USD 329 Wabaunsee has become the first district to be certified as a “Public Innovative District” under HB2402, which was passed this session.
The Kansas State Board of Education voted 8-1 earlier this week to approve the district’s application, which exempts it from many state laws and regulations to provide alternative educational pathways and other innovative instructional methods for students.
In the case of USD 329, Superintendent Dr. Troy Pitsch said this will allow the district to move some of the “Career Technical Education” in-house, and provide a pathway from grades 7-12 to focus on plumbing or electrical trades.
Currently, students interested in the trades at Wabaunsee have to ride the bus 45 minutes one way to Washburn Tech — eliminating 90 minutes of instructional time each day.
“So talking to Don Frank, one of our local plumbers, I realized that we’ve got the expertise here in the community. My issue was that the state provides a pathway to allow school districts to bring skilled professionals in to teach kids, but it requires an annual (certification) renewal, and some substantial paperwork,” Pitsch said. “it is administrative-heavy, not only on the district, but also on the person that you’re asking to come in and teach the kids. These guys have businesses, they’ve got things to do, and to be tied down into an annual renewal credential waiver system did not give us enough stability and predictability that we could implement, so this district innovation designation came along at just the right time.”
KSBE Board Chair Cathy Hopkins questioned why the designation was needed when waivers already allowed technical professionals to teach without a degree.
While that is true, as Pitsch noted, that would require periodic recertifications by the tradespeople — all of whom have Master certifications in their respective trades — to teach.
Dave Trabert, CEO of the Kansas Policy Institute — which owns The Sentinel — said there was no reason for such requirements.
“It’s sadly ironic…even tragic… that the state school board members who want master plumbers and other professionals to prove they know what they are doing every two years don’t have the same expectation of school districts,” Trabert said. “Our state constitution and statutes call for academic improvement, but KSDE and state school boards historically ignore those legal responsibilities. They routinely renew accreditation of districts with low proficiency levels and show little to no progress because they don’t want to be held accountable for improvement. Instead, they emphasize processes, like having social-emotional learning plans and taking certification exams.”
Moreover, Pitsch noted that while the master tradespeople teaching the courses will be compensated, it won’t be as much as they’d make for a couple of hours on the jobsite.
“Our community professionals that we want to bring into our schools have businesses to run. We do not want to saddle them with administrative burdens when simply all they want to do is teach our kids how to become great electricians,” Pitsch said. “We should respect their ability to run their own businesses and do what they need to do, and not give them a bunch of extra homework, just so that they can enter into the building and teach students.”
KSBE board member Melanie Haas, who was the only vote against certifying Wabaunsee, said she was concerned that many districts would take advantage of the program. Board member Jim Porter was not present for the vote, but earlier said he opposed the innovative district application.
“My fear is that we do this for you, and then we’re going to have other schools lining up, going, ‘Oh, I want to do these things, it looks like I have to go through this process too,’ and it just seems kind of unnecessary,” Haas said.
The real fear, it seems, is that an innovative district will demonstrate that the top-down administrative burden is a hindrance to improving outcomes.
However, regardless of necessity, the new Innovative District law gives KSDE only the responsibility to decide whether the application is properly completed. If the board refuses to take action — the application to be an innovative district is “deemed approved.”
Under the previous rules, if the board failed to take action on an application, it was “deemed unapproved.”
Senator Renee Erickson, (R-Wichita), said in April an “innovative district” can be “a number of things.”
“It’s just basically a district that says, hey, look, we want to try something new, regulations or rules or specific laws prohibit us from doing it,” Erickson, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said in a phone interview. “For example, I know McPherson at one point wanted to use the ACT as their measure of student outcomes instead of the state assessment, so they could apply to do that. Some have used, and we’ve only had, I think, six districts over the years try to be or become an innovative school district. The goal is always to improve student outcomes, but it’s always around a rule, regulation, or law that prohibits them from doing something innovative that they think will help their students learn.”
USD 329 board member Dr. Greg Kennedy said this gives the district more flexibility.
“I think the question among the board was, ‘is it necessary to be innovative when we can maybe do some of this already?'” he said. “Yet clearly this gives us an opportunity to do some long-term planning, and to really get the electrical and plumbing professionals involved with students.”
Wabaunsee innovative district plan will provide trade certifications to students
Wabaunsee’s innovative district program will start students who want to be involved with familiarization with plumbing or electrical work — two trades which are short thousands of new apprentices each year in Kansas alone — in 7th and 8th grades.
“So the plan kind of got it laid out in that in that chart in there is we start the exploratory courses with our kiddos in seventh and eighth, by ninth grade they’re ready for introductory construction site classes, we’re going to get them through the OSHA 10 certification, so all of our kiddos that are in these construction pathways and in our ag pathways will get OSHA 10 certification.”
OSHA 10 is the gold standard of worksite safety certification.
As the chart below shows, by 9th grade students will be working to obtain the OSHA 10 certification, by grade 11 students will have the opportunity to work on more advanced projects, and by grade 12 students will be working in the field as apprentices.
That “longer runway” the Innovative District designation gives Wabaunsee allows for this six-year-long program.
“We need to be able to work with these contractors and plan out long term, and if we have to do an annual or an every other year credit waiver, you know what? If [KSDE] changes their methodology two years down the road, you know, then we’ve got a mess,” Pitsch said. “We’ve got these kids in a pathway that they can’t complete because we no longer can get a person in to teach those application and introductory courses, and it just becomes a mess.”
Trabert agreed, saying this legislation is key because the State Board of Education’s failure to require academic improvement for accreditation is a large part of why about 150,000 Kansas students struggle to read.
“Thank goodness the Legislature created a pathway for school districts to get relief from the bureaucratic thumb and allow districts like Wabaunsee, and hopefully many more, to become an innovative district and focus on improving outcomes,” Trabert said.
