ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The USD 480 school board continued to hear High Reliability Schools (HRS) updates at its most recent meeting Monday evening, with Ashley Lehnert providing an update on Sunflower Elementary School, which she is principal of.
Lehnert began her presentation praising the work of the Sunflower Elementary School team.
“I’m very proud of our team at Sunflower Elementary School, the staff all work together wonderfully,” Lehnert said. “I feel like we’re already a strong school, but I know we can always be better, and I feel like HRS has done a great job showing ways to do that.”
Lehnert then began her presentation by talking about the areas of strength mentioned in the HRS survey.
“We’re excited to all our areas of strength. Anywhere we’re over the 3.5 mark are considered areas of strength, and anything under 2.5 is considered something to be worked on,” Lehnert said. “We did not have any areas under 2.5, which we are very proud of. We have safe and orderly schools under 1.1, and our students and faculty/staff perceive Sunflower Elementary School positively in that regard. Teachers have formal roles in decision-making processes and school initiatives, and we’re really big about asking for teacher input, but we could use a bit of improvement in asking for student input, which we are working on. Teacher teams have collaborative time and regularly interact – we’re seeing a great job there with our instructional coach, Tamra Kapp, and the Professional Learning Community (PLC). And it truly is a collaborative effort, it’s not just Ms. Kapp and Nathan [Smith} and I giving information, it’s a back-and-forth conversation where teachers are allowed to submit ideas. And when we have the consultants come in, we ask staff members what they need so everything is more or less specific to what their needs are.”
Another area of strength Lehnert said came up was the overall functioning of the school.
“Teachers and staff now have formal methods in terns of the optimal functioning of the school, and the fiscal and technological resources are managed in a way that directly supports the teachers,” Lehnert said. “Something I really appreciate about USD 480 is the resources our staff has, and when things aren’t running quite they should, we can contact Rusty [Tuman] or someone in his department, tell them we’re having an issue, and they get someone in pretty quickly to help fix whatever’s going on.”
Lehnert then talked about some of the areas of growth brought up in the HRS survey.
“Students and parents in the community now have formal ways to provide input regarding the optimal functioning of the school. When we looked at all of this, parents were pretty positive about this aspect, teachers and administration were at a 3.67, and students were at 3.26 when we calculated all the average scores,” Lehnert said. “However, with the student score being that low, we wanted to really look into why students felt that way. Part of those efforts in our action plan will be helping students understand they DO have a voice, but they need to understand what all that could entail since we are a Leader In Me school. We do have the Student Lighthouse Team, where students can apply for roles and potentially ultimately be selected. That team meets weekly with Nicole Hougard, and those students have direct input into what we’re doing – every single event we have, it’s their input, whether it’s spirit days or something else. I feel like those efforts will be focusing more on educating the students on what their voice looks like and making sure what all is involved, as well as how we can improve on gathering student input.
Another area of growth was the success of the whole school as well as the individuals within being appropriately acknowledged.
“When we looked at these scores, the parents were at 4.5, the students were at 4.26, the teachers were at 3.76, and administration was at 4.3,” Lehnert said. “This is something we’ve worked very hard on, and one of our Leader In Me goals was making sure everyone felt appreciated. When we saw the teachers’ number at 3.76, it was a bit of a red flag for me and I was wondering why there was that discrepancy. We asked Dr. Gomez-Rocque if the teacher information could be divided out, and she procured that for us. We had the Instructional Support staff, support staff that is not instructional, and teacher breakdown, and when we looked at the data, we found we are doing a good job with having teachers feel valued, we’re doing a good job with our Classified Staff members who are instructional, but we’re lacking with other staff such as custodial staff, cafeteria staff and others who aren’t directly involved in the instructional side of everything. We will move forward with making sure everyone in the Sunflower Elementary School building feels valued and knows they are a key part of the team.”
Lehnert then concluded her presentation by detailing the action plan developed from the HRS survey.
“With our action plan, our first goal is to increase meaningful student voice by establishing consistent and formal structures for the students as well as share feedback and ideas,” Lehnert said. “Again, that will be helped by Ms. Hougard, with the Student Lighthouse Team, by gathering feedback we need and then organizing it all for the teachers and administration. We will be working on launching those feedback structures and then building student understanding and ownership and helping them understand how much power their voice can entail. Something else I know we need to work on is the consistency of all of that – we need to have a structure in place so we are consistently gathering that feedback. Another goal is to ensure the recognition systems at Sunflower Elementary School are consistent, and that’s applicable basically all throughout the school. We’ve already done quite a bit of work, but we’re going to continue gathering data and making those adjustments where needed. The HRS survey was definitely good for us in terms of doing those deep dives, and we learned a lot.”
In the meeting’s new business, the board approve early graduation applications for Linettee Garzona Gardea, Elias Alvarez Lopez, and Johnathan Naasz as well as four Canvas Stipends per the superintendent's approval in the amount of $2,568. The board also approved a quote from Integrated Openings Solutions in the amount of $265,105 for the purchase of new toilet partitions in the student restrooms at Cottonwood Elementary School and Sunflower Elementary School as well as the purchase of custodial supplies from Pur-O-Zone in the amount of $19,215.28. The board also approved a quote from Dean E. Norris in the amount of $11,387.50 to replace a compressor on one of the Variable-Refrigerant-Flow units at Liberal High School and presented 2026-27 school year calendars. To conclude the meeting’s new business, the board approved a SEED Financial Support Agreement and a SEED agreement with Adam Gouro.
