A piece of software that facilitates online enrollment at Hays USD 489 remains down on Friday morning.
According to Amy Veatch, student software systems administrator, staff is still working on getting the powerschoolhays.com up and running.
In the meantime, online registrations are still available — but with one old-school step. Parents either need to visit the school or make a phone call to receive the “snapcode” used to enroll online. Once that access code is received, parents can then begin the online enrollment process.
As of late Thursday afternoon, more than 800 students had been enrolled in the district, Veatch said.
Growing up in a small town in central Kansas, Anna Hand was heavily involved in high school activities in Ellsworth.
She found similar opportunities at Fort Hays State University and got involved with travel abroad programs immediately upon her arrival on campus in 2012.
FHSU political science major Anna Hand, Ellsworth senior, sports Tiger apparel representing both her university and an Australian rules footy team while attending a football match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground this summer.
“I decided when I came to college, I was going to live it to the most,” said Hand, who in her first two years in college made two trips to Peru and one to Costa Rica through school projects, as well as visiting Europe twice on her own.
Nothing though, Hand said, could have prepared her for an internship in Australia this summer.
Hand, a political science major who will be a senior at FHSU this fall, just returned from a six-week trip to the Melbourne area, where she worked for the organization “Youth Generation Against Poverty.”
She earned an hour of college credit for her internship, which is mandatory in her major, and Hand said it was an experience of a lifetime.
Not only did she get to plan a program she hopes to launch on campus at Fort Hays State this fall, but she got a taste of marketing at the same time. YGAP also owns a restaurant, “Feast of Merit,” in Melbourne, and Hand said the restaurant was just starting to market a spice product. She learned a lot about marketing in a short time.
“It taught me that marketing is something I can use in anything I do,” she said.
Hand had learned about YGAP through The Intern Group when she was searching online for international internships. While researching YGAP, she thought its mission of “a world without poverty” sounded interesting.
When she applied with The Intern Group, Hand had five cities from which to choose, and her first choice was London. However, the only vacancies available at the time were in Australia, a 16-hour flight from Los Angeles.
“I never wanted to go to Australia. I hate flying,” Hand said, “but I really wanted this internship.”
So she took off on her own in June and arrived in Preston, a suburb of Melbourne where she stayed in a hotel with several other interns.
“There were a few surprises,” she said with a laugh. “The toilet in my hotel room was in my shower, which was something I’d never seen before. It wasn’t like I was expecting a five-star hotel or anything, but that was really different.”
Then Hand learned she would be traveling about 90 minutes to work each day, and the same trip back to her hotel at night. “I got to know public transportation really well. It was a real eye-opening experience.”
During her free time, Hand got to know other interns. “I made some really good friends while I was there,” she said.
Two of Hand’s favorite activities were attending a horse race and an Australian rules footy match, which she described as a mix of football, rugby, soccer and basketball. She was pleased to learn that the mascot of the local footy team in Richmond, another suburb of Melbourne, was the Tigers — the same as FHSU.
“I had my Fort Hays State jacket and windbreaker with me, and it was perfect, because their colors were black and gold just like ours,” said Hand, who purchased a Richmond Tigers scarf to bring home with her.
It didn’t take long for YGAP to recognize Hand’s strengths.
“I think they were impressed that I was involved with Greek Life and the causes they donate to and the service hours we do,” Hand said.
Hand soon began work on developing a college environment strategy for introducing the program “Polished Man” on the Fort Hays State campus. Polished Man is an initiative by YGAP that challenges Australian men to raise funds and awareness about child abuse and violence against children.
Hand has plans for several campus activities for two weeks in early October for an American version of “Polished Man.”
Until then, she is busy preparing for her senior year at FHSU. She is a member of a sorority, recruitment chair for Panhellenic Council, a senator for the Student Government Association, president of Kansas Young Democrats and a member of the professional business fraternity Alpha Kappa Psi.
Oh, and Hand is enrolled in 19 hours for the fall semester.
“It’ll definitely be busy,” she said, she is excited about organizing the Polished Man initiative.
She said the trip will be one she remembers for a long, long time.
