The Great Bend USD 428 school board had its first reading Tuesday of next year’s handbooks for students, teachers, athletics and activities. The Athletic Handbook and the Activity Handbook include some new guidelines for school bus sponsor duties.
The proposed handbook adds the following statements to bus sponsor duties:
• The sponsor is responsible for adequate supervision on the bus.
• The sponsors shall sit in the front, middle and back of the bus that will enable them to monitor all students.
• Separate boys and girls on coed trips with space between the groups. A sponsor shall sit in the space between the boy and girl groups.
The handbooks also keep some of the current wording:
• The sponsor shall be in charge of all students’ conduct while they are riding, loading or unloading from the bus.
• Sponsors should ride in a seat on the bus that will enable them to monitor all students.
• Sponsors are responsible for the cleanliness of the bus.
• At the conclusion of the trip, items left on the bus are the sponsor’s responsibility.
The board will have a month to review the proposed changes to all handbooks and will vote on them at the April meeting.

Personnel
In addition to hiring Coach Erin Beck, the board appointed Ashley Riley as a teacher of Special Education Adaptive English at Eisenhower Elementary School and Tricia Reiser as the Federal Programs Coordinator.
The board approved the retirements of three teachers: Jeanette Bryant, ESL/Literacy Lab teacher at Great Bend High School; Daniel Eyestone, Social Studies teacher at GBHS; and Debbie Eyestone, English teacher at GBHS; and the resignations of two teachers: Tyler Manwarren, ISS teacher/supervisor and coach at GBHS; and Gregg Smith, teacher of technology at GBMS.

Upcoming meetings include an interest-based bargaining (i.e., contract negotiations) meeting at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, March 30, at the District Education Center, and the board March luncheon meeting at noon on Thursday, March 31, at Great Bend Middle School