RUSSELL — The American Red Cross will have a special blood drive in honor of a transfusion recipient.
Junior Pruter was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome/transfusion-dependent anemia in December 2009, requiring at least weekly blood transfusions. Those transfusions gave Pruter another three years with his family.
Before he died in October 2012, Pruter wanted to attend blood drives to personally thank those giving blood. He was unable to fulfill that wish, so his family has invited the community to attend the upcoming blood drive held in his
memory and help others in need.
The blood drive will be noon to 6 p.m. Oct. 1 at Fossil Creek Inn & Suites.
Call (800) RED CROSS or visit redcrossblood.org to make an appointment. Walk-ins are welcome.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A nonpartisan report to Congress is raising new questions about a key provision of federal health care law: a compromise on abortion that allowed the legislation to pass in 2010.
The Government Accountability Office said in a report released late Monday that only 1 of 18 insurers it reviewed was separately itemizing a charge for coverage of elective abortions on enrollees’ bills.
The 2010 compromise that President Barack Obama sealed with conservative Democrats stipulated that no federal funds would be used to pay for elective abortions.
The GAO review did not address the fundamental issue of whether federal subsidies are being used for elective abortions, but abortion opponents said the findings underscore their view that the compromise is an accounting gimmick.
The administration says the policy may require additional clarification.
Mary Rose Henderson, age 86, of Ellis passed away Sunday, September 14, 2014, at the Good Samaritan Society, Ellis. She was born May 1, 1928 in Munjor, Kansas, to Peter and Sophia (Koerner) Miller.
She married Gay Henderson may 27, 1952 in Great Bend, Kansas. He preceded her in death August 20, 2005.
Mary was a homemaker and enjoyed quilting and crocheting. She was a member of St. Mary’s Catholic Church and the Ellis Ladies VFW Auxiliary.
She is survived by four children, Tom Henderson and wife Norma of Hays, Paula Lerch and husband Lutz of Commerce City, CO, Marla Worley and husband Paul of Ringling, OK and Marion Henderson and wife Vicki of Cheyenne Wells, CO. 10 grandchildren; 7 great grandchildren and a sister-in-law, Shauna Zimmerman of Bloomington, MN.
She was preceded in death by her parents; 2 sisters and 9 brothers.
Funeral services will be 1:30 PM Wednesday, September 17, 2014 at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Ellis. Burial will follow in the church cemetery.
Visitation will be Tuesday 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM with a parish vigil service at 6 PM all at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Ellis.
Arrangements in care of Keithley Funeral Chapel 400 E. 17th Ellis, KS 67637.
Cynthia Osborne Sack, 61, of Aurora, Colorado, passed away on Friday, September 12, 2014, with her family by her side.
Cindy was born on July 2, 1953, in Salina, Kansas, to Richard and Barbara (Scott) Osborne. She graduated from Hays High School in 1971 and received her Nursing Degree from Barton County Community College in 1979. Cindy is also a graduate of Fort Hays State University.
Cindy married Roger Sack on July 31, 1976, in Hays, Kansas. She was retired and a member of New Hope Community Church in Aurora, Colorado.
She is survived by her husband, Roger; a son, Cory Sack and wife, Ann, of Parker, Colorado; a granddaughter, Madeline, and expected grandson this Christmas; a daughter, Rachel Sack, of Aurora, Colorado; a brother, Scott Osborne and wife Rebecca, of Nashville Tennessee; a nephew, Nick Osborne and wife, Tina, of McCook, Nebraska; a nephew, Alecsander, and expected nephew later this month.
She was preceded in death by her parents and brother, Robin Osborne.
Services will be October 11, 2014, at 11am, at New Hope Community Church in Aurora, Colorado.
John Richard Schrock is a professor at Emporia State University.
Where does Kansas rank when it comes to the quality of schools, teachers, and the education provided? It all depends on who does the survey, what they measure, and how they interpret the results.
If you follow US News and World Report, Kansas ranks #47 (fourth from the bottom with Washington DC as a 51st “state”) based on a mix of reading and math scores, advancing the performance of poor kids, and levels of AP/IB students.
But based on parents, students and teachers submitting 1-5 scales to the national online “School Digger” site, Kansas ranks #4 from the top!
Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst uses a report card that finds many states, including Kansas, essentially failing. Her group assigns scores for states allowing private school vouchers, charter schools, and a “parent trigger” that permits parents to take charge of failing schools. Kansas requires charter schools to be recommended by the local USD and that dooms Kansas on any ranking system sponsored by political groups that favor charter schools. A.F.T.’s Randi Weingarten points out that Rhee’s group gave “…the top-ranked state of Maryland a D-plus for failing to embrace the StudentsFirst agenda of testing, sanctioning teachers and divesting from public schools.”
WalletHub, a financial social media company, recently came out ranking Kansas as fifth highest in the nation as a “top-performing state in terms of education.” This is apparently the ranking that Gov. Brownback touts in his campaign for re-election. WalletHub’s 12 “key metrics” include: student-teacher ratios, dropout rates, bullying incidents, etc. Their criteria of “lowest percentage of children who repeated one or more grades” failed to realize that some states such as Utah automatically promote all students and therefore would have no repeats by law, not educational quality.
Education Week, the K-12 newspaper of record, issues many annual rankings on criteria that vary year-by-year and involve ever-changing fads. Because the nature of Kansas educational governance does not allow for rapid turnover in leadership, and with our relatively unconsolidated rural school autonomy, Kansas does not see the rapid adoption of educational cure-alls that whipsaw teachers in other states. As a result, Education Week surveys often rank Kansas in the middle of the pack, often as low as #37.
The January 2014 report by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ ) has its own agenda, giving Kansas various D’s for not expanding the teacher pool or identifying effective teachers, and an F for not “exiting” (firing) ineffective teachers. In a separate earlier report, NCTQ did praise Kansas for depth of training science teachers along with ten other states, while 39 states and Washington DC received low scores for training shallow science teachers.
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) gave Kansas a B+ and A- for academic standards in Language Arts and Mathematics, respectively. But ALEC has the same agenda as NCTQ on school choice and “expanding the teaching pool” (letting more folks teach without training), and gave very similar grades as NCTQ for teacher training and firing. On cost per student, Kansas was ranked 26th and on students scoring “proficient” or higher, Kansas ranked 19th.
What about a reliable long-term national “standard”? The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was first administered in 1969. Managed by more test-savvy experts at the U.S. Department of Education, the NAEP for 2013 has Kansas with 9 states significantly higher, 20 significantly lower, and 22 in the same range with insignificant differences. Thus Kansas is somewhat average.
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” wrote Mark Twain (attributing the phrase to Disraeli). The above cases select criteria that are at best arbitrary and incomplete. At worst, they are irrelevant, political, and used to assign meaningless scores to make unjustified policy.
Harvard Professor Daniel Koretz has written a simple book Measuring Up to describe “what educational testing really tells us” that will help a parent understand why test scores and other numbers are not adequate criteria for deciding where to move to provide your child with a good education.
We should focus on having good teachers in our classrooms just as we should be concerned with having good surgeons in our hospitals—period. “State report card” rankings give voice to non-professionals who usually have political agendas.
N.E.A. data show Kansas is #1 among all 50 states in having the most males in classrooms (33.1%). Whether that is good or bad, I do not know. But it is about the only bit of education data that I trust.
ANDOVER, Kan. (AP) — Andover police are searching for vandals who damaged the football field at the Andover District Stadium before a rivalry game.
The vandals sprayed a large, blue “A” on the field sometime overnight last Friday. That is the Andover High logo and the incident occurred before Andover High and Andover Central played Friday night.
KWCH-TV reports the district spent $2,000 on a chemical treatment to remove the paint from the artificial turf. That didn’t completely remove the paint, so school officials are considering other options. Replacing the damaged part of the turf would cost about $40,000. The vandals could face felony charges because the damage exceeded $1,000.
Officers are currently following up on leads, including video surveillance from the field.
A revised work session calendar was approved by USD 489 Hays school board members Monday night.
In August, board Vice President Marty Patterson suggested conducting work sessions in each of the district’s school buildings.
The board hopes the location changes will encourage district patrons to come talk to the school board members in a more familiar school environment, rather than at the Rockwell Administration Center.
Work sessions are not televised.
The Sept. 8 work session was held at Hays Middle School, with a tour of the building prior to the meeting.
