WEDNESDAY,FEBRUARY 19,2003
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 7A
Experimenting on the floor
Scott Reynolds/Kansan
Caleb McGeeney, Parkville resident, experiments with break-dancing moves in the Pool Room, 925 Iowa St. Break dancers said they liked the large dance floor and open space.
Farmland Industries signs $270 million deal with Koch
The Associated Press
WICHITA — Bankrupt agriculture cooperative Farmland Industries Inc. has signed a $270 million deal to sell its nitrogen fertilizer assets to Koch Nitrogen Co.
The agreements, subject to bankruptcy court approval, must still go through an auction process.
The deal basically means that the Koch offer, the highest to date, would be the starting bid in a live auction by the court, said Farmland representative Sherlyn Manson. The Kansas City, Mo-based cooperative filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 31.
One agreement with Wichita-based Koch includes selected Farmland domestic fertilizer assets and the other includes Farmland's share of Farmland MissChem Limited, which owns an ammonia plant in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
The proposed sale includes
$104.4 million for the domestic assets and $86.5 million for the FMCL interest. The remaining $79.1 million is total liabilities being assumed by Koch Nitrogen for the two businesses.
Farmland's fertilizer business with annual sales of about $1 billion made Farmland one of the largest fertilizer manufacturers in the nation.
"While no longer a core business for Farmland, the sale of these valuable assets is pivotal to our successful reorganization," Farmland executive vice president Stan Riemann said in a news release.
The assets covered by the deal include Farmland's fertilizer plants in Dodge City, Kan; Fort Dodge, Iowa; Enid, Okla.; and Beatrice, Neb.; as well as 12 terminals located throughout Minnesota, Kansas, Texas, Iowa and Illinois, Mansson said.
Those facilities employ more than 280 in the United States and 81 in Trinidad, Manson said.
Koch also has a one-year
option to purchase Farmland's fertilizer operations in Coffeyville and Lawrence, as well as one in Pollock, La. Those operations are not included in the deal announced yesterday, said Koch representative Mary Beth Jarvis.
"Adding the terminals and plants to the ones Koch operates really form a nicely sized and customer-friendly group of assets to serve the U.S. Midwest, which is a large and very important customer base." Jarvis said.
Koch Nitrogen owns a fertilizer manufacturing plant in Sterlington, La., and 15 terminals in the Midwest and has part ownership and marketing agreements already in place in Venezuela and Trinidad.
Farmland anticipates completing the fertilizer sale later this spring. It is still trying to sell its petroleum refinery and grain elevators. Manson said.
Koch Nitrogen Co. is a subsidiary of the privately held Koch Industries, Inc.
Panel hears opposition to school consolidation
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — Legislators received a simple message yesterday as they considered consolidating school districts: Don't.
Superintendents, school board members and parents testified before the House Education Committee on a series of bills to reduce the number of school districts from 303 to as few as 40.
They said small districts already provided good education and that changing administrators' duties would not produce desired savings.
"Everyone wears quite a few hats," said Fowler Superintendent Gena Stanley, who also oversees food service and is the district's main substitute teacher.
Stanley said what many people feared was the loss of community identity. Fowler is 45 miles from Dodge City along the Oklahoma border.
"Our town really revolves around the high school," she said. "People really only live in Fowler because of the schools."
Education Chairwoman Kathe Decker (R-Clay Center), said the committee would hold hearings again today but that it was uncertain if a bill would emerge for House consideration. She said
the topic could be studied after the 2003 session.
Kent Moore, a farmer whose children attend the Skyline schools in Pratt County, said the 400-student district should be allowed to make its own choice about consolidating. A 1967 decision to combine four dwindling districts to create Skyline was driven by local concerns, he said.
"If and when a community makes that decision, the state should facilitate consolidation, but it should not mandate that it take place." Moore said.
And Kay Smith, another Pratt County resident, said, "Rural living is a lifestyle choice that we made. Consolidation takes away that freedom of choice."
Others, including South Haven Superintendent Jim Sutton and Axtell Superintendent Larry Geil, said consolidation would reduce the opportunities for students to participate in extracurricular activities. The superintendents said activities improved an educational experience and helped shape young leaders.
Mark Tallman, lobbyist for the Kansas Association of School Boards, said consolidating would not necessarily save state dollars. Kansas spends $2.3 billion in general revenues on elementary and secondary education.
He cited figures from 1965 to 1968, where total budgets increased 7.42 percent and perpupil spending increased 11.48 percent. Tallman said the suggestion that as much as $480 million could be saved was misleading.
"Parents would expect the same level of academic offering and services across the new district, and possibly more services in a new, larger district," he said.
Not represented at yesterday's hearing were districts with more than 1,000 students.
Salina Superintendent Gary Norris, who has worked on a plan to create 40 regional education districts, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that the plan has received a lot of attention but is "not a silver bullet" for education.
He said the plan wouldn't work unless "every dollar currently allocated to education remains allocated to education."
Regardless of what bill may emerge, Norris said it was difficult for local districts to consolidate without legislative initiatives or incentives.
"Generally, it will not come from the local folks," Norris said.
Suspended school principal concerned about his career
The Associated Press
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The principal of a Kansas City elementary school where he and two teachers are accused of using excessive discipline thinks his career might be over.
District policy.
"I think they will either terminate me or ask for my resignation," Pitcher Elementary Principal Rick Mills told The Kansas City Star. "I hate that because I love being an elementary principal. I love being around children."
But he said publicity surrounding claims against him may prevent other schools from hiring him.
"My career in education is probably over," said Mills, who took the Kansas City job this school year after retiring from another school district where he admitted to 0spanking children. "It hurts. It really hurts."
Mills, 53, has been an advocate of corporal punishment, having said that's one reason people have rear ends. He was suspended Feb. 6 for allegedly spanking three children in violation of Kansas City School
The two teachers, who also have been suspended, are accused of binding kindergartners to their chairs with tape, placing pepper in their mouths and threatening them with a hot glue gun.
"Both these teachers are excellent teachers. They both made a mistake," Mills said.
He declined to elaborate on what he meant by the word "mistake."
The allegations are the latest to surface at Pitcher, where last year, under a different principal, 23 students were strip-searched by two teachers who were looking for a missing $5 bill.
Also last year, a teacher and teacher's aide were disciplined for physical and verbal abuse of preschoolers.
Mills acknowledges that he is a staunch believer in corporal punishment, but denies he swatted Pitcher students. He said he follows district policy and disciplined children by putting them in the corner with their hands behind their backs.
Mills has been openly quoted on his support of corporal punishment, and has had to answer questions about his disciplinary practices in the past.
He was hired at Pitcher in July after retiring from the Henry County R-1 school district, where he had been principal at Windsor Elementary School. That rural district, located about 70 miles southeast of Kansas City, allows students to be spanked with a parent's permission.
While principal there, Mills told the Sedalia Democrat in an interview in 2000 that he spanked nine elementary pupils during the 1999-2000 school year and rarely saw a repeat offender.
"When you love children, sometimes you have to hug them and other times you have to spank them," Mills told the newspaper. "God gave us a butt for two reasons: one is biological, the other is for discipline."
Kansas City school officials subjected Mills to the routine check of criminal and Missouri Department of Social Services records before hiring him, but nothing about previous allegations or his belief in corporal punishment showed up.
Listing Useful Services
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The University of Kansas Chancellor's Student Awards Committee
Is accepting nominations and applications for the following graduating senior awards:
The Agnes Wright Strickland Award
The Agnes Wright Strickland A.
The Donald K. Alderson Award
The Class of 1913 Award
The Alexis F. Dillard Student Involvement Award
*The Rusty Leffel Concerned Student Award
The Caryl K. Smith Student Leader Award
Nominations must be received by 5:00pm, March 7 Applications must be received by 5:00 pm, March 26
*This award is not limited to graduating seniors
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