Keystone Administrator Dr. Doug Anderson and Assistant Special Education Director Belinda O’Dell have a tall order — find new quarters for the learning services and do it quickly. They are asking for the public’s help.
by Clarke Davis
Keystone Learning Services, currently headquartered in Ozawkie, is in search of a new home and timing is becoming critical.
The Jefferson West school district owns the school building now leased to Keystone, but after 14 years the board wants it back. The district’s buildings are crowded and more classrooms are needed.
Keystone administrator Dr. Doug Anderson said the facilities they have now are not only the right size but are ideally centrally located among the eight school districts served through an interlocal agreement.
“We are desperately looking for an alternative location that is centrally located for our member districts,” Anderson said. “Our most vulnerable children are served in this building year round through our partnership with The Guidance Center. The families rely on the collection of resources we have here and we are very concerned that we find a suitable location.”
“We’re open to consider anything,” Anderson said. “We’d like to keep things together and location is important.”
Housed in the Ozawkie building is the John Dewey Learning Academy that has a current enrollment of 37 students in grades 1 through high school. It now uses six classrooms.
The Keystone administrative offices are located in Ozawkie along with a number of offices needed for the service center, which provides several statewide services. These are now housed in one large area separated with cubicles.
The Ozawkie building also houses an after-school program in conjunction with The Guidance Center that runs through the summer months as well. Location is important for this program.
Anderson said the interlocal board has looked at some options, but nothing suitable has been found at this time. The Catholic school at Nortonville was considered, but it is not available for the long term. The Highland college building at Perry was explored but it is now under new ownership.
A business building in Valley Falls was looked at but converting a business building to a school with sufficient restrooms would not be easy and the students need access to outdoor recreation which is not available in the business district.
Anderson said Keystone would like to own their own building, but he had doubts if they could afford to build, considering the cost of land and everything else it might entail. They might consider a lease-purchase arrangement with the right party.
Keystone has no taxing authority. Its revenue comes through state and federal funding plus tax dollars from the eight districts it serves.
For the past 48 years, those sponsoring districts were the six in Jefferson County plus Atchison County Community at Effingham. An eighth district, Easton, joined in 2014.
One representative from each of the eight districts make up a governing board. It would require this board and their respective districts to agree to finance new quarters. Keystone’s current cost is only $1,200 a month, about the same amount that USD 340 is paying the local bank to house the administration.
USD 340 Superintendent Jason Crawford said the district is seeing growth and now has four sections of kindergarten.
“We will need four sections of first graders next year if I can find a teacher,” he said. “The board is considering all its options and having the Ozawkie building back will solve some of the problems in the short run.”
At the outset there is a problem with breaking the lease agreement, Crawford said. The language is difficult and confusing.
“Page 2 doesn’t agree with page 3,” he said, but the district planned to have a representative at the Keystone board meeting Oct. 4 and try and reach an understanding.
“We are willing to negotiate and even give them another year, but we need some options, too,” Crawford said.
One of the first things is moving two classrooms of Head Start from the Meriden elementary building to Ozawkie. This is a NEK-CAP program and USD 340 has been housing this government-funded program for free.
“If we move those classes to Ozawkie that gives us some relief in the short run to operate another year,” he said.
A Keystone pre-kindergarten class, formerly housed in the elementary building in Meriden, has been moved to Valley Falls this year.
Ultimately he sees the Ozawkie building housing Head Start, an early child development program, and the administrative offices along with conference and board rooms.
“The community is also in need of additional day care,” Crawford said, not to mention before- and after-school programs and summer programs.
“I think the good we will get out of that building far outweighs whatever it could be sold for,” he said.
Relieving the pressure on the elementary building might allow the fifth-graders to be moved back to that building instead of being housed in the middle school, which is also seeing crowding pressure.
USD 340 currently has one of the lowest mill levies in the area at 40 and has no bonded indebtedness.
Crawford estimates a new middle school would cost $55 million, but adding 16 mills would only create $13 million and the levy would match one of the highest districts in the area.
“And we don’t have the land for it,” he said.
Crawford said his board recognizes the difficult position it places on Keystone. He said the board is well aware that USD 340 is one-eighth of that interlocal and they are helping educate part of our student population, too.
Keystone has a $10.5 million annual budget serving 1,000 students with 92 certified and 130 classified personnel. The tax dollars coming from each of the sponsoring districts is based on a formula of total students along with number of students in need of services.
In addition, another $7.5 million in the budget is for the service center portion providing statewide services.
“It’s less expensive to pool resources and have us provide certain services statewide,” Anderson said.
A couple of examples is being host to the software that allows the majority of special education teachers in the state to write individual education plans known as IEPs; and Kansas is required by the federal government to produce reports regarding performance of students with disabilities on 18 state indicators.
For this purpose, Keystone hosts the management information systems and is the fiscal agent for that project.
The Keystone board members are Caleb Clark, USD 338, Valley Falls; Justin Finley, president, USD 339, Jefferson County North; Kelly Midgley, USD 340, Jefferson West; Jana Farmer, USD 341, Oskaloosa; Robin Croxel or Pam Carleton, USD 342, McLouth; Ramon Gonzalez, vice president, USD 343, Perry-Lecompton; Kelli Bottorff, USD 377, Atchison County Community; and Jerry Barnes, USD 449, Easton.