News

Special to the Leader & Times

The Kansas Department of Commerce’s Office of Innovation is proud to announce the launch of the Accelerating Concept to Commercialization in Kansas (ACCEL-KS) program, an initiative aimed at fast-tracking innovative ideas to market-ready solutions. The program is designed to empower entrepreneurs, foster collaboration, maximize diverse resources, and support Kansas businesses to drive economic growth and create high-quality jobs in target industries.

Kansas Department of Transportation

The Kansas Department of Transportation is conducting a study to improve mobility, safety and accessibility in Southwest Kansas. Feedback in this study will help shape highway development decisions for many decades in the Southwest Kansas region.

The Southwest Kansas Highway Mobility and Expansion Strategy will study road use in the area and examine how to make that movement more efficient. Once complete, the study will create a plan for future transportation priorities and investments in the region.

L&T staff report

Dustin Ormiston has filed as a candidate in the race for three positions on the Seward County Community College Board of Trustees in the upcoming August primary.

ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

State testing has been going on throughout the U.S. and Monday, the USD 480 school board heard an update on recent testing at Liberal High School.

“We discovered, through a lot of data dives, we have students who are scoring in the high 20s on their ACT but scoring 1's and 2's on the state assessments, so we knew we needed to ramp things up and take a different approach to what we were doing because the state assessments weren't truly representing what our students are capable of,” LHS Assistant Principal Brandi Fowler said. “We came together as a group and we came up with our ACE the Test initiative, and the goal of that was to address apathy of the students, help the students become more confident in the content they'd be tested on, and establish a strong testing environment. Those were the three key aspects we felt would move the needle for us, and we also wanted to be sure we had a student version, a parent version, and a teacher version so everyone was on the same page. We especially wanted the parents to know there were things they could do to help their students succeed, and we definitely wanted the teachers to know that as well. We gave that information out before the parent-teacher conferences. We had multiple teachers and instructional coaches helping us with getting all of this together, so we really all worked together to make sure the students had everything they needed.”