School board members across Kansas this week have had similar reactions to the Kansans Can Success Tour: pleased with progress but wanting to do more and go faster.
In Wichita, the state’s largest school district with nearly 50,000 students, several members of the Wichita USD 259 Board of Education attended the tour Monday evening at the district’s central administrative facility and commented on the vision for improving Kansas student success presented.
“I’m excited to see we are accelerating this effort, because I thought with COVID, things were stalling a bit, but it's great to see the Kansas State Department of Education doubling down on their effort,” said Wichita 259 Board Member Stan Reeser. “I think this is good news, and I think these changes have to be made.”
Fellow Wichita board of education member and member of the KASB Board of Directors Ron Rosales said many of the goals outlined at the meeting were already under way. “I really enjoyed seeing some of the things we are doing in Wichita reflected in this vision. At our table discussion, we received some really good feedback about what we could do better. My impression is that going forward, we have a good vision and some good statistics.”
Part of the presentation reports on improvements in Kansas’ high school graduation rates since 2015, and how lower performance groups (students in poverty, students with disabilities and English Language Learners) have improved faster than the group
In more rural settings in northeast Kansas, Pam Dankenbring, Marysville USD 364 Board President and KASB Regional Vice President, said she thought the Kansas Can vision supports the state values. “I would perceive Kansans to value personality-based skills: cognitive thinking, problem solving, those kinds of things. It’s a little scary to think about what that looks like in a school system, because those are not attributes you can test for. So how do we bring those pieces into the school environment in a way that we can measure our effectiveness?”
Another Marysville board member, Brenda Arntt, found the focus on personalized education most important. “I think what excites me the most is the idea of individualized education programs for all students all the way through school,” she said. “We know that we see problems in preschool and in getting children assessed and moving along at the rate they need to be. We have a great community in Marysville, great involvement, a job shadowing program in place, and we are doing mentoring with several civic groups. I think we are moving in the right direction.”
And, Kevin O’Neal, Marysville Board Vice President, appreciated bringing the tour to his community. “We just had a great conference with Dr. Watson here in Marysville, great learning experience. It was great to see all the locals come out.”
“I think one of the most important things I have heard is from our discussion groups,” said Marysville board member Melissa Borgerding. “One of the parents said, ‘we need to figure out what our students are good at and have our counselors work with them on that.’ I think we are doing a good job of meeting our kids’ needs, but I don’t think we are meeting all of our kids’ needs. We need to move forward on that, and I think we can.”
In Hiawatha, Horton (South Brown County) board member and president Jason Selland said: “I thought today was a great source of feedback for administrators, teachers and school boards. The idea that communities and businesses have so much to say and want to be involved in our school and with our kids is really encouraging. This is a great way to bring that back and show progress is being made on those goals. We have clear data showing progress is being made and every reason to believe it will continue to be made in the state of Kansas.”
After a meeting with nearly 100 participants Wednesday evening in Emporia, Art Gutierrez, Emporia school board president and member of the KASB Board of Directors, said the meeting was motivation to push harder on improving student success. “It’s exciting to hear the progress we are making, and it lets us know we can do better; that it is achievable. What really sticks out at me, especially when we look at graduation rates, is that while it is a number we are given, it’s really people’s children. We owe it to those kids to do better. I’m excited about the success we have had and I’m confident for the future that we can reach even more kids.”
A schedule of tour meetings is here.
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