The USD 450 Scoop

Quarter 1 Newsletter

2023-24 School Year

The school year has gotten off to a great start, and we hope your family has successfully transitioned into the rhythm of the new year. The beginning of the school year is always a time of renewed energy and potential for our students, teachers, and community.

As we look around, we can see our community growing. New houses are coming on line each month, and more sub-divisions are being planned and developed, bringing more families to our community. While our district's enrollment has held steady at 3,500 students in the past, we are seeing increases in our enrollment, especially in our elementary schools. We are also receiving many more requests from families/students seeking Out-of-District status to transfer into our district. And why not? Shawnee Heights is a great place to live, work, and raise a family. Our community is loyal, respected, and a desired destination.

This growth in our community brings fantastic opportunities and changes to our community as well as challenges. We are experiencing most of the increase in students in our elementary buildings. Berryton Elementary, our small country elementary school, is now our largest, with over 500 students in this building. In addition to seeing growth at our elementary buildings, our special education population has grown rapidly. We need additional space for programs to serve at-risk students as well as more Career and Technical Education opportunities at the secondary level.

What does our school district need to do to prepare for this growth in our community? To help answer this question, we have to do some research. The Board of Education has initiated an Enrollment/ Population Analysis and Facility Master Plan Study. This information will help us begin to craft a plan on how best to respond to these changes and allocate resources moving forward.

Our district has hired RSP & Associates to conduct an enrollment/population analysis. The previous enrollment/population study was performed for our community about ten years ago. This study will help determine when the population will grow and how it will impact each school’s enrollment numbers. RSP & Associates helps bring meaningful planning to school districts and has proven to give accurate predictions of population changes and migration patterns. However, it will be more difficult to predict major employers moving into the area and legislative policy changes, such as the updates to the open border law, due to take effect during the 2024-2025 school year.

HTK Architects has been hired to create a Facilities Master Plan for the district. HTK Architects has been visiting our buildings to assess our facilities, program needs, vision, and goals. While conducting these discussions, they look at what we have in place currently and refine the assessment to create a Master Facility Plan document. While creating this document, they look at how we can update or repurpose some areas of buildings or add on to existing buildings to accomplish the determined needs.

Lastly, our district has requested that SNCO Public Works conduct a future Traffic Engineering Assistance Program study, specifically of the traffic along 45th and Shawnee Heights Road. All of us have experienced the busy and packed roads and intersections as 2,000 people enter and exit from our main campus onto the narrow two-lane Shawnee Heights road. We hope this study will eventually lead to solutions to alleviate the traffic back-up at the intersection and make for a safer commute to and from our middle and high schools for school and activities. We also need to look at our four elementary buildings and their challenges with traffic during arrival and dismissal times.

We anticipate the completion of the Enrollment/Population Analysis and Master Facility Plan this fall.

At the August 7, 2023, Board of Education Meeting, the Curriculum Directors presented the state assessment results and summary of the building needs assessments to the BOE for the budget approval process. Here are some of the highlights from that presentation.

Takeaways from the State Assessments and FastBridge Data:

• On average, students who fell behind because of the pandemic have caught back up. The students who struggled before the pandemic still work to overcome those struggles. Targeted efforts remain in place to continue helping address their needs.
• Of our students subjected to the state assessment, those scoring at level 3 or 4 have increased. In math, scores are up more than 7% since 2021 and 3% above the preliminary 2023 state average. In reading, scores are up more than 4% since 2021 and almost 1% above the preliminary 2023 state average.
• More than half of our 3rd graders (students who would have been in Kindergarten during the 2019-2020 school year) are testing at levels 3 and 4 in Math, and more than 40% are testing at levels 3 and 4 in Reading.
• FastBridge data (more localized data collected at the classroom level) indicates a declining need for targeted interventions at the third-grade level.
• State assessment scores are just one metric used to determine student outcomes and will not measure the higher-level thinking and application skills we strive to provide our students.

Barriers Related to Student Needs:

• Once we looked at the data, we considered the barriers preventing our students from being more successful. Chronic absenteeism impacts learning at all levels. A student qualifies as chronically absent when they have more than 10% absences. In a typical year, that is approximately 17 absences. During COVID, we asked families to stay home when they were sick. Now that we are seeing far fewer students with COVID, we must focus on getting students back to school and attending regularly.
• Another barrier that was mentioned was the overcrowding in the elementary school buildings, which presents a need for more adequate learning spaces. Our targeted intervention programs are working, but adequate space for students to utilize those interventions is a struggle.

We will continue to address barriers and improve instruction through targeted work in professional development, ELL supports, curriculum review work, and student intervention services. We look forward to continued partnerships with families to help all students achieve.

