By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Hays USD 489 will add certified staff for the 2023-24 school year, including new elementary science teachers and an additional librarian.
The USD 489 school board approved the changes at its meeting Monday night.
The district will add one and a half library/media specialists. The three largest elementary schools — Roosevelt, Wilson and O'Loughlin — will all have full-time librarians under this plan. Lincoln Elementary School will share a librarian with Hays Middle School and Hays High School.
The district will add three STEM teachers — one each at Roosevelt, Wilson and O'Loughlin. It will be eliminating non-certified technology assistants at those schools. Those staff members will have opportunities to be reassigned. Lincoln will keep its technology assistant.
Superintendent Ron Wilson said he thought adding the science teachers will help students better meet their science standards and create consistency in how the standards are taught.
To offset the positions that will be added, the district will temporarily eliminate two elementary class sections due to low enrollment during the next school year. A fifth-grade class will be eliminated at Roosevelt, and a fourth-grade class will be eliminated from Lincoln.
One social studies teacher will be added at Hays High School. Those social studies classes are currently being split between a foreign language and physical education teacher.
Adding the new position will allow the foreign language teacher to offer more language classes and the physical education teacher to teach more PE classes.
The district plans to add one family and consumer science teacher who will split time between HHS and HMS. HHS will be able to add four electives taught by the new teacher, including culinary arts.
HMS has no FACS teacher. The additional staff member will allow the school to add two sections of electives. Family and consumer science was eliminated from the middle school previously because of a lack of space.
A half-time music teacher will be added. This will not change the music offering in the district, but it will allow one of the current vocal music teachers to teach speech and debate half-time at the high school.
Shawn Henderson, HHS principal, said the school has low participation in debate because students have to prepare for tournaments before or after school and that conflicts with other school activities. He said he thought participation should soar when the class is added back into the school day.
The district will net 3.5 new certified positions for the next school year at a cost of $230,000, which includes benefits.
Board member Curt Vajnar asked if the increase in certified staff could affect the ability of the district to offer raises. Wilson said it is possible.
"We feel like this is really beneficial to our district, beneficial to our students and beneficial to our staff. It's going to make a huge impact," Wilson said of adding the positions.
HVAC projects
The cost for the three projects will be almost $5 million. The cost with interest will be just less than $6.8 million.
Work has begun on the field project. Work will be done this summer on the HVAC projects.
School buses
The board approved the purchase of two Bluebird school buses for $255,213 from Kansas Truck through the Kansas School Bus Purchasing Program.
This purchase is part of the school district's five-year transportation plan. $300,000 had been budgeted for the purchases.
The board approved a bid from Kansas City Audio Visual for $48,100 for nine Clear Touch Interactive teaching boards and installation at the Early Childhood Complex.
Three local residents spoke during the public comments section of the meeting. All three said they no longer wanted Hays High School to use the Indian as its school mascot.