Jack Koehn, superintendent of USD 257 schools, explained in detail Thursday evening why the district needs to replace its elementary and high schools. SAFETY EDUCATIONAL EFFICIENCIES OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCIES ADEQUATE EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT THE DISTRICT has an option to purchase about 95 acres of land, just north of Oregon Road, that straddles the Prairie Spirit Trail. KOEHN said he and others are willing to visit with anyone about the bond issue.
Koehn spoke at length with a small group of Iolans about issues facing the district, and why the most affordable long-term option is new construction.
Voters in Iola and USD 257 will decide Nov. 4 a pair of issues: a district-wide general obligation bond and a half-cent sales tax for Iola. Both must be approved for the project to proceed, due to an inter-local agreement between the Iola City Council and the USD 257 board.
Koehn touched on four issues that he contends make new construction the best option for USD 257 — safety; educational and operational efficiencies; and what he describes as an inadequate educational environment.
Elementary, middle and high school buildings have significant issues regarding air quality, stemming from water in basements and crawl spaces, Koehn said.
Traffic and parking around each school creates major problems, particularly in separating cars and bus traffic. A side note, Koehn dispelled what he calls a “neighborhood school myth”: more than 4 of 5 students ride to school in a vehicle.
The high school campus layout also remains an issue, because students must cross U.S. 54 (Madison Avenue) to get from the main campus to the Bowlus Fine Arts Center.
One student was struck by a car as he crossed the highway last year, Koehn said.
“He wasn’t injured,” he said. “He was lucky.”
Each of the elementary schools and high school fared poorly in a vulnerability study, Koehn said. Of particular concern is inability upon their arrival to funnel visitors through the administrative offices.
In addition, none of the schools meets Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations for restrooms, stairs, doors and parking spaces. While each elementary is comprised of cinder block walls, that’s no guarantee of their safety in a tornado.
“Greensburg and Chapman both had schools like those,” Koehn said. “And those buildings were wiped away. What kills people in tornadoes is debris. Even if the walls remain standing, the roofs are gonna be gone.”
“Special education space is neither adequate nor appropriate” at any of the elementary schools, Koehn said. “That’s just a fact.”
Administrators routinely switch entire classrooms to different floors in the middle of the school year to accommodate students who cannot climb stairs, Koehn said.
“We thought for a while we weren’t going to have enough first-floor classrooms at one school last year,” Koehn said. The number of special-needs students varies greatly among the elementaries, straining resources.
Koehn also touched on what he described as another myth, that building a new school would lessen the one-on-one interaction between a student and teacher.
“Where is this one-on-one interaction occurring at these schools today?” he asked. “It’s typically out in the hallway, on the floor.”
A single elementary school would prevent the annual headache of asking parents to transfer their students from one school to another if a building becomes over-crowded, “a constant PR nightmare,” he said. “What we find are the parents who get mad and move their kids to another district are also the parents who are usually involved with their kids’ educations.”
Fewer than 40 percent of Jefferson’s students this year would be considered in the school’s neighborhood, Koehn said. Others come from the north edge of Iola, west of town and elsewhere as needs arise.
A single school would make resources, technology, curriculum and policy implementation more consistent, he said, while teachers could collaborate more freely.
“Right now, we have quite a bit technology at Jefferson Elementary,” Koehn said, “and almost none at Lincoln or McKinley.”
A new building with dedicated lunch room would eliminate the need to shut down physical education classes for 2½ hours each day to clear out “our gymacafetorias,” Koehn said.
A single school “allows greater services to the students who need them most at a lower cost,” he contended.
Over the past seven years, the district has spent $3 million on maintenance projects; that number is projected to skyrocket to more than $5 million over the next five years.
“Every one of our HVAC (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning) units in the district is past its life expectancy,” Koehn said.
Replacing all would cost about $2.6 million. The district also will need to spend another $854,000 in roof projects. Problem is, the district’s capital outlay levy raises only about $311,000 annually, forcing the district to dedicate other funds, Koehn said.
“The trade-off for repairing old buildings has been the inability to buy new technology for students and teachers,” he said.
One recent study noted the district spends about 70 percent more on utilities at McKinley Elementary School per square foot than Garnett does at its new elementary school, Scott Stanley, USD 257’s maintenance supervisor said.
A new building would be much more energy efficient; perhaps saving as much as 34 percent annually, Koehn said.
USD 257’s three elementaries are “industrial age” buildings, which are not acceptable for “digital age” students, Koehn said.
Thick concrete walls make it difficult to impossible to get clear Wi-Fi signals, he said.
Classrooms are ill-equipped for flexibility.
“Right now, our curriculum is dictated by our facilities,” Koehn said. “We want our facilities to be dictated by our curriculum. And as far as innovation, we don’t know what’s going to be coming down the pike.”
The plan is to accommodate more technical schooling with a new facility.
A greater emphasis on accounting and marketing classes is a necessity at the high school, Koehn said.
In addition, Bowlus Fine Arts Center classes could be converted to half-day programs for such things as vocal and instrumental music recording engineering and production.
The elementary school would be built west of the trail; the high school to the east. Adjoining land is large enough to accommodate further expansion.
There is no plan for new athletic facilities, although the area would be large enough for practice facilities, Koehn said, eliminating the need for students to travel to Riverside Park for practices. The bond project would include about $1 million for improvements to Iola Middle School.
If approved, the district would pay for just less than half of the project’s cost, with 51 percent from state aid.
With recent changes in state education funding, the net result is a property tax hike of about 9 mills over today, which means it would cost the owner of a $75,000 house an additional $80 annually, or about $6.65 a month.
A grassroots effort also is taking shape to seek out volunteers to visit with prospective voters.
New schools votes on the ballot
