Three Jayhawk board members sworn in, hear proposal on adding health science pathway

Journal staff report, with reporting by Kayla McGrew, board clerk

MOUND CITY – The Jayhawk USD 346 Board of Education at its January meeting welcomed the return of three incumbent board members who won re-election last November. One of the first items on the Jan. 12 agenda was administering the oath of office to Tracy Springer, Ketturah “Kitty” Rhynerson, and Matt Higgins.

Later in the meeting district Superintendent Shawn Thomas would recognize board members for their contribution to the district’s success during School Board Recognition month. To further show appreciation to board members, Jayhawk Elementary School (JES) counselor Denise Umphenour showed a brief video of the elementary students thanking school board members for all that they do for our school.

Thomas introduced Project Vanguard, a strategic initiative to modernize the secondary student experience by aligning learning, instruction, and programming, with the skills, dispositions, and competencies students need for post-secondary success – college, career, military, or workforce. The administration team is going to continue to work on vision refinement this winter and spring and will present Vanguard to our community at spring parent-teacher conferences.

Student Improvement Services coordinator Stephanie Nichols gave a brief update. She said that the staff is looking into adding a health science career pathway next year. Currently, Jayhawk-Linn High School offers most of the classes that are in the pathway already, but would need to add an Introduction to Healthcare class.

JLHS currently offers these pathways for students:

• Agricultural Technology and Mechanical Systems

• Diversified Agricultural Science

• Construction and Design

• Family, Community and Consumer Services

• Media Design and Communications

Career Technical Education (CTE) pathways are groups of classes that help prepare students to enter careers after graduation.

The counselors from both schools and Nichols also discussed efforts being made to prepared students to look beyond their K-12 education. At JES, Umphenour said she meets with sixth-graders once a month including a unit of Career Exploration by using Xello college and career readiness software.

At JLHS, Nichols said that at the junior high level students complete career surveys and research careers.

Also at the high school, counselor Brett Kramer teaches a senior seminar class where he assists them with researching colleges, setting up college visits, filling out student financial forms, and college applications. For those that don’t have senior seminar class, he meets with them monthly during Jake Kramer’s class. This semester, Kramer will meet with seniors twice per week to work on scholarships.

Following a closed-door session, the board approved the following:

• Accepted the resignation of Jessica McGriff, JLHS English and language arts teacher, at the end of the school year.

•  Accepted the resignation of Jeana Brownback, JLHS social studies teacher, at the conclusion of this school year.

•  Approved an updated classified employment list that included Dakota Hall as lead custodian at JLHS, Rylan Rogers as custodian at JLHS, the transfer of Kay Northcutt from JLHS head cook to special education driver/ aide.

•  Approved an updated extra duty list to include Morgan Wills as eighth-grade class sponsor.

The board members also:

• Learned that work on the auditorium at JLHS was continuing and that those improvements were expected to include an upgrade on lighting.

• Learned the district sold a bus on Purple Wave for $2,400.

• Heard  Thomas recognized donations for the RandyLeach Pavilion. There were 36 donors totaling over $27,000. He thanked them for their tremendous generosity and recognized F&M Bank for being a great partner on that project. He also expressed thanks for an anonymous donation of $1,000 to the J-Store and $1,000 to the Guardian Angel Fund.

• Heard Thomas thank the district’s technology department for their hard work on our new district-wide communication platform – Rooms. He noted that they continue to work to improve that and educate staff members on how to utilize it.

• Were presented with copies of the final audit from Diehl, Banwart, and Bolton. He noted that there weren’t any exceptions.

• Learned that Thomas anticipated the need to call for a special board meeting regarding bond issue. He would like to invite DCS and Piper Sandler to the meeting.

•  Approved increasing the mileage reimbursement from 70 cents to 72.5 cents after Thomas told them the federal reimbursement rate had increased.