The Emporia board of education re-elected Mike Crouch as president and elected Brent Windsor as vice president as it took care of annual appointments to begin the 2011 fiscal year.
Appointments were approved unanimously as recommended: Kristy Turner, clerk; Karen Flood, deputy clerk; Brian Jordan, clerk pro-tem; Rob Scheib, treasurer, hearing officer/meal applications and food service representative; Marie Hazlett, deputy treasurer; Tammy Somogye, school attorney, Elizabeth McCoy, all principals and assistant principals, truancy officers.
Also, Capitol Federal, CoreFirst Bank & Trust, ESB Financial, First Community Bank, Lyon County State Bank, Credit Union of Emporia, and Emporia State Federal Credit Union, depositors of school funds; Core First, district checking account; The Emporia Gazette, official paper; Karen Yeager, KPERS representative; Nancy Horst, Freedom of Information officer; George Abel, compliance coordinator for federal programs.
Multi-sports
The board approved an update to the Emporia High School athletic handbook to allow students to participate in more than one sport during a season. The change will require approval from head coaches of both sports.
Members discussed the proposal at length, comparing requirements for athletics, co-curricular and extracurricular activities, and solutions when schedule conflicts arise.
Board member Amy Scheller described a situation that had occurred with a student who had chosen to play basketball with the EHS team rather than take part in the seasonal celebration, which comprised a portion of the student’s grade. Any student who chose sports over music was given “a tremendously long assignment.”
“With all due respect … a student should not be placed in the middle and have to bear the burden of being punished for choosing one over the other,” Scheller said.
“I think what we need to do is implement a policy that’s purely for athletics,” Crouch said. “And then we can look at a second policy that would go into the high school handbook that would cover co-curricular, extracurricular and athletics all in one.”
Crouch said that the policy handbook covering all of those situations would supersede the athletic handbook.
Windsor said that maintaining good grades also could be a part of a future policy for multiple participations.
“I don’t want to micromanage, but then again I don’t want to see the kids suffer,” Windsor said.
Scheller pointed out that students participating in more than one sport during a season would be involved in a lot of traveling.
“That’s a lot of classroom time missed,” Scheller said. “We need some kind of opportunity to evaluate how this is working.”
Board member Mike Helbert reminded the panel that “there’s another level of protection here: parents.
“And I would hope, I think, that 90 percent of our parents are going to say you can’t do both. That’s too much. But there are going to be special cases, and I don’t want to arbitrarily deny a student having the opportunity,” Helbert said.
Restrooms
The board approved a bid for $79,700 from Markowitz Builders for an alternate restroom renovation project in the commons area at Emporia High School. Because of time constraints for completion before the beginning of school, the board rejected the base bid of $141,200 for improvements in Classroom Area A and B restrooms.
The condition of EHS restrooms has been a concern of the EHS Stuco for several years.
“I would like to inform student council, though, of why we didn’t follow their recommendation of doing the others first,” Schreider said. “It was the bidding process. It wasn’t that we, as a board, didn’t listen to what they had to say.”
ESSDACK
The board tabled an interagency agreement with ESSDACK to operate the Flint Hills Learning Center, after asking that the agreement be pulled from the consent agenda and placed as a separate item to be considered.
Members asked for clarification of details in the agreement that seemed vaguely worded concerning several responsibilities assigned to the school district and to ESSDACK.
Board member Windsor raised the first question about the curriculum at the Learning Center, as compared to the curriculum at the high school.
“They are teaching the same courses that we have at the high school, so it will be the same curriculum,” said Abel, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning. “… We actually studied the curriculum and found that in some cases … courses that we look at were actually asking students to learn stuff that was beyond what we were offering in our courses.”
The curriculum requirements were part of a verbal agreement, and Windsor said he would like to have that agreement written into the contract.
He also questioned how many school district employees were teaching at the Learning Center, whether the school district paid its own employees there and what would happen if ESSDACK chose to cut the number of its employees, requiring the school district to add teachers and pay their wages.
“We could easily get into a situation that if we provide more and more support, we provide more and more financial backing,” Windsor said.
Other questions were raised about English as a Second Language teachers, and which entity would provide, or rent, a building, equipment, technology support, desks and other necessities.
Interim school superintendent Theresa Davidson agreed that the verbiage in the agreement was a little unclear, though some of the questions appeared to be answered in other sections of the agreement.
Board member Angie Schreiber asked about qualifications for teaching at The Learning Center.
“Right now we have a teacher placed there that is not certified to teach high school, and I don’t think that is correct,” she said.
The motion to table the item until questions could be resolved passed unanimously.