“I didn’t know anyone when I went, and I thought it would be really hard, being away from family and friends for six weeks,” she said. “Then I got down there — and I think people where we live are the nicest people there can be — but somehow Australians are even nicer. I didn’t think it was possible.”
Courtesy Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism
Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism
ELLIS–If you’re interested in introducing your child to the world of shooting sports, hunting, fishing and other outdoor-related activities, mark your calendar for August 15. Hays area businesses, conservation groups and shooting sports groups have teamed together to offer a free day of target shooting and outdoor activities for youth 17 and younger at the 18th Annual Youth Outdoor Festival. The event will be held Saturday, August 15 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Hays City Sportsman’s Club located 1/4 mile north of I-70 Exit 157.
Youth will learn about and experience trap and skeet shooting, archery equipment, air rifles and BB guns, muzzleloaders, small-bore rifles, and more. There will also be a BASS casting competition, paintball target shooting, and a furharvesting demonstration.
Youth will be closely supervised at each station by expert volunteer instructors, and all equipment will be supplied.
Hunter Education certification is not required, and youth must be accompanied by an adult.
Registration for the event can be completed onsite prior to participation. Lunch will be provided, and youth will have a chance to win prizes, including guns, fishing tackle and other outdoor equipment.
For more information, contact Kent Hensley at (785) 726-3212 or Troy Mattheyer at (785) 726-4212.
Along with the rash of recent restaurant openings in Hays comes big news to fans of traditional fast-food chains.
Aaron White, Ellis County Coalition for Economic Development executive director, has confirmed the Long John Silver’s, 3380 Vine, will be expanding to include an A&W within the location.
Work has began on the conversion, with an expected completion of late August.
Check back with Hays Post as more details become available.
The Hays Fire Department, along with members of Ellis County Rural Fire Department, City of Ellis Fire Department and City of Victoria Fire Department will be training with the Kansas Fire and Rescue Training Institute the next four days involving aspects of trench cave-in rescue.
According to HFD Deputy Fire Chief Ryan Hagans, the course consists of one day classroom lecture and one day of hands-on-training. This is a two-day course being held on consecutive days.
The firefighters will work with the KFRTI, based at the University of Kansas, in rescue training east of the Hays Water Plant, 1000 Vine.
RUSSELL — Law enforcement officials continue to investigate a Monday night high-speed chase on Interstate 70 involving a 2015 Chevy Tahoe with Texas tags.
A woman in the vehicle, Breanna Meeks, 33, Arkansas, remains in the Ellsworth County Jail on suspicion of felony fleeing and eluding.
Another individual from the SUV, who escaped on foot in a rural area of Russell County, has not been found, according to the Russell County Sheriff’s Office, the Ellsworth County Sheriff’s Office and the Kansas Highway Patrol.
The high-speed chase began just after 10 p.m. on Monday, when KHP officers attempted to stop a Chevy Tahoe traveling westbound in Ellsworth County.
The chase, which reached speeds in excess of 100 mph, began at the I-70/K-156 junction, when the driver allegedly failed to yield.
After the chase ended in Russell County, one individual from the vehicle escaped on foot.
Officers began a search of the area, which included assistance from the Kansas Highway Patrol helicopter from Hays. After searching several hours on Monday night and Tuesday, the search was discontinued.
At 9:34 a.m. Wednesday, the Hays Police Department received an anonymous phone call from a male informing the department that a Hays Sunflower Bank branch, 4720 Roth Ave., was going to be robbed by two males.
Officers responded to the call to secure the bank and the area according to Don Scheibler, chief of police at the Hays Police Department.
No other information is available at this time, but Scheibler said the incident is under investigation.
Check Hays Post for more details as they come available.
STOCKTON — Stockton Police are on the lookout for a suspect in an armed robbery at a liquor store.
At about 6:25 p.m. Tuesday, an individual entered Krob Liquor Store on the east end of Stockton.
The suspect pulled a pistol from his left pocket robbed the store. The description is a white male with a dark tan or complexion, black hair, and between 5’8” and 5’10”. The suspect was wearing a long-sleeved plaid dark shirt with kkaki or light colored pants/jeans. He had no facial hair and did not speak with an accent of any kind.
