ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
USD 480 now officially has a new hand at the helm with a new superintendent.
After three executive sessions at its most recent meeting Monday evening, the USD 480 school board approved the employment of Dane Richardson as per a contract presented by counsel from July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2028. More details will be shared in a future edition of the Leader & Times.
Concerns about student performance also continued to be a focus for the board Monday evening, with the discussions beginning with local parent Sarah Castaneda, who spoke during the Comments from the Floor part of the meeting.
“I have two children who have already graduated from Liberal High School, and one who’s a senior this year, and they all three struggled with the scheduling,” Castaneda said. “My senior is currently extremely struggling. He wanted to the alternative school so he could get his credits, and most of his friends are either in the alternative school or in Ingenuity so they can get caught up to be able to graduate this year. I would like to see a schedule change because I have an 8th grader who’s going to be at LHS next year, and I’m really concerned he won’t use the Personal Learning Time (PLT) that’s available now. According to my senior, to a lot of students, PLT means Play around, Leave when you want, and Time to do whatever, and that’s their mindset. I would like for my child to have some structure – not to punt my parenting on the teachers, but I want the teachers to teach my child. I will handle everything at home as far as getting homework done and getting things turned on, but I would like my child to have structure from now on at LHS and know they have the necessary support. I understand the current system works for other students, but there’s a big chunk of students it’s not working for.”
USD 480 Assistant Superintendent Ruben Cano then talked to the board about some issues related to student performance at Liberal High School.
“I decided to pull some data from LHS to help with performance, especially as we continue to move forward, and we’re going to be working with all of the USD 480 buildings on this,” Cano said. “In looking at overlaps, and in looking at more than 1,400 schedules, we looked at the different grade levels and I discovered in the freshman class, at least 237 of those students have at least one overlap, which is about 63 percent of that class. When I looked at the sophomore class, roughly one-sixth of those students also have at least one overlap. In the junior class, 318 out of 382 students have at least one overlap, and then the senior class has the highest number, with 325 out of 359 dealing with at least one overlap. There are multiple factors to take into account with these overlaps, I just took a look at the schedules to see how many had overlaps in them. I also looked at the total number of ‘F’ grades by school year, and we average between 2,000 and 2,500 ‘F’ grades per year at LHS, and those numbers include both semesters. In the 2023-24 school year, there were 1,174 ‘F’ grades in the fall semester and then 958 in the spring semester. This past fall semester, there were 894 ‘F’ grades, and we’ll be getting this semester’s numbers after the year ends. Something we really worked on was the amount of communication shared with parents and students regarding those grades and missing assignments, and there has definitely been a reduction in those numbers since that increased communication started, which tells me that is going a long way.”
Cano also talked about Grade Point Average (GPA) numbers.
“When you look at GPA, and I looked at the number of students at each grade level who had a 2.0 or above, about 37 percent of our current freshman have a 2.0 or higher, 78 percent of our sophomores have a 2.0 or higher, 78 of our juniors have a 2.0 or higher, and 76 percent of our seniors have a 2.0 or higher,” Cano said. “As a school, about 78 percent of our students at LHS have a ‘C’ average or better. We’re also looking at the number of missing assignments, and we have a high number of missing assignments depending on what course(s) you’re looking at. With a lot of our core courses, the students have the highest number of missing assignments – for example, amongst those in the Algebra II class, there are 443 students who are not being successful in that class, and that number is 268 in the geometry course. We saw that same trend with some other courses.”
Cano then continued the discussion about PLT numbers.
“When I looked at the number of PLT mods by grade level, a large percent of our freshmen have between 25 and 34 PLT minutes, which is about 250 students compiling 500 to 600 minutes of PLT a week,” Cano said. “With the sophomore class, there are 200-plus students compiling 500 to 600 minutes of PLT a week, and the junior class is compiling 300 to 600 minutes of PLT a week. The senior class numbers are a little more spread out, with an average of 30 to 35 minutes of PLT a day, which is 600 to 1,100 minutes of PLT a week. However, when you look at the number of credits earned by students by grade level, about 86 percent of the freshman class are currently on track to earn their required amount of credits to be considered a sophomore and graduate, and about 77 percent of our sophomores are on track to be considered juniors next year. 92 percent of our juniors are currently on track to be considered seniors next year, and when you look at credits, 96 percent of our seniors are on track to earn the credits to graduate.”
After several more minutes of discussion with the board, Can concluded his presentation.
Earlier in the meeting, Sunflower Elementary School staff briefly shared some middle of the year academic goals for the students.
“Our school-wide reading goal is for 10 percent of our students will move from below grade level to at or above benchmark by the end of the year using the DIBELS assessment,” Sunflower Elementary School ESL teacher Kandice Lee said. “Then, in math, we also want to have 10 percent of our students go from below grade level to at or above benchmark by the end of the year as measured by our iReady assessment.”
“We have different ways to celebrate reaching our goals, and those include special days like Pajama Day and Dress Up Like a Royal Day and things like that,” Sunflower Elementary School Principal Ashley Lehnert added. “Some of the classes also get 10 extra minutes of recess. All of our goals are talked about each month at our assemblies, so everyone knows what they have to do. From 2023 to 2024, in math, we reduced our Level One numbers by six percent, which is huge growth for the school, and we increased our Level Two, Level Three, and Level Four numbers, and we’re really proud of that accomplishment. In ELA, we reduced our Level One numbers by five percent, and then increased our Level Two, Level Three, and Level Four numbers, which we were also really proud of. In math, with our ELA scores, this is something we’re extremely proud of because we’re beating the state percent scores in 3rd grade and 4th grade math. That goes to show all of the hard work our staff and students are putting in in moving forward.”
In the meeting’s new business, the board heard a proposal for a local citizen’s purchase of land near Seymour Rogers Middle School and approved payment of payment application No. 5 to Osborne Construction in the amount of $224,619.14. The board also approved updates to Board Resolutions I, P, Q and S, the 2025-2026 school calendar, and the renewal of a contract Apptegy in the amount of $18,565.75 for maintenance of the USD 480 Web site. To conclude the new business, the board also approved a new position of Spanish Language Arts teacher at Seymour Rogers Middle School and a new position of administrative assistant to the assistant superintendents.
