The Great Bend USD 428 Board of Education is proceeding with plans to search for a new superintendent.
At a special meeting on Monday, board president Joyce Carter asked that a board superintendent survey be added to the agenda for Tuesday’s luncheon meeting at Park Elementary School.
The board planned to discuss and select a superintendent survey to be released to the district and community, according to the agenda. But at the Tuesday meeting, Carter asked that the board go into executive session for a personnel matter, to protect the privacy of persons discussed.
District administrators were not included in the discussion among board members, which lasted for 15 minutes.
Following the executive session, Carter stated, “The board will go forward with the superintendent search, and we will be contacting KASB (Kansas Association of School Boards) to go forward with that.” A motion to that effect was approved.

In other business, the board approved the following retirements: Mary Smith, fourth-grade teacher at Lincoln Elementary; Linda Martin, speech language pathologist at Jefferson and Riley; Vicki McCulley, first-grade teacher at Eisenhower Elementary; and Marcia Burhenn, special education teacher at Eisenhower. Speech language pathologist Michaela Heitschmidt was hired to replace Martin.
Park School Principal Phil Heeke and staff gave a building report, showing how Building Leadership Teams share data to track the progress of each student and help students improve. A single form shows how a student is doing in reading and math skills and social-emotional development.
“It’s like a snapshot with all of the data on one page,” Heeke said. “We feel like we’re seeing lots of progress here.”
Heeke and staff had board members take an interactive, online quiz called “How well do you know Park School?” “Our students are engaged with quizzes like this,” Heeke told the board. “Thank you for your support of technology.”