The remaining work sessions are scheduled as follows:
Oct. 20: Lincoln Elementary School gym
Nov. 10: Wilson Elementary School media center
Dec. 8: Roosevelt Elementary School library
Jan. 12: Washington Elementary School gym
Feb. 9: Hays High School library
March 2: O’Loughlin Elementary School gym
April 13: Munjor School gym
Other work sessions are scheduled in the Rockwell Administration Center on Sept. 29 and May 18 in conjunction with fall and spring graduation ceremonies at The Learning Center of Ellis County.
USD 489 Hays Board of Education members Monday night approved the appointment of an interim board clerk.
Sarah Wasinger was named assistant to Superintendent Dean Katt and clerk of the school board. Her appointment is effective Sept. 22 and continues until the position is filled permanently.
Wasinger attended Roosevelt Elementary School, Thomas More Prep-Marian High School and Fort Hays State University. She is the former manager of Radio Shack in Hays.
“I am very excited to have Sarah on board. Her work ethic and work experience will be an asset to the district and I am certain she will exceed my expectations,” Katt said in a news release Tuesday.
“I look forward to the opportunity of collaborating with Dean, the Board of Education and the USD 489 staff to assist in providing the best education for the children of our community,” Wasinger said.
The board also recognized Elizabeth Jaeger, who has served in the position for nearly eight years. She resigned recently to accept a position at Eagle Communications in Hays as corporate brand manager.
Board member Josh Waddell and Vice President Marty Patterson were absent from the meeting.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A group of Wichita residents who want to reduce the punishment for possessing small amounts of marijuana will try a second petition drive.
The first effort to get the issue on the November ballot fell less than 40 signatures short of the number required.
Esau Freeman, president of Kansans for Change, says supporters will start collecting signatures again Oct. 1, with a goal of getting the issue on the April ballot.
KAKE-TV reports the effort would reduce the fines for possession of small amounts of marijuana. The first effort sought to reduce the penalty for possessing marijuana from the current maximum of a year in jail and a $2,500 fine to a $25 fine with no jail time.
The exact language of the second initiative is still being considered.
USD 489 Facility Needs Committee co-chairmen Bryce Young and Patrick Lowry, with HTK Architects Vice President Chuck Smith, Topeka.
By BECKY KISER Hays Post
“The school district cannot fall behind. The reason that HaysMed, Fort Hays State University and other businesses are able to recruit new employees to Hays is, frankly, because of the school district.”
That was the caution issued Monday night by Bryce Young, chief operating officer of Hays Medical Center and co-chairman of the USD 489 Hays Facility Needs Committee. Young and co-chairman Patrick Lowry, Hays Daily News editor and publisher, presented the committee’s recommendations to the Hays school board at Monday’s meeting.
The 10-member group of community volunteers and two school board members began their work in November 2012 and had a final draft on March 7 of this year. The presentation to the board was delayed until this week.
The committee, in conjunction with HTK Architects of Topeka, worked on a long-range vision for facility improvements, touring each building in the district and working with administrators and staff to understand the educational needs at each school.
The price tag of the projects is a little more than $100 million dollars, proposed to be funded by a bond issue.
“We didn’t fully understand the constraints and space requirements needed for special-education classes,” Lowry said, noting nearly every building needs updated security and safety features.
Necessary building and equipment maintenance has been deferred for years, he added.
“I think if you could get everyone in the community to go through the same two-year process that we did, everybody would walk away saying it truly needs to be done,” Lowry said. “None of us walked in thinking that there was that much to be fixed or to be planned for. We walked away discovering it was a $100 million recommendation.”:
The committee asked for each school’s top five needs and top five wants. The recommendations include closing the Rockwell Administration Center and the Munjor school. All early childhood classes would be located in Wilson Elementary School. Washington Elementary would house Westside Alternative school and the Learning Center.
Following the 30-minute presentation, USD 489 Superintendent Dean Katt said the committee’s recommendations will be reviewed at every school board work session, starting next week.
“There may be some sessions devoted entirely to discussion of facilities needs,” Katt said. “We have a lot to talk about.”
In April, Kansas will conduct school board elections statewide. Lowry suggested that if the Hays school board wants to “push fast on a bond issue, voter turnout would likely be better then than any other time.”
The last major construction bond issue was in 1979 for Hays High School. The last USD 489 bond issue was in 1995 for maintenance items, according to Katt.
Click HERE for the committee’s recommendations report.