RUSSELL — The Kansas Highway Patrol was involved in a high-speed chase on Interstate 70 on Monday night.
According to the KHP, just after 10 p.m., officers attempted to stop a 2015 Chevy Tahoe with Texas tags traveling westbound in Ellsworth County.
The chase, which reached speeds in excess of 100 mph, began at the I-70/Kansas 156 junction when the driver allegedly failed to yield. After the chase ended in Russell County, one individual from the vehicle escaped on foot.
Officers began a search of the area, including using the Kansas Highway Patrol helicopter from Hays. After several hours, the search was discontinued.
A woman in the Tahoe — Breanna Meeks, 33, Arkansas — was arrested and is being held in the Ellsworth County jail on suspicion of felony fleeing and eluding.
On Tuesday, a search of the rural area continued and the incident remains under investigation.
On Monday night, representatives for the Hays USD 489 Board of Education — Lance Bickle and Greg Schwartz — met with negotiators for Hays National Education Association for the first time since the 2015-16 board convened for the first time earlier this month.
Board members Sarah Rankin and Luke Oborny were also in attendance.
While the meeting addressed several issues the most contentious issues of the evening are still undecided. Those issues include health insurance, sick leave accrual payout, hours teachers are required to work and the grievance policy for the district.
While health insurance is still open for discussion, negotiators said the information required to make a decision is still unavailable, with insurance rules preventing comparisons between providers.
Superintendent Dean Katt said changes for this year are unlikely to happen because of the limited time available between now and the beginning of the school year.
With insurance talk on hold, the amount of time a teacher is required to be on site before and after the end of the school day quickly became a point of contention between the negotiating teams.
“I think some of the concept was before (the school day begins) might be beneficial to students,” Schwartz said in response to increased teacher hours before and after the school day.
However, the HNEA disagreed with the addition of time to the day, citing a lack of interest and increased work for teachers without additional pay.
“Just from past practice asking students, I have offered to come in at 7:15 a.m.,” said Kathy Wagoner, co-chair of the HNEA team. “They don’t show up. They don’t show up until 7:45 a.m.”
“I always thought 30 minutes was reasonable,” she said.
It was also noted elementary school buildings are not open for the extra 10 minutes the board would like to have teachers in their classrooms and, if the extra time were to be put into teacher contracts, there would be an added cost — even if teachers do not receive extra compensation – from support staff in the building earlier and later in the day.
Sick leave accrual payouts were also a hot topic at the meeting.
HNEA sought answers from the board in order to pass information along to teachers who might be seeking to retire before the beginning of the year.
Overall, the teachers’ group appeared upset the district negotiators weren’t ready to discuss retirement benefits, noting the timeline for teacher retirement is short at this point and, if an agreement is reached too late in the summer, could cause a number of teachers to retire right before or after the school year has begun.
“That’s not our choice. That’s theirs,” Schwartz said. “The threat of mass retirement is not good-faith bargaining.”
Schwartz pointed out to the HNEA team that nothing can take the accrued time away from the teachers if the HNEA does not consent.
With so much room between the two groups, Katt suggested he could talk with HNEA negotiators outside of a regular meeting for options regarding grandfathering in teachers who could lose time if a limit was set in new contracts.
“Many of these people have worked for 15-20 years for the district and so should be grandfathered into payout of sick time,” Wagoner said.
In the last area of focus in the meeting, the HNEA asked the board for a counter proposal for a grievance policy that does not include mandatory binding arbitration.
Under the current system, Wagoner said, “We don’t have any due process.”
The HNEA wants the option to address grievances without the publicity that might come with a court action, while Bickle argued teachers and the board should have options when addressing teacher concerns and not be limited to one process.
The next negotiating session will be on Aug. 5 at 5 p.m.
Norton resident Deb Christy will compete in the barrel racing at this year’s Kansas’ Biggest Rodeo aboard her seven year old horse Blitz. Christy, the daughter of steer wrestler Bud Forell, grew up in Phillipsburg and ran barrels at the rodeo as a young girl. Photo by Dakota Rose Photography.
