Tag: Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey
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Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture: Wichita School District’s Favorite Architect Has Hand in Everything
Recently I obtained the contract for the construction of Stucky Middle School for USD 259, the Wichita public school district. Something I observed is that Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture was not the architect. Instead, it was Gossen Livingston Associates, Inc. Gossen Livingston was one of the hosts for the kickoff of the “Yes For…
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Records Requests Sent Today
Today, I’ve made two records requests under the Kansas Open Records Act. The first, to USD 259, the Wichita public school district, is this: All correspondence between USD 259 and Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture and its representatives from July 1, 2007 to the present. I ask for both written and electronic correspondence such as…
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Mark McCormick’s Wichita School Bond Bias
Writing from Scottsdale, Arizona Today’s Mark McCormick column in the Wichita Eagle (Opponents of school bond skip specifics) provides an example of this columnist’s bias, and how this bias leads to his rapidly losing credibility among Wichitans. Bias is okay for a columnist. Everyone is entitled to a point of view. After reading a few…
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Wichita School Safe Rooms: At No Cost?
Writing from Scottsdale, Arizona At the September 8, 2008 meeting of the board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, safe rooms were on the agenda. A few things I learned: It appears that it was by serendipity that the district discovered that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would help pay for the…
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Carol Rupe, Kansas School Board Member, Speaks for the Wichita School Bond Issue
In a letter to the Wichita Eagle, Kansas school board member Carol Rupe makes the case for supporting the Wichita school bond issue. It’s not remarkable that a member of the public school bureaucracy would support increased spending on schools. Her letter is remarkable, however, in what it says, and what it doesn’t say. For…
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Increasing the Wichita School Bond Issue: Why Was Courage Required?
Talking to news media during a break in the meeting of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, on Monday August 11, 2008, Connie Dietz referred to her surprise motion to increase the amount being asked for by $20 million, remarking “I knew what I wanted to do, and I guess I was trying to…
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Wichita School Bond Issue: What We Don’t Know
In a recent article I wondered Who Runs the Wichita School Bond Issue Campaign? Reporting in today’s Wichita Eagle (Technical ed at center of bond changes) makes me even more concerned about this. At Monday’s school board meeting, representatives of Citizens Alliance for Responsible Education (CARE) revealed their recommendations for the revision of a proposed…
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Who Runs the Wichita School Bond Issue Campaign?
As reported in the Wichita Eagle in May, the co-leaders of Citizens Alliance for Responsible Education (CARE) knew very little of the details of a telephone survey their group conducted to discover Wichitans’ attitudes towards a school bond issue. That they knew so little gives the citizens of Wichita cause to question who is in…
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CARE Dropped Ball on Educating About Wichita School Bond Issue
My friend Helen Cochran of Citizens for Better Education contributes this article, which appeared in the Wichita Eagle. In this article, Helen analyzes the work of Citizens Alliance for Responsible Education, a group that supports the Wichita school bond issue. As Helen notes, attendance at the four educational meetings CARE held was low. In one…
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Wichita School District: Tax Rates Not Increasing, But Taxes Paid Are
According to the Wichita Eagle article School board plans no tax increase for coming year, USD 259, the Wichita public school district, does not “plan to raise property taxes” to pay for school operations next year. Now if you read that and that alone, you might want to congratulate Wichita school officials for respecting the…
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Wichita Business Journal: Please Explain the Wichita School Bond Impact
Mr. Heck must be relying on reporting from his own newspaper, for a few months ago it printed the article “Brooks: Bond issue possible in spring” (December 28, 2007 Wichita Business Journal) in which Brooks and Joe Johnson, head of the school district’s architectural firm Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture say that the bond issue…