ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The USD 480 school board ended up making rather quick work of its new business at its most recent meeting Monday evening.
Up first for discussion was the use of the professional development program Reframing Behavior for the 2024-25 school year.
“Reframing Behavior is a district-wide training for all educators to help build a positive and supportive classroom environment,” Special Education Director Dane Parcel said. “This main goal of this program is to help increase the understanding of how the teachers can understand the neuroscience of the brain and respond appropriately to stress and anxiety, which can affect how we teach and learn. It is based on four main principles: Reframing Your Perspective, Reframing Your Awareness, Reframing Your Actions, and Reframing Your Relationships. Per the agenda information, this program helps educators regulate their own emotions while helping students in their classroom exit fight, flight, or freeze mode and enter into learning mode, and the training allows for each school to certify two trainers that will bring information back to their staff during Professional Learning Community (PLC) time and Professional Development Learning Days.”
“Is this a program we’ve done before?” Board Vice President Brad Carr asked.
“No, this is actually a brand-new program that’s sponsored by the Crisis Prevention Institute,” Parcel said. “It actually doesn’t come out until June, so we’ll be one of the first districts to pilot this.”
Ultimately, the board approved the subscription with Crisis Prevention Institute for use of the Reframing Behavior professional development program for the 2024-25 school year for $18,000.
Up next for the board was discussion of Nonviolent Crisis Intervention Training.
“Nonviolent Crisis Intervention provides staff with skills to safely recognize and respond to everyday crisis situations, including safe disengagements and restrictive interventions,” Parcel said. “The staff members who end up being trained will be certified for two years, and per the agenda information, this certification will allow those staff members to train others across the district in a common de-escalation communication framework, proactive verbal de-escalation strategies, and safety interventions. Nonviolent Crisis Intervention is necessary to support staff and students in Emergency Safety Interventions, which is a state mandated reporting requirement. This is also sponsored by the Crisis Prevention Institute, and it’s a training we already do in the Special Education department, but we want to open it up to other staff. This is to get three staff members sent off to Wichita to be trained and certified for this, and then they’ll come back and train others in the district.”
The board ultimately approved the training for USD 480 staff members to receive Crisis Prevention Institute's Nonviolent Crisis Intervention Training to be able to train staff in Emergency Safety Interventions.
In other business, the board also approved the WebKIDSS Individualized Education Program (IEP) Management System for the 2024-25 school year and funding of an additional nurse position from the General Fund. The board also approved a quote from Water City Power Washing in the amount of $10,500 to wash the Redskin Field bleachers and a quote from First Wireless, Inc. in the amount of $19,125 for the purchase of two-way radios. Concluding the meeting’s new business, the board approved the Science of Reading Professional Learning for $12,100 for the 2024-25 school year.
Earlier in the meeting, the board also recognized the April and May Educators of the Month, James Babinec (Eisenhower Middle School) and Deena Fuller (Meadowlark Elementary School), respectively.
“One word I always associate with Mr. Babinec is ‘energy,’” Eisenhower Middle School Principal Randi Jones said. “When you walk into his classroom, you’re going to feel a lot of academic energy in his students, and that stems from what Mr. Babinec comes up with every day for what he happens to be teaching. He always works really hard to make his lessons exciting and engaging – I was in his classroom one day in March, and they were reviewing the mean/median/mode stuff and making predictions for the March Madness games with the data they had on the different teams. You can only imagine the excitement of the students in that room when they were working on all of that and predicting who would beat who and justifying their data. A big part of that also is how Mr. Babinec himself is always learning, and any investment into professional learning is something he is going to take very seriously. If you send him to a conference or workshop or something similar, I can guarantee he will come back eager to try something new. He’s always, ALWAYS willing to learn, which I admire so much about him, and it inspires me to improve and do better. We’re also a Leader In Me school, so not only does Mr. Babinec teach his students about the habits of highly effective people in his classroom, he also coaches almost all the seasons on our campus, and I’ve had other coaches come to me and tell me they’ve learned so much about those habits from listening to him talking about them with his athletes. He’s always an educator and always looking for opportunities to grow his students, and we’re just so glad he’s part of our Warrior family.”
Meadowlark Elementary School Assistant Principal Melinda Cline then praised Fuller’s work.
“Since this is the final meeting of the school year, I guess we could say we saved the best for last,” Cline began with a chuckle. “When I was reading the nominations, my first thought was ‘Where do you start?’ when it came to Ms. Fuller, because there’s so much to her – so much fun, so much kindness, and so much energy and excitement. One of the biggest things she’s gotten enthusiastic about for this year was the ClearTouch boards and the additional technology that goes with the curriculum. She has embraced all of that so much and involved the students in all of that, and that helps get them more excited about their academics. She’s been with USD 480 for a while now – she started out as a parent volunteer and then moved into being a substitute teacher, then became a paraprofessional and earned her degree, and she’s also been a kindergarten teacher, an instructional coach, an interventionist, an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher. You name it, she’s probably done it. She’s run the gamut and knows where the students need to go and how they need to get there. Throughout the years, she’s developed a lot of friendships because she started at what used to be Southlawn Elementary School, then moved to MacArthur Elementary School, and is now at Meadowlark Elementary School. She’s made a lot of connections throughout the years with many of her fellow staff members, and she’s maintained all of them. She spends a lot of time outside of school planning and preparing lessons – she is never one to say ‘Just a minute, I need to get something ready,’ she is ALWAYS prepared and ready to go when the students come in her door. She’s also willing to help other teachers when they need help with something, and does a lot. I could talk a lot more about Ms. Fuller, because she absolutely loves her students, and that radiates into everything else she does.”
