By JAMES BELL
Hays Post

Former Hays residents Nick and Andrea Felder wanted their young children to have the same childhood they did growing up around Hays so, after some planning, they developed the idea to open and run a child care center in the city.

Now that plan is in action.

The Bright Minds Academy will be located at the intersection of 22nd and Wheatland, with the over 4,000 square feet facility expected to open in January of next year.

The center will have the room for up to 55 children from as young as two weeks old up to six years old.

“Right now, plans have been submitted to the city,” Andrea said. “So we are waiting for approval from them to start building,”

Construction is currently planned to be completed by early December.

The building will start with four rooms — an infant room named Beaming Babies, a room for children 1-2 years old, named Cosmic Kids, a room for children 2-3 years-old, named Twinkling Tots, and for the older children a room named Shining Scholars.

Originally they hoped the center would be open near the end of this summer, but were delayed during the permitting process with the city.

“They didn’t make it too painful. It was just submitting the requests,” Nick said. “It’s a three-meeting process, and they only meet once a month.”

They were further delayed after having to restart the process after the second plot of land was purchased to accommodate required parking.

While the process took longer than they hoped, they credited local realtors, Adam Prey, owner of the Platinum Group, 116 E. 11th St. and David Spady, agent, with keeping the project rolling while they were still living in Topeka.

“They have helped us out a lot,” Nick said. “They definitely went the extra mile on just about everything without any prompting from us, they were all over it.”

Nick said Pray found the location that perfectly fit their plans.

“We wanted something on this side of town,” Andrea said.

“The family area is here,” Nick said.”The other center is on the other side of town, so it’s nice to have the balance there for people to have two different options, not right in the same place to take their kids too.”

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A labor of love

“After we had kids, we thought it would be so nice if they could be around their grandparents all the time and it just worked out perfectly that we are from the area and can be by both families why wouldn’t we want to come back,” Andrea said. “We want to give our kids the same upbringing that we had.”

Andrea grew up in Victoria and Nick was raised on a farm near Cedar Bluff, later attending Thomas More Prep-Marion, 1701 Hall St.

The academy not only allows the Felders to be closer to their extended family, but they also hope it will be a boon for the area and hope to partner with other business in the area in the future to provide child care to as an employee benefit.

“We are all in on this project,” Andrea said. “This is important to us, just from a personal standpoint, to provide care for people that need it because it is hard to find good quality care, so it’s become our personal mission to do as much as we can.”

In Topeka, both Nick and Andrea worked for Blue Cross, and while Andrea is still in her position, Nick is working in the Topeka daycare their children go to in order to fulfill a six-month experience requirement by the state to open their center.

“I used to take them to daycare and drop them off and go back to my job, now I just stay there,” Nick said.

“I didn’t know what to expect starting out, but it has definitely solidified the decision for me,” he said. “It’s made me more passionate about it.”

Andrea has an accounting background and Nick has an industrial engineering background.

Both have completed Masters’ of Business Administration degrees and see early education as a cornerstone of academic success.

“All of the programs will be education based,” Nick said. “That’s what our kids get and we see how much they are learning.”

Faith-based learning is also something the Felders’ believe strongly in and plan to incorporate that in their center.

“We are going to touch on Christian based faith as well,” Andrea said. “We think that is important.”

“Nobody is going to be forced to say anything, but it’s nice to participate if that is their background.”

Nick added, their goal is not to push religion, but rather to share with children the midwestern morals and values they grew up with.

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Daycare vs. child care centers

While there are daycare centers peppered throughout the city, the Bright Minds academy will be classified as a child care center — only the second to be opened in Hays, the other being the Hays Area Children’s Center, 94 Lewis Dr.

“The regulations between a child care center and a daycare are completely different,” Andrea said. “You are getting a lot of different types of care at a center.”

“We are held to a little bit higher expectations as far as curriculum and education,” Nick said.

The staff to child ratio is also typically a lot lower in a child care center.

“Your child is getting more supervision, one teacher is not watching as many children in a center,” Andrea said.

The academy will also have a full day preschool.

“That’s kind of rare,” Andrea said.

