KVSV

USD 273 BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETING MONDAY DEC 8TH

 

Unified School District Number Two Seventy-Three Board of Education

Monday December 8, 2014

By Terry Bailey

 

The USD Number Two Seventy-Three Board of Education met Monday evening, December eighth two thousand fourteen.

The Board reviewed a letter from Darrell Moore, Beloit Jr. Senior High School principal, announcing his desire to retire at the end of the two thousand fourteen-fifteen school year. The Board accepted Moore’s retirement intentions. After a twenty-five minute executive session for the discussion of non-elected personnel, the Board announced that Casey Seyfert, currently the assistant principal, would be named to succeed Moore as the principal of the Jr. Sr. High School.

In his report to the Board, Superintendent Jeff Travis discussed the ever-critical status of School Finance. Currently the State of Kansas faces a three hundred forty to three hundred fifty million dollar shortfall on revenue estimates used to fund the state government. Referring to financial information provided by Craig Newswander and Dale Dennis in Topeka, Travis quoted them as saying, “The State will have to cut two hundred seventy-eight point seven million dollars of spending just to get back to being broke.” Nobody cared to speculate whether or not the Governor’s experimenting with tax reform had contributed to shortfall of money needed to fund the State government. By law, unlike the Federal government, the State cannot spend more money than it collects each year.

On a mixed note, Travis advised the Board that students in Kansas rank fifth in the nation in academic progress while Kansas teachers’ salaries rank forty-second in the nation.

Student Council president, R.J. Jackson, updated the Board on their activities at the school. In the recent Food Drive at the Jr. Sr. High School, the Student Council had set a goal of nine thousand food points for this year, considerably higher than last year. Jackson proudly announced that the final total was almost twenty-three thousand food points.

Jackson told the Board the STUCO members would be serving as hosts at the Isle of Lights next Saturday from six to ten p.m.

Finally, Jackson said that STUCO was working on a Teacher Appreciation project

Karen Niemczych, Director of the Beloit Special Education Coop, updated the Board on statistics relevant to the five school districts with the Coop. Niemczych said there were four hundred forty identified students throughout the five districts. This year, seventy-two newly identified students have been added. This is an increase of eighteen percent which she said, “was concerning.” The vast majority of these new students are identified as having Social Emotional Skill Deficiency.

These trends, according to Niemczych, will necessitate a change is how these students are taught. Students with these type of skill deficiencies require a different teaching approach. She believes the Well Managed Classroom program, which is a strong research-based model, would serve as a starting point.

Niemczych went on to say, “A one-day training for teachers will not provide them with the necessary skills to manage this new group of students. It will require a paradigm shift in teaching, discipline and classroom management.”

Assistant Principal Casey Seyfert, told the Board that the winter sports athletic seasons were off and running with good success. Both the boys and girls junior and senior high basketball teams are winning games and showing good promise for successful seasons. Wrestling has gotten off to a good start also. Seyfert said the Trojans would go to Russell for the wrestling Regionals this year.

Beloit will host one of the Sub-State basketball tournaments this year during the first week of March. Scott City has been assigned to the Beloit Sub-State which will make it a very competitive tournament.

Seyfert said he had met with representatives of the K-18 and American Legion baseball teams and the City of Beloit to discuss improvements in the dugouts at the baseball diamond. They have reviewed the dugouts at Marysville, which are considered state-of-the-art facilities. These are truly dugouts and bricked very nicely. Because these types of dugouts are below ground level, water drainage will be hard to manage. Currently with all the buried electrical lines and underground sprinkler systems near the diamond, it appears that the drainage lines would have to cross the baseball diamond.

Elementary Principal Byron Marshall announced that an In-House Book Fair will run from December ninth to December eighteenth. School Librarian Roberta Meier and volunteers have everything set up. All profits from the Book Fair benefit the school library.

The Fourth grade program will be on December eleventh at seven p.m. at the Elementary School. The Sixth grade program will be December eighteenth at seven p.m. at the Elementary School.

Marshall informed the Board that they were gearing up for the Kansas State Assessments in February, March, and April.

In a report from Jr. Sr. High School principal Darrell Moore it was noted that twenty-four vocal students attended the League Honor Choir in Russell. Mrs. Ediger took seven Jr. and senior high students to the “Real Men Sing” workshop in Lindsborg. The vocal students will be traveling to Boston in March and will perform at the Navy Pier. Mrs. Ediger and the students have been working hard at fundraising to pay for the trip.

Twenty High School students and thirty-two Jr. High students participated in the Western Kansas Orchestra Festival held this year in Salina. It was a two day, Friday and Saturday Festival.

The Rogers and Hammerstein version of the play Cinderella was performed on a Thursday night, Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon. It was well attended but none of the performances were totally sold out. By all standards it was considered a successful experience for the students.

 

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Beloit, KS 67420, USA