In the Sept. 5, 2019 USD 112 board minutes, Superintendent Clark stated saying “Are we looking at one school for the entire district?”

Then in the Sept. 12, 2019 board minutes, Tony Zink was stated concerning the Futures Committee saying “The committee will look into whether the four communities and also the areas surrounding them would be open to coming together for something bigger than mutual sacrifice. Each community would by necessity lose their education center and make a sacrifice similar to the one that Bushton has already made.”

Bushton did NOT make a sacrifice to close their school. YOU, Tony Zink, closed it. And when you say “each community would make a sacrifice”, yes, Holyrood, Wilson and Bushton will all be making sacrifices.

But what about Claflin? They will NOT be making one sacrifice. Their whole intent through closing the schools, one by one, is to enable Claflin to make a proposal to build one new large school in their area. They will not sacrifice anything and they have never intended to sacrifice anything in this district.

We continue to send our grandson to Claflin, but we have no desire to support the school or the city of Claflin in the future. We are just waiting for the time when other patrons start pulling their children out of the district and we will be more than pleased to follow with them.

As the board has worked to control spending for education purposes, how much has been cut from the athletic budget? The board will continue to cut education needs so we can send athletic teams all over the state of Kansas. And what about salaries? The board fired all the longest tenured personnel so they didn’t have to pay them the high salaries. What about the superintendent? Have you made a cut in your salary, Mr. Clark?

And the board talks about unification. This is NOT a unified school district. Wilson has their own colors and mascot, as do Bushton, Holyrood and Claflin. If we were unified, we would all have the same colors and mascot. Going to a junior high football game recently, we noticed the high school football team practicing. Lo and behold, what jerseys do you think they were wearing? The old Claflin purpose jerseys. What happened to the T-Bird blue jerseys? I bet everything that had anything to do with Bushton was thrown away, but Claflin got to keep theirs. And you call this unification? There needs to be some big changes in personnel on the board soon or this district is going to lose students.

Robert Behnke

Bushton