While the academy will be open year-round, they plan to follow a typical nine-month school calendar for the preschool.

During the summer months, Nick said the learning will be a little less formalized, with a focus on exploration play, rather than curriculum.

Every staff member will be required to do safety training, including safe sleep practices, emergency preparedness, food handling.

“There are a lot of things that are common sense, when you go through those trainings, but there is also a lot of things that you haven’t thought about in a long time, or you didn’t know that exact way you are supposed to do it, so it irons out a lot of those details for people that might not be 100 percent confident in some of those things,” Nick said.

The center will also incorporate a live video feed parents can access at any time, something the Felders’ appreciate at their children’s current facility along with secure access.

“It provides extra piece of mind,” Nick said.

They will also utilize an app that will give daily tracking information, including naps, food, diapers, and educational activities.

As a full day child care center they plan to offer two snacks and a meal daily on a five-week rotating schedule.

They will prepare meals on site, with the goal of the programs director handling meals an experience Nick has received during his training.

The academy is currently accepting applications for staff as well as children, although infant spots are already full.

Applications can be sent via email with the address located on their facebook page.

“It’s all organic so far,” Nick said, “We sent up a backend end sales phone number for people to learn more about our facility and secure a spot by making a one-week deposit that will be credit back to their care once they start.”

As they prepare to open they will also be taking donations of any lightly used toys.

“The more stuff we can get from parents that don’t want it anymore…that’s just more we can provide to the kids sooner,” Nick said.

By JAMES BELL
Hays Post

After only 10 weeks since announcing a new Hays location, Harbor Freight construction is progressing at Big Creek Crossing, 2918 Vine, as the retailer prepares to open in Hays on July 31.

Construction is expected to be completed by July 15, giving the retailer time to install interior fixtures and place merchandise, according to James Younger, BCC property manager.

“These guys do not mess around,” he said, adding they arrived to get a jump-start on construction working in empty locations on the property three days earlier than anticipated.

Harbor Freight is also currently accepting applications for employment, which can be found at harborfreightjobs.com.

Younger said they expected to hire 18 people for the store.

While Harbor Freight construction continues, the new bathrooms for the facility are in progress as well.

“We are estimating the end of June or the first part of July for the restrooms to be open,” Younger said, noting they are cautiously optimistic about that time frame.

“Any time you take on a significant amount of construction on your property, there is always small foibles or shipping delays, things of that nature,” Younger said.

Despite the hassles of construction, Younger glad the shopping center is seeing continued development.

“We are definitely excited about that, updating our facilities for our customers is a big deal,” Younger

 

By JAMES BELL
Hays Post

In third grade, Hays native Chuck Schmidt turned in a writing assignment and the teacher was so impressed he was told he could be an author someday.

After 33 years in education working as a teacher, coach, principal and superintendent, that day has finally come.

Schmidt recently published his first book “Tales from School: You Can’t Make This Sh*t Up!” and is currently promoting his work that shares his experiences in the classroom and as an administrator.

“This book has been a real labor of love,” Schmidt said. “I have been thinking about writing a book about my experiences for a long time, but never had the time to do it until I finally retired.”

The book is a chronological narrative recounting of many of his experiences throughout his career.

“I have had so many tremendous experiences good, bad, indifferent, funny, sad, tragic, whatever, I thought I ought to record this,” he said.

Schmidt hopes the book will be helpful to teachers and administrators entering the field of education.

“A lot of stories that I think would be really helpful to new teachers and new administrators, to see the things that I ran into and how I handled them,” Schmidt said. “Sometimes they can learn from my mistakes, and sometimes they can learn from my successes.”

While the book recounts stories from Schmidt’s career, he said it is not about him, but rather what he has learned over the years.

“It is not necessarily an account about my career, but it takes the experiences I have had in all of the different positions I have been in in education and then talks about the stories and experiences and some of the lessons you can get in that,” Schmidt said. “A lot of it is stories about some of what I see as successes where I might have contributed, some places where I have made mistakes and things did not turn out so well.”

The book runs the gamut of his career, covering his time as a coach, extracurricular activities, humorous recollections of interactions with students, challenging students, and his time returning as a sixth-grade social studies teacher after years of serving as a superintendent.