The USD 450 Board of Education approved a 2023-2024 budget of $66,421,795, not including interfund transfers. This budget is equivalent to 51.183 mills, slightly lower than last school year’s budget of 51.211 mills. This is the third consecutive year the district has been able to lower the mill levy. The district’s goal is to keep those mills as flat as possible while positioning the district for an early payoff of $15.9 Million in debt between the 2023-24 and the 2024-25 school years, saving taxpayers nearly $1.7M in interest payments. This plan positions the district’s budget for a future bond issue that will provide innovative, rigorous, and diverse learning experiences for students and address many of the items identified in the district’s budget needs assessment, namely issues with crowding at the elementary level and program limitations at the secondary levels.

Please join us in extending our warmest congratulations to Mrs. Lisa Taylor and Mr. Michael Brooks for their exceptional dedication to education and selection as our 23-24 Horizon Award Nominees.

Mrs. Taylor, a 1st-grade Teacher at Shawnee Heights Elementary School, and Mr. Brooks, a business Teacher at Shawnee Heights High School, have demonstrated unwavering commitment to their students and the teaching profession. We celebrated their achievements by surprising Mrs. Taylor in her classroom on Friday, September 15, 2023 and Mr. Brooks on Monday, September 18,2023, surrounded by Administration, Board Members, Foundation Members, and colleagues. Each received a beautiful acrylic award, a delicious cake, and colorful balloons to mark this momentous occasion. Additionally, the Shawnee Heights Public School's Foundation generously presented Mrs. Taylor and Mr. Brooks with a gift of $250 in recognition of their outstanding contributions.

The Kansas Horizon Award program identifies and recognizes representatives of excellent teaching in the elementary and secondary classrooms of the state. The mission of the program is to recognize exemplary first-year teachers who perform in a way that distinguishes them as outstanding.

Mrs. Taylor and Mr. Brook's hard work, dedication, and unwavering commitment to their students and the field of education inspire us all. We are truly proud of their accomplishments and the positive impact they continue to make in the lives of our students.

Once again, congratulations to Mrs. Taylor and Mr. Brooks for this well-deserved recognition. Their passion for teaching and their ability to inspire those around them exemplify the highest standards of excellence in education.

As you can imagine, the District calendar takes time and consideration when creating a plan for the entire school year. Some of the requirements we take into consideration to meet logistical needs, state law, and negotiated agreement requirements are:

• 190 day contract for Teachers to work between August 1 and the end of May (Memorial Day)
• 172 student contact days (Students must meet a minimum of 1,116 hours)
• 8 Professional Development and Collaboration Time (PD/CT) days
• 6 Teacher workdays
• 4 Parent/Teacher Conference days
• Winter Break must be at least 8 weekdays
• Spring Break (5 days) must align with the Board of Regions calendar
• Graduation day is shared with Washburn Rural, and Seaman (Seniors must have 1078 hours before their graduation date)
• Quarters and semesters must be balanced as closely as possible to have a similar number of days.

Other logistical considerations included bus availability, an early Easter, and having as many full weeks without disruptions as possible. Parent/Teacher Conferences were moved back one week in February to avoid conferences falling on Valentine’s Day, an especially busy time for our Elementary schools.

There are approximately 300 days between August 1st and Memorial Day. After the weekends and holidays, the current calendar only has a few days that can be moved around. If we have a bad winter and miss school for snow days, we may have to make those up after Memorial Day. This fall, a Calendar Committee will work on updating the calendar and work to capture minutes during the day that currently do not count towards instructional hours. We hope more efficiency during the day will allow us to shorten the 190 day calendar by a few days, giving us additional flexibility in how we structure the calendar in future years. We hope to have that work completed and options to take to the Board in January.

Get ready for Election Day on Tuesday, November 7, 2023! We have an important election where four out of our seven board positions are up for consideration. Meet the candidates:

USD 450 District A Position 1

• Lauren Tice Miller
• Damon Shore

USD 450 District B Position 2

• Rocky Busenitz
• Chris Kieffer

USD 450 District C Position 3

• Sarah Sanders
• Troy Showalter

USD 450 Member At-Large

• Kristy Van Metre
• Michael P Cichowicz
• Jason A. Schulz

In this election, every registered voter within the Shawnee Heights district can cast their vote for all board positions, regardless of their specific position boundary.

Make sure you're prepared to participate by registering to vote or updating your registration by October 17, 2023! You can easily check your registration status or make any necessary changes by going to the State of Kansas website Voter Information page.

Also, don't forget to find your polling location on the Voter View Kansas Secretary of State Page so you can make your voice heard.

Remember, your vote carries significant weight in shaping our community's future!

Tim Hallacy, Superintendent

Matt Hirsch, Associate Superintendent

Board of Education

Rosa Cavazos - President

Erica Price - Vice President

Rocky Busenitz

Eric Deitcher

Christina Flaming

Jason Schulz

Lauren Tice Miller