
The district collects the funds and passes them on to the Flint Hills Technical College, which is in charge of adult basic education on behalf of the Emporia district.
FHTC President Dean Hollenbeck and program director Chris Matson provided details of the program to the school board.
Matson said that the technical college serves 350 to 400 students annually. The number of students expected to receive GEDs this year is down slightly, with 37 students projected to earn GEDs, compared to 40 to 50 in previous years.
Approximately half of the enrollment is made up of English as a Second Language students and about half are working on GEDs. Five of the ESL students have become citizens.
“Those are always celebrations for us,” Matson said.
Village Principal Wendy Moore talked to the board about usefulness of the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments that have been given for the first time this year to children in grades three through 10. The tests are done three times a year, and students in kindergarten through second grade were added to the test pool this spring.
Students log on computers to access questions and answer them; the computers adapt the questions according to the students’ answers.
“So, if they continue to provide correct responses, the computer continues to ratchet up and go on to more challenging material,” Moore said.
The computer reacts correspondingly to students whose answers are incorrect.
“It’s a benchmark test in my mind,” Moore said.
MAP diagnoses instructional needs, identifies skills and concepts learned, and monitors academic growth of individuals over time.
“We’ve used it to make data-driven decisions” at classroom, administrator and district levels, she said. “We get the results immediately. The minute the kids finish that test, the score comes up so we know right then and there how the kids did.”
The consistency of the tests allows identification of types of instructional needs, no matter the grade level.
“We’re not looking at kids based on their grade level, we’re looking at it based on what their instructional levels are at that time,” she said.
Students seem to be responding well to MAP-driven instruction, and they participate in setting goals and planning how to achieve them.
MAP, combined with other tests, allows teachers to evaluate their impact on students’ academic growth, she said, and find effective ways to help them.
Additionally, the overall profiles of the tests allow Moore to identify strengths and weaknesses of the building’s teachers and students as a whole and to work with them in the areas that need changing.
The board heard an initial reading of changes suggested for the Emporia High School policy handbook, including a stiffer policy on electronic devices.
The policy currently states that cell phones “are not to be seen, heard, or used from the time the students enter the building until the end of school. Students may use cell phones outside the building during lunch.
Scott Sheldon, principal, said that a sentence “Violations will result in confiscation and/or disciplinary action” would replace the current statement that the items “may be confiscated and continued violations will result in disciplinary action.”
The board asked Sheldon to clarify the “and/or” portion of the replacement sentence to reflect that those items will be confiscated and violations also may result in disciplinary action.
The new policy would require violators to spend one hour after school on the first violation, and could progress to mandated attendance at Friday School.
“We do not consider the hour after school disciplinary action,” Sheldon said. Attending Friday School is considered a disciplinary action.
The policy revisions included changes in unexcused absences and elimination of peer mediation because it has not been done for a number of years.