ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The USD 480 school board had an easy evening at its most recent meeting Monday evening.
Beginning the meeting was the Good Things, which featured Paul Fisher and the PE elementary school archery team.
“We’ve been doing archery in house for roughly the past seven years or so, and it’s only been the past couple years that have seen us travel to Wichita and more seriously compete,” Fisher said. “Both of the years we’ve competed, we’ve brought home a trophy, and we’re really proud of how we’re doing. We recently hosted an in-house competition between Prairie View Elementary School and Cottonwood Elementary School, and there is a traveling trophy for that. The Prairie View team took home the trophy this time around. Last week, we took 16 students from those schools to Wichita to represent USD 480’s program in the 3rd Annual Air Capitol Archery Tournament, and they ended up winning it all and bringing the gold back to Liberal again. There are other archery tournaments out there, but that tournament is the one that fits us best as far as scheduling and facilities use and all of that. We only take 5th graders to the Wichita tournament, but in our in-house competition, that features 4th and 5th graders. We use compound bows – some of you might remember from the past when those bows were really big and cumbersome, but they’ve been redesigned from what you remember.”
Students in the program also shared their thoughts.
“I had a lot of fun, it was fun being out on the court and shooting arrows and scoring points for my team,” Prairie View Elementary School student Cairo Svaty said. “It was just really fun competing.”
“Each round had 24 archers competing, so there was a lot of competition and there were some nerves since there were so many eyes on everyone the entire time,” Fisher said.
After going into some more detail about how the competition worked, Fisher and his fellow coaches again praised the students’ performance before concluding the presentation.
The board then moved through the agenda’s new business rather quickly, beginning with approving a bid from Dean E. Norris for $167,474 for the purchase of new HVAC equipment for the IT bunker.
“We solicited bids to replace the HVAC equipment located in the IT Bunker at the former McKinley Elementary School building, and we feel this project is important because the existing equipment is approaching 20 years old and needs replaced,” Director of Operations Chad Mease said.
The board also approved bids for the purchase of art supplies, paper and general stock supplies for a total of $199,985 and also approved the recommended out-of-district enrollment cap of 0 additional students for PreK-12 for the 2024-25 school year.
After that, the board also discussed a proposed interim instructor agreement.
“This is something the board had asked us to look into last fall during a work session, so we had the district legal counsel help us develop this based on what we currently have,” Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Education Lana Evans said. “A lot of the agreement talks about pay and benefits and different logistical stuff like that. We did also add in the last paragraph something about liquidated damages. This will be in effect starting the 2024-25 school year.”
After some quick discussion, the board ultimately approved the proposed interim instructor agreement effective starting the 2024-2025 school year.
The board also approved the proposed elementary and district wide instructional curriculum and professional learning in the amount of $153,312.91. The board also approved multiple changes for the 2024-25 middle school student handbook as well as Ramsey Education curriculum in the amount of 22,159.92, which will be used to teach personal finance curriculum to students in business courses at both Eisenhower Middle School and Seymour Rogers Middle School.
To conclude the meeting’s new business, the board approved the proposed Secondary Instructional Curriculum and Professional Learning in the amount of $183,817.64.