“I spent my last 14 years as a superintendent in two different places, and then after I retired as superintendent my successor called me in August and said, ‘Hey would you teach sixth-grade social studies because we can’t find a teacher?’ ” Schmidt said.

So he returned to the classroom after 22 years.

“It was at the same time, a terrifying and a gratifying and a heartwarming experience all at the same time.”

Returning to the classroom allowed Schmidt to compare teaching from the beginning of his career in 1972 to today, giving him valuable insights into how much has changed in the classroom.

Despite changes in technology, funding and administration, Schmidt said the importance of relationships with students remains crucial.

“In order to be a successful teacher or administrator, you have got to establish relationships with kids, you have got to show them that you care,” he said. “I think what I have seen in my career is that is even more important now.

“I think kids are smarter today than when I first started teaching, but they don’t know what to do with it because they don’t get as much guidance,” Schmidt said, noting several tough situations he observed with his students in recent years.

“That’s where a teacher becomes even more crucial today.”

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Amazon publishing platform gives Schmidt outlet to share experiences

As any author knows, writing a book is only the first step in a long process of getting it into readers’ hands.

Schmidt shopped his manuscript around before deciding to self-publish on the Amazon publishing platform.

“They have a pretty good process,” he said.

But before you get to that point you have to have an editor, he said, and he found one for his book using an online service that connected him with a professor of English at Southern Arkansas University.

Layout and design of the cover was completed with the help of a Wichita cover artist who Schmidt met during a panel on self-publishing.

The artist had some help, though, as Schmidt’s 12-year-old granddaughter mocked up the cover idea that the artist used to make the final cover.

“It’s her concept,” Schmidt said.

With the book ready, Schmidt is now working on getting the word out and hoping new or future educators can value his insights from 33 years of education.

He has already hosted book-signing events in Independence and Topeka and was featured in the Topeka Capital-Journal.

He is also pushing the book through social media and in areas where he taught, with a Hays event to be scheduled soon.

Schmidt said he is also contacting schools of education in Kansas, with the hope that future educators may read it and use his stories as they embark on their own careers.

While completing his bachelor’s degree in secondary education at the University of Kansas in 1972, Schmidt said he remembers a first-hand experience of a teacher and found it to be more helpful than any textbook and hopes his book may be as helpful to new educators.

The book can be bought on Amazon in paperback form for $15 or as an e-book for $4.99

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Time at Thomas More Prep-Marian shapes life in education

Schmidt credits much of his success, and the success of many others to Thomas More Prep-Marian, 1701 Hall.

“I had some great teachers, both in grade school and at Thomas More, which was  St. Joseph’s Military Academy at the time,” Schmidt said.

One teacher stuck out to Schmidt as having a particular impact on his life and career; freshman English teacher James Traffas.

“He opened my mind,” Schmidt said. “I was just a farm kid from western Kansas at he started us reading Great Expectations and we read the Bronte sisters books and all of that stuff which was completely foreign to the life I had.”

“It opened my eyes and mind to the world.”

His class sparked Schmidt’s interest in education, but in general, he credits TMP with creating many notable alumni.

He noted several school superintendents attended the school as did former Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer, author and journalist John L. Allen Jr., and executive Washington editor for The Wall Street Journal Gerald Seib.

“They challenged us so much. They challenged us to reach our potential,” Schmidt said.

Those challenges in turned pushed Schmidt to drive his own students, several of which are now superintendents as well.

“I think there was an atmosphere of striving to be the best you possibly can and we a lot of kids that went on and did that,” Schmidt said. “For me, that came from my teachers in grade school and high school.”

The culture that shaped Schmidt at TMP stuck with him and over the years he dreamt of coming back to Hays to serve as the principal and president at TMP, but as he moved through his career and accepted other challenges and opportunities kept his dream never came to pass.

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Students success reward enough for former educator and author

Without a doubt, Schmidt cares deeply for education and for his students, and the biggest reward he could seek is the knowledge that his teaching had a positive impact on someone’s life.

He recalled recently one of his students from the early 1970s saw the book announcement and texted him telling him he was one of his best teachers and thanked him for what he had done.

“That’s enough to take care of me for the next couple of years,” Schmidt said. “Sometimes you don’t even realize how you are helping them. That’s the reward.”

You are never going to get rich as an educator he said, but “the richness comes from the knowledge that you have helped people in their lives and helped them to be successful in some way.”

“When you hear those things, there is nothing better, nothing better than that.”

 

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Technology is a tool to create better-educated students

When Schmidt began his career as a teacher in Topeka during the 1972 school year, technology in the classroom as we know it was in it infancy, but Schmidt embraced new tools and valued their ability to assist teachers in their classrooms.

Early in his career, he recalled sending letters around the world in order to collect stories to share with students about life around the globe first-hand.

Embracing the internet as a tool for learning, during his last year of teaching pulled up a live stream of people climbing Mount Everest.

“That could sear into their memory the height and the magnificence of the mountain,” he said.

The embracing of technology in the classroom has gone through ups and downs, Schmidt said, but he sees the value of integrating technology to enhance student learning.

“I think for a long time it became a fad, and then we finally figured out that technology is just a tool to help us think better, to help us find information and then we still have to use our brains to analyze it.”

“I think we have gotten more sophisticated now to use it when we need it to quickly find information.”

In particular, Schmidt said the value of technology in the classroom is the ability to prompt deeper discussions about a topic rather than spending time only on information gathering but warns technology can also be a detriment if not monitored.

“We have to be careful how we use it in schools, a lot of schools ban smartphones in the classroom and there is a good reason for that,” Schmidt said. “Kids will get on there and they will be texting and not paying attention, But there is also a lot of great use of those smartphones as well. If you can regulate and get those students to use them well, it’s a great tool.”

The information available to students with access to the internet is so vast Schmidt believes teachers now need to shift their lessons to demonstrate how to filter information, rather than how to collect it.

“I think kids are smarter than they ever were today because they are exposed to so much information, the key now is we have to teach them how to use that information, and what to do with it,” he said.

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Good facilities facilitate good education

A significant part of the job of school administration is maintaining facilities, and with 20 years of administration experience, Schmidt has seen a wide range of buildings in various states of need, dedicating a chapter of the book to facilities and bond issues.

“It’s not the major thing and it’s not the only thing, but it is an important part of it,” Schmidt said. “Kids have to be comfortable, they need to take pride in their facilities. You lose something if you are teaching in an old dump.

“You still have to have the basic things in your facilities, and you have got to be modern and you have got to prepare kids for the world they will be coming into and if you are in building that you haven’t done anything to in 100 years you’re not going to be able to do that. Technology is one of the big things, technology is something that was not considered in very old buildings, and they need to be upgraded.”

Preparing for the bond issues, Schmidt said he learned a lot of valuable lessons, not just about facilities, but also about leadership.

“I did some things wrong on the first one,” he said. “The second one, I hold up as an example of the best democracy in action I have ever seen.”

During his second bond issue, it was presented three times, all three for around $20 million.

All three failed.

On the fourth one, a community group was brought together, and they came up with a 45 million bond issue.

“I was stunned,” Schmidt said. “‘I said ‘What the hell makes you think we can pass 45? We can’t even pass 19.’ ”

But the community push, succeeded with 58 percent voting yes.

“It was an amazing process,” Schmidt said.

He shared those lessons with Leadership Kansas on how to build a consensus.

Generally, Schmidt hopes people stop to learn about the facilities in the districts and they come to understand their importance.

“We had the people that said ‘It was good enough for me back then, it’s good enough for them today.’ Well, that’s short sighted,” he said.

He recalled during his bond issues others told him it’s not the building that makes the education, teachers do.

“All of those have some element of truth in them, but they are not the whole story,” he said.

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Finding educators harder during far-right leadership in Kansas

Schmidt is not shy sharing his political opinions and unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for the Kansas Senate in 2016.

He believes many of the difficulties finding high-quality teachers in Kansas lays squarely on the shoulders of Republican leadership in Kansas that frequently attacked education in the state.

Schmidt said it is getting harder and harder to find teachers.

