6A • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2002
Educators want regional education districts
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — Two superintendents hope their proposal for a regional education district ignites a serious debate about school consolidation and inequities in how the state distributes its aid.
"With the continued decline in enrollment in many of our school districts, it is obvious that without restructuring, education opportunities will degrade," Ken Kennedy, superintendent in Pratt, said.
Kennedy and Manhattan superintendent Sharol Little have spent the past couple of years working on a plan to reorganize the state's 303 school districts. They used business models from
McDonald's, Wal-Mart and regional hospitals as their guide.
The plan would create regional education districts by collapsing smaller districts into ones covering larger areas. That would allow for better use of resources with fewer buildings, activities, operating budgets, administrators and school boards, they argue.
"It's time for the Legislature to take a look at it," Little said.
Even as Kennedy and Little try to sell their proposal, two western Kansas districts have come to the conclusion that they cannot survive alone. Tomorrow, the State Board of Education is to act on a request by the Bazine and Ransom school districts to consolidate.
Kennedy and Little have been pitching the plan around Kansas.
The districts, located in Ness County, will have a combined enrollment of 223 students, 129 at Ransom and 94 in Bazine. The entire county, with four districts, has an enrollment of about 560 students.
Within the last year, the West Graham-Morland district has dissolved to become part of the Hill City district as enrollments declined and keeping schools open became difficult.
School consolidation has been a bitter subject in Kansas for four decades, and legislators hesitate even to discuss it. A 1963 state law ordered consolidation, and it was upheld by the courts in 1965.
By 1969, 1,850 districts had been winnowed down to only 310.
Kennedy said many communities still feared a loss of identity with further consolidation.
"It's the idea that the entire community really revolves around their school." he said.
In 2001, legislators and the state board received a consultant's support which suggested that 50 of the state's school districts could be collapsed to improve education and make the allocation of dollars more efficient. Legislators did little with the $200,000 report.
Kennedy and Little have reached similar conclusions in their report, which they completed on their own time for little
more than $1,000. They hope that given the state's budget crisis, either plan gets serious consideration.
Gov. Bill Graves has already trimmed nearly $120 million from the fiscal 2003 budget, including $17.5 million from schools. The renewed consolidation buzz hints that fewer districts will mean a savings to the state when dollars are tight.
Kennedy and Little say the savings will not be as substantial as legislators might hope but could allow for the better allocation of limited resources.
To encourage the new districts, the superintendents say financial incentives are necessary, including funding for the transfer of
school property to other entities They also believe penalties should be considered for districts that won't consolidate.
But, they said, a revised formula for distributing state aid, now at $2.3 billion, must consider rural districts that are too isolated and small to consolidate.
Little said the state spends $220 million to provide extra funds to its smallest districts, simply because they have relatively few students.
Consolidation could eliminate that need and improve the quality of education for all size districts, Little said.
"We want to see a better use of the money," she said. "We are advocating for a better solution."
Kansas prepares for war
The Associated Press
WICHITA — On a bitter-cold field at Fort Riley, a