PHILLIPSBURG — This week, the town of Phillipsburg welcomes 400 guests.
It’s time for the annual Kansas’ Biggest Rodeo, and 408 cowboys and cowgirls will visit the rodeo grounds north of town, all hoping to be the highest score or the fastest run in their event.
Some contestants will travel a distance to get to town, coming from as far away as Florida, Texas, and even from Marseille, France.
For others, it’ll be a quick trip to Phillipsburg.
Three of the more than four hundred cowboys and cowgirls are hometown-ers and are familiar to Phillipsburg rodeo fans.
Barrel racer Deb Christy and team roper Tyler Brockman are from Norton, and team roper Cody Ware is from Logan.
For Christy, she’s been attending the Phillipsburg rodeo since she was a young child. She grew up in Phillipsburg, the daughter of Bud Forell, a steer wrestler. At that time, local contestants who were not pro rodeo members were allowed to compete, so she ran barrels there as a young girl.
At this year’s rodeo, she’ll ride Blitz, a seven year old she raised and trained herself. Blitz, whose registered name is Dashin on the Blitz, is a brother to the best horse Christy has had so far, Choc, who died of an autoimmune disease in 2011. Choc was a phenomenal horse, and Christy thinks his brother Blitz will do as well. “Choc was a star. He was gifted,” she said. “Blitz is gritty. He’s had some adversities of his own,” one of them being a broken hipbone, which put him out of action for a year while it healed.
The partnership between the horse and cowgirl in the barrel racing is crucial, and Christy knows her horses as well as a mother knows her child. For horses, competing at rodeos is a learning process, and Blitz is learning. Phillipsburg will be his fifth rodeo, so it is new to him. “It takes a while for them to get used to the noise,” Christy said. The crowd noise, the carnival, and all the activity can be upsetting to a horse. For that reason, she will run in slack on Wed., July 29.
Christy finished second at the Phillipsburg rodeo in 2008, Choc’s best year. She made a 16.90 second run, “which would have won it,” she said, but was beat out by Mary Burger, who had won a world title two years earlier.
Not only is Christy a Women’s Pro Rodeo Association member, which means she can compete at pro rodeos, she is also a member of the Kansas Pro Rodeo Association, Nebraska State Rodeo Association, and the Mid-States Rodeo Association. She’s currently sitting in the top fifteen of the KPRA, NSRA and M-SRA standings.
Choc was an outstanding horse for Christy, but she thinks Blitz can be just as good. “He’s tough, very gritty,” she said. “The way he runs, the way he goes at it. He attacks whatever you ask him to do. He’s going to work as hard as he can no matter what.”
Team ropers Tyler Brockman and Cody Ware don’t have far to drive to get to their rodeo this week. Brockman lives in Norton and Ware in Logan, and they’ve been roping together for the past two years. Brockman, who grew up in Lawrence, Neb., moved to Norton four years ago, and Ware married Jesse Voss and moved to Logan two years ago.
Brockman competed in high school and college rodeo, growing up with a dad who roped. “I’ve been roping since I was seven or eight years old,” he said.
Ware grew up in a family that roped on a ranch in Floydata, Texas. He met Jesse in college at Panhandle State University in Goodwell, Okla., where she competed in rodeo as well. Jesse, a team roper, competes at jackpots.
The summer time is the busy work season for the ropers; Brockman works for a local farmer and Ware ranches with his wife’s family. But they both find time to get away and rope as much as possible. They compete at KPRA and NSRA rodeos more than pro rodeos, mostly because they are closer to home than pro rodeos.
Brockman, who is the header, competed in Phillipsburg last year. For Ware, this will be his first time. They will rope on Saturday night, and if they could win the rodeo, it’d be a big win. “They put on a hell of a rodeo,” Brockman said. “They get all the top names (contestants), and it pays good, and it’s a rodeo you don’t want to miss. It would be a nice feather in your hat to win that rodeo, especially living twenty miles away.” They will rope on Sat., August 1.
