By Rena Russell
Labette Avenue

School board members heard about the recent approval of a charter school grant at Monday’s USD 504 Board of Education meeting.

Supt. Terry Karlin explained that Service Valley School will receive $170,000 for two years plus $60,000 up front for training. It is a project that is agriculture based with integrated technology components. Each class involved will be age appropriate, and there may be individual projects. The idea is to teach students about agriculture heritage and work ethics. They will be responsible to various work related issues that are involved in caring and feeding animals and tending to garden plots.

USD 504 applied for the charter school last fall. The project will begin next school year.

Ray Huff will be the charter coordinator. The charter schooll will include traveling to Kansas State University for one week’s training, followed by one week’s training to Kansas State Extension at Olathe. The coordinator and principal will attend a charter school convention in New Orleans and Huff will receive coordinator training in Boston.

Service Valley will be the third charter school of this type in the country. The two others are in Minnesota
and Newton.

The state allows a charter school to be more relaxed in terms of how to use their staff and many of the regulations that apply to traditional public schools. They will have more flexibility for control at the school level. “The charter school will be for Service Valley students only and they will still have their core subjects for accreditation and the No Child Left Behind mandate,” Supt. Karlin said.

“It will instruct students how to work and earn the respect for it,” Karlin said.

Items that will be added include a high-quality greenhouse; wind turbine electric generator; portable
chicken coops and nine garden plots for vegetation and flowers.

The BOE would like to acquire additional land to raise bucket calves and maybe goats. Right now the Service Valley property has seven acres that are constricted with sewage lagoons, Karlin said.

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