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Building update on agenda
Published 10/24/2009 in Local News : Education
By MONICA SPRINGER
An update about construction of the new high school and early childhood center, along with a report about the Bilingual Teachers of Tomorrow program are on Monday night's USD 457 Board of Education agenda.
Jerry Bell, director of bond construction, will start updating the board on the progress of the construction about once a month, said Steve Karlin, deputy superintendent.
Dirt work is under way at the site of the new high school, which is east of Campus Drive and north of Mary Street. The new Garden City High School is scheduled to open in August 2012. An addition is being built onto Garfield Elementary School, which will be turned into an early childhood center. The early childhood center is scheduled to open in August 2010.
Other buildings that will be affected by the bond projects include Abe Hubert Middle School, which will become an elementary school, the current GCHS building will be converted into a middle school, and New Outlook Academy will move into J.D. Adams Hall, which sits adjacent to the current high school.
The board also will hear an update from the facilities naming committee that is in the process of recommending names for the schools affected by the facilities upgrade project.
The naming committee made a preliminary decision to recommend that the new high school be named Garden City High School, to retain the name of J.D. Adams Hall on the current building, to rename Garfield Elementary School as Garfield Early Childhood Center and Abe Hubert Middle School as Abe Hubert Elementary School. No recommendation on a name for the current high school building, which will become a middle school facility, has been made.
During its second meeting, the committee passed a motion for Clifford R. Hope Sr., a Garden City High School graduate who won a landslide election into the U.S. House of Representatives in 1926; J.R. Jones, former superintendent; Horace Good, former superintendent; Jesse Bernal Sr., a foreign language teacher at GCHS; Norman Clark, social studies teacher at Abe Hubert Middle School; Bernard Killer, a former teacher and principal; and Abe Hubert, former teacher and principal and namesake of one of the district's two middle schools, to be potential names for the future middle school.
Additionally, the committee added those names, plus the names that members of the public suggested through letters for another facility. If the name Abe Hubert is chosen for the middle school, a new name would be needed for an early childhood center or an elementary school.
The public suggested the following names: W.D. Fulton, a founding father of Garden City; Robert Sander, retired teacher and coach; Russell Isaac, a former school psychologist; Meredith Sonderegger, former educator; Lori Peister, former teacher and administrator at Kenneth Henderson; and Lincoln and Washington, after presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
There also will be a curriculum report at Monday's board meeting.
Janie Perkins, supplemental programs coordinator, will give a report on the Bilingual Teachers of Tomorrow program, which allows students to return to their hometown and teach after college. The program offers a scholarship, which is a collaboration between USD 457, Garden City Community College and Fort Hays State University.
Perkins said she wants to encourage more students from Garden City to apply for the scholarship and pursue a teaching degree. The deadline is March 1. Perkins said there are six teachers who received the scholarship and returned to Garden City to teach.
Perkins said she'll talk to the board about the English as a Second Language endorsement that teachers are encouraged to receive.
Four schools offer the courses in western Kansas -- Fort Hays State, the University of Kansas, Kansas State University and Newman University -- and teachers can earn the endorsement in one to five years, Perkins said. The endorsement requires teachers to take 15 credit hours.
USD 457 will reimburse the teachers for up to $4,000 in tuition costs if they agree to stay with USD 457 for two school years.
Download a copy of Monday's meeting materials.
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