Among the other contestants at the rodeo are reigning world champions like the 2014 World Champion Bull Rider Sage Kimzey, tie-down roper Tuf Cooper, and team ropers Clay Tryan and Jade Corkill.
Kansas’ Biggest Rodeo will also see five of the cowboys in the number one spot in this year’s world standings: bareback rider Evan Jayne (from Marseille, France, via Texas), team ropers Tryan and Corkill, tie-down roper Monty Lewis, and bull rider Kimzey, whose father, Ted Kimzey, was a well-known barrelman who worked the Phillipsburg rodeo several times.
Slack competition is at 7 pm on July 28 and 29 and is free. On July 28, slack will feature tie-down roping, team roping, steer wrestling and barrel racing. On July 29, slack is steer wrestling and barrel racing.
The rodeo begins at 8 pm each night, July 30-August 1. Tickets are $15 for reserved adult seating and $11 for reserved child seating, and general admission tickets are $13 for adults and $10 for children. To purchase tickets, call Heritage Insurance at (785) 543-2448. For more information, visit the rodeo’s website at KansasBiggestRodeo.com or, on Facebook, search for “ksbiggestrodeo”.
From left, Zachary Smith, Amelia Jaeger and WKSC Coach Justin Kuhlman.
Submitted
LAWRENCE — Ten-year-old Hays Hurricanes swimmers Zachary Smith and Amelia Jaeger will end the long-course swimming season by bringing home 11 medal finishes in 13 races at the Missouri Valley Champs meet in Lawrence last weekend.
Smith swam six races, bringing home two golds in the 50- and 100-meter fly, two silvers in the 50-meter back and free, a bronze in the 100-meter back, as well as a top ten finish in the 100-meter free.
Jaeger swam seven races and brought home a gold in the 50-meter fly, four silvers in the 100-meter free, back, and fly and the 200-meter medley and a bronze finish in the 50-meter back, as well as a Top 10 finish in the 50-meter free. Jaeger was awarded third place female high-point individual, Smith finished the weekend in the fifth place position for individual points.
Smith and Jaeger have qualified to swim at the Central Zone Championship Meet in Topeka, July 30 to Aug. 2. Smith and Jaeger have both qualified to swim six events, each: 50-meter free, fly, back and 100-meter free, fly and back. The Zone Championship meet is the highest level meet for the Central Zone, which is made up of 16 states and boasts close to 90,000 swimmers. Those swimming at Zone meets have a chance to qualify for Junior Nationals.
Western Kansas Swim Club made a strong showing with its six qualifying swimmers. Of the 450 qualified swimmers and 26 clubs, WKSC was ranked 15th in the team standings. Hurricanes swimmer, Isaac Smith (13) swam four events qualifying for finals in three with top 20 finishes placing eighth in the 50-meter free, 10th in the 100-meter fly and 11th in the 100 meter breast.
Three additional WKSC swimmers, from across western Kansas, also competed in a total of 18 races, resulting in 11 top 20 finishes.
The Hays Hurricanes Swim Team is a member of the Western Kansas Swim Club and competes within the Missouri Valley Swimming and USA Swimming organizations. The Hurricanes are composed of swimmers (age 5 to 18), parents, coaches and volunteers and was established in 1975.
As the busy summer sports season winds down, Hays Post invites parents and coaches to send in photos and stories about the success of their youth athletes. Email photos and information to [email protected], along with the contact number.
An early morning front pushed through the region Monday, offering up a soaking rain accompanied by wind and booming thunder.
Reports from Ellis County ranged from 0.41 inches north of Ellis to 0.78 inches south of Hays. Rain continued to fall south of Hays as the work week began.
Ness County had a report of 2.4 inches of rain, while southern Trego County reported 1.79 inches of rain in the gauge Monday morning.
The skies are expected to clear Monday, with a high of 98 degrees predicted. Chances of storms and showers return Tuesday through Thursday.
A piece of software that facilitates online enrollment at Hays USD 489 remains down on Friday morning.
will be training with the Kansas Fire and Rescue Training Institute the next four days involving aspects of trench cave-in rescue.
