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Archives for “Shawnee Mission School District”
Tweet Donna Bysfield, the Shawnee Mission School Board member who represents the SM East area, will be running for her sixth term in office next year. In fact, all three incumbent board members who are up for election will be running for another term. Cindy Neighbor, who holds one of the at-large positions on the [...]
Tweet “There is a fiscal cliff coming in Shawnee Mission, too,” according to Shawnee Mission Superintendent Gene Johnson, not just for the federal government. Fund balances have dropped precipitously over the last few years and there is little prospect of state support coming soon in the face of the tax reduction plan that kicks in [...]
Tweet Visionary, charismatic, an effective communicator, passionate, up to facing a challenge: Those are some of the characteristics that the next superintendent of the Shawnee Mission School District should possess according to more than dozen people who offered input at a public session at SM East Monday evening. Ray and Associates of Cedar Rapids, IA, [...]
Tweet Shawnee Mission students who want to transfer to a different school in the district have until January 5 to file their request. While quite a few students requested transfers last year, especially at SM East, the district has not determined which schools will be open to transfers for the 2013-2014 school year. That decision [...]
Tweet The Shawnee Mission School District has sent out information on its first Legislative Information Session of the school year, to be held next Thursday, Nov. 29: Shawnee Mission will welcome members of the community at 9 a.m. on Nov. 29 to McEachen Administrative Center, 7235 Antioch for its first Legislative Information Session of the [...]
Tweet If you want to have a say about the qualities the next superintendent of Shawnee Mission School District should possess, you’ll get your chance this month. The school board has hired a search firm to help it find the replacement for retiring Superintendent Gene Johnson. Monday, November 26, and Tuesday, November 27, the firm [...]
Tweet The national polls may have had President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney neck and neck heading into Election Day – but Shawnee Mission School District students have a clear preference in the presidential race, according to the mock election they held Nov. 1. Results from the mock election, in which nearly 17,500 students [...]
Tweet If there are images in this attachment, they will not be displayed. Download the original attachment The Shawnee Mission School Board takes an initial step toward replacing retiring Superintendent Gene Johnson during a special board meeting tomorrow. The board will interview four search firms in a public meeting that begins at 7:30 a.m. in [...]
Tweet The Shawnee Mission School District is preparing for a 2013 state legislative session that its chief lobbyist says could be an “historic year.” A lot of new people are going to be in the legislature because of lawmakers who either did not run again or have already been defeated in the primary Stuart Little [...]
Tweet Almost with the stroke of a pen, Shawnee Mission School District will save more than $11 million by refinancing bonds from 2004 and 2005. The winning bid for the resale of the bonds came in at 1.78 percent. Representatives from the George K. Baum company, had predicted a rate of more than two percent [...]
Tweet The Shawnee Mission School Board formally accepted the resignation of Superintendent Gene Johnson Monday night and continued its accolades for his service. Several board members took the opportunity to praise Johnson’s 5-year tenure. The board will do a national search for a new superintendent by hiring a consulting firm to guide the process. It [...]
Tweet “I haven’t had a bad year, ever,” Dr. Gene Johnson said of his 44 years in education shortly after his retirement was announced Thursday. Johnson, who will turn 66 in January, said the timing of his announcement had more to do with the fact that the current five-year cycle of strategic planning in the [...]
Tweet Shawnee Mission School District superintendent Gene Johnson has informed the board of education he will retire at the end of this school year. Press release from the district copied below: Gene Johnson, Ed.D., superintendent of schools, has notified the board of education of his intent to retire effective July 1, 2013. Since 2008, Dr. [...]
Tweet The Shawnee Mission Education Foundation annual breakfast, featuring Superintendent Dr. Gene Johnson’s annual “State of the District” address as usual filled the ballroom at the Overland Park Convention Center this morning. The crowd heard Johnson both detail the accomplishments of the district over the last year and make a plea to change the recent [...]
Tweet The Shawnee Mission School Board took the first step Monday toward a bond refinancing that could save the school district more than $9 million. The district plans to refinance two general obligation bond issues, one from 2004 and one from 2005. The older issue has an interest rate of 5 percent on bonds of [...]
Tweet A recommendation to close Westwood View Elementary is not moving forward, Shawnee Mission School Superintendent Gene Johnson said after Monday’s board meeting. A strategic planning committee meeting earlier this year made several recommendations for facilities upgrades and closures. Among the schools targeted for closure by the report were Westwood View located off Rainbow on [...]
Tweet If you’re wondering what you can do to support local schools, says Shawnee Mission School District Superintendent Gene Johnson, the answer is pretty simple: Vote. “We are at a real crossroads here and we need everybody’s help and support for that to change,” he said. “We need people who will help us advocate for [...]
Tweet You can bet that administrators for the Shawnee Mission School District and the cities of Westwood, Westwood Hills and Mission Woods are spending plenty of time thinking about what Google Fiber means for the future of beloved Westwood View. The neighborhood elementary school, which has one of the smallest enrollments in the entire district [...]
Tweet One of the the Shawnee Mission district’s top performing and most beloved elementary schools could close if Superintendent Gene Johnson pursues the recommendations of a strategic planning committee report submitted to his office. The committee, made up of 30 district administrators, teachers, principals, parents, students and staff, recommended that Westwood View Elementary be closed [...]
Tweet If you hadn’t noticed, it was warm this winter. Like, really, really warm. Which was probably a pretty big disappointment to the thousands of school kids who pine for a blessed break in the form of a snow day. Well, kids, here’s a little deferred gratification: The Shawnee Mission School District will be letting [...]
Tweet Nine SM East seniors have made the finalists list for the annual National Merit Scholarships. Just 15,000 finalists are named, and are chosen based on their academic record, the endorsement of their principal, and their SAT and P-SAT scores. The finalists from SM East are: Toni Aguiar Andrew Beasley Spencer Davis Maggie Fenton Duri [...]
Tweet SM East has always had a great reputation for academics. This year’s crop of college-bound athletes suggests its profile in sports is on the rise as well. Fourteen — count them, 14 — Lancers signed national letters of intent to play collegiate sports during a ceremony in the SM East gym Wednesday afternoon. They are: [...]
Tweet The Shawnee Mission School Board on Monday passed a measure moving Brookwood Elementary families into voting area for the SM South representative on the school board — a move that’s upsetting to a number of Brookwood parents. At issue, they say, is the fact that approving the move now, as opposed to before April’s school [...]
Tweet A USA Today story published Wednesday uses the Shawnee Mission School District as an example of how minority families leaving inner-cities impact the surrounding community’s demographics. The story focuses on Kansas City and how racial segregation in the metro area has plummeted over the course of the past decade. It notes that as troubles [...]
Tweet A group of parents who protested the decision to move Brookwood Elementary into the SM South feeder area last year have a new gripe with the Shawnee Mission School Board: voter disenfranchisement. At its monthly meeting last week, the board heard the first reading of a proposal to move Brookwood-area families out of [...]
