Curriculum adoptions at Great Bend USD 428 involve more than textbooks. Publishers share programs that come with physical books, kits, online materials, workbooks and more, including training and lesson plans for teachers. For each subject, a curriculum study team looks at options and narrows them to two. Those finalists are then used in actual classrooms for a semester-long pilot. Each curriculum is on a seven-year rotation.
At the Feb. 9 Board of Education meeting, the school board approved upcoming pilots and received a recommendation for a program that has already gone through the process.
First, the PreK Curriculum Adoption Team received approval to try out “Frog Street” and Savvas Learning Company’s “Three Cheers for Pre-K” during the fall 2026 semester. The presenters were Katie Maneth, Melissa Lutt and Natasha Hardcastle.
The K-12 Social Studies Team will pilot two prospective curriculum programs for K-8 and two for grades 9-12. The choices of K-8 are McGraw-Hill’s “Impact Social Studies” and Savvas’s “myWorld Interactive.”
For 9-12, one choice is Imagine Learning Traverse for all courses: World history, world geography, U.S. history, U.S. government and economics. The other choice uses a combination of publishers: TCI for geography, government and economics; McGraw Hill for world history, and Savvas for U.S. history. The teachers said they will stick with the Kansas history curriculum they already have.
GBMS teacher Audra Ensley said they feel it is important that they have physical books along with the online versions. Others who joined her in the presentation were elementary teacher Jessica Delgado and high school teacher Barbara Austin.
The 7-12 English Language Arts Curriculum Team has already done its pilot and recommended “My Perspective” by Savvas Learning over an HMH product. The presenters were GBHS teachers Lindsay Behnke and Amanda VanSkike, and GBMS teachers Lori McLeland and Sarah Ellegood.
The board learned the seven-year quote for this curriculum, including training, is $269,554.70. Superintendent Khris Thexton said that is about $74,000 more than the curriculum cost seven years ago. This proposal was presented to the board as a “first reading,” meaning they will have a month to review the materials and ask questions before being asked to approve it in March.