“When Sam Brownback came in and the far right leadership of the legislature, they started attacking education, they started with attacking administrators, saying we get paid too much, and we don’t do enough and there is too many of us, then they even started attacking teachers.”

He said the trend has continued causing many to abandon their hopes of becoming teachers knowing they will get attacked and paid at a lower level than similarly educated professionals.

“That’s reflected right now in our low numbers in lower numbers in our schools of education,” Schmidt said.

But he believes the current Kansas governor is pro-education and has hopes the trend may start to reverse, but without higher pay, it will still be challenging to find teachers.

“We have got to raise that pay,” Schmidt said. “I think what we have got to do is continue to try and explain to people why it is important and why we need to fund it.”

Unlike many other professions, no matter what technology comes along Schmidt said the problem is education is a people-intensive business and leaders must recognize the value of good teachers in Kansas schools.

“We have got to have political leaders who talk about the value of education and recognize the outstanding teachers that are out there,” Schmidt said.

And he knows both sides of the pay issue — as a superintendent he often had to negotiate pay with teachers to make a budget, noting the teachers were not always happy, but he always did what he could.

“The bottom line is that it pays off if we have an educated population we do better as a state, everybody does better,” Schmidt said.

Kansas, he said, has always been a leader in education until that last decade, corresponding with the attacks on education, and that was an attraction for people to come to Kansas.

“All of that has come together and pulled us done where we are not in the top 10 anymore.”

By JAMES BELL
Hays Post

A little over a year since construction began Midland Marketing is set to open its newest grain elevator in Palco with a ribbon cutting set for 11 a.m. Monday.

The new stand-alone facility will hold over a million bushels of grain and will help the company increase its grain storage along with new technology that will create much-needed efficiencies in the rural area.

The company looked at expanding other facilities but found a new facility was the best option according to Anna Luna, Palco coordinator.

“After doing site surveys at our current facility, it wasn’t feasible for us to add on,” she said.

The new facility is expected to hold 500,000 bushels in the main elevator along with two 550,000 bushel bunkers at the site.

The land the site was built on was purchased two years ago after finding more storage was needed with area farmers diversifying their crops.

“Things have changed a lot in the farming community,” Luna said.

Up until the ’90s, farming in the area was primarily wheat, but new as new crops have become more favorable to area farmers, facilities have to change with the times.

“With that change, we found that we need to also add more storage,” Luna said.

In 2018 and 2016, the facility was forced to store grain on the ground after reaching capacity.

“That made it kind of interesting, especially last year when we piled on the ground and it was open to the rain and the snow,” Luna said. “We decided as a cooperative, our board of directors and our general manager, decided that it was time to add onto our storage.”

Generally, Luna said the company has expanded current facilities to hold more grain, but in this case building from scratch was the best option at the Palco location and the new facility will take some pressure off of other area facilities.

The need stems from a lot of grain coming from the western part of Rooks County and created a situation where milo was at on the ground at Palco after the facility at Zurich was at capacity, Luna said.

“We’re hoping to take a little pressure off that location,” Luna said, which coincidentally was the last new ground-up facility the company had constructed. “What is exciting about it, it is the first new facility that we have built since the 1980’s when we built the annex at Zurich.”

With building a new facility comes increased capacity, but they have also integrated features that will help the facility become faster and more efficient.

“We are really excited about all of the automation,” Luna said.

“The automation will be like, someone can stand in the control room and push a button and load a truck. It frees up a couple of people to go do other jobs that we have been short-handed in being able to accomplish.”

Faster loading and unloading will also be a key component of the facility.

The elevator will be able to move 20,000 bushels an hour, compared to the current facility that is limited at 8,000 per hour.

A conveyor at the bunkers will also be able to move 15,000 bushels an hour.

“Just the speed and efficacy of getting that farmer back to field is going to be great,” Luna said.

The capabilities of efficiency and automation free up a person that they are able to go and do something else means that we can have one person instead of multiple people moving grain she added.

“That helps a lot,” Luna said, noting the difficulty in rural areas to find employees and the growing lack of interest in working in their industry.

While the new facility is exciting for the company, residents of the small town have been keen on the new construction as well.

“It brings a little bit of excitement to this small community,” Luna said.