CLAFLIN — Members of the Central Plains School Board responded Monday to a public letter signed by several members of the district’s Futures Committee during the November board meeting at Central Plains Junior-Senior High School in Claflin.

The letter, addressed to board members, administrators and patrons, raised concerns about the goal of the committee. The entire letter is on Page A4.

“When we were recruited for this committee, we were led to believe that the goal of this group was to come together to explore different solutions and ideas in order to create a sustainable future for the district,” the letter stated.

At the third meeting of the committee, board vice president Tony Zink indicated to the group that the only task it had was to determine whether district communities would support a school bond to build an “all-in-one” school, encompassing all students in the district at a central and “neutral” location.

“That was news to almost everyone in the room, and in direct contradiction with the originally discussed objectives for the team. The consensus among the members of the group is a belief that there are solutions which would better fit our communities’ vision.”

The letter goes on to state “If all the board really wanted to explore was the viability of a bond to construct an allin-one building for the entire district, why form a committee that is going to spend several months investigating a question that could have been answered by the district sending out information to district patrons and asking for a response, or simply hosting Town Halls in each community?”

Before and at the meeting, the Independent-Reporter asked several committee members about the letter. Here are their responses:

Stephanie Petermann of Holyrood: “Frankly, I was a little frustrated and upset that they take 12 people in our communities who are willing to donate our time and energy and ask us to do something that could have been done by the school board itself.”

Allison Koch of Holyrood: “It was a little surprising to agree to be there for one purpose, only to be told your focus is different. If I had known the ultimate goal was one building I probably wouldn’t have agreed to be on the committee.”

“It was a little surprising to agree to be there for one purpose, only to be told your focus is different.”
Allison Koch
Futures Committee member

Koch penned the letter.

Karen Riggs of Bushton: “Everything is so confusing on the reason we were there to start with. When Tony (Zink) came in and basically told us this is what you are doing, we were all thrown a little bit on what our goal was.”

Jessie Habiger of Bushton: “I think Allison and the ones that signed it wanted to make sure that the community members weren’t thinking that it was us coming up with this plan of action. When we were told in that Futures meeting what we were supposed to be doing, like she said, we were all shellshocked. It was a way to say ‘hey, board, we weren’t prepared for this. We didn’t know this is what we were supposed to solely be doing. Here’s our feedback, here’s our thoughts. We’ll do what you ask, but were also going to do more’.”

Zink began his comments by putting the situation into context.

“I was asked to meet with the Futures Committee to discuss the role of the Futures Committee and what some of what the board was asking of them,” he said.

Zink said within a couple of days after the June board meeting, he called Superintendent Clark with the idea the board form a committee to look into one specific question the board would like the answer to.

“With a limited term left for this current sitting board of Dec. 31, it had to be fairly narrow in scope,” Zink said.“The idea as Greg and I thought was that if this board could get a committee in place that the new board that will take seats in the beginning of January would see the merit in the committee and, hopefully, not only continue to not only ask the committee for some help, but to maybe possibly expand their role and move forward.”

Zink said that was discussed during the next several board meetings.

“I still to this day believe there is value in a committee such as this,” he said.“The challenge we have is this board cannot set the agenda for the next board. And this board is limited by time.”

Zink said the board clarified during board meetings what it was asking the Futures Committee to do.

“That, basically, long and short, was to go out into the communities and find out if the communities were open to the idea, or even if the communities wanted the board to even invest time and effort into looking into one district school,” he said. “One location, bringing everyone together and finally bringing everybody into one complete district school.”

Because he was pushing the idea of the Futures Committee, Zink said he was asked by Clark to speak to the committee.

“Now whether I did a good job or not speaking to the committee — I tried to explain to them the situation I just explained to everybody here,” Zink said.

Zink said the Futures Committee are a good group of people.

“Individually and collectively, they are intelligent, they are diverse, and they are working to not only answer the question — I believe there are flyers in some of the communities right now or maybe cards — trying to get the information from the community in regards to the bigger question. But also in the background I was told they’re working on other things as well.”

Zink said although he wasn’t at the Futures Committee meeting long enough to go into what some of those other ideas are, he said they do have merit.

“Given the opportunity, I hope the new board can see that, and that the new board can, as I said in that meeting, possibly expand or at least give the agenda to the committee based off of what the new board wants to do,” he added.

Based off the current election, Zink said there will be four of the current members on the new board.

“Come the first meeting in January, it will be my intent to point this out again to all on the new board,” he said.“That once we have completion of the task this board has given them, they consider keeping the committee in place and expanding their role.”

“To add to that, the reason we emphasized that question, the one school for the district, is because in all of these discussions with the bond, the school closure, all of that, the question always came up why don’t we just close all the schools and do one, or close half the schools and do two new schools, whatever that might be,” board member Brad Schiermeyer said.“And so, for me, personally, that’s why I wanted to emphasize that question. Because as a board, we can’t answer that. That is a community thing.”

Schiermeyer emphasized the board wants the committee to do more in the future.

“Just because we would like an answer to that first question doesn’t mean we don’t want answers to other questions,” he said.

“I just know from the beginning that it has been a miscommunication on our part,” board member Jerry Bieberle said. “I understand that was the main goal, but I thought there was more to it and so did a lot of other people — and so did Mr. (Gary) Sechrist (from the Kansas Association of School Boards who was asked to be the moderator of the Futures Committee meetings).”

“I’ll take some of the blame in that,” Clark said. “Because when I talked to him (Sechrist), we knew we were looking at the one building and we didn’t want that to get overlooked. I probably did not stress to him enough in our meetings and phone conversations that was where we really wanted to focus and look at first. So bear with us a little bit on that.”

Clark said he picked people for the Futures Committee he knew would take it seriously, be able to look outside the box, and do what is right for the district.

“I appreciate their commitment to the district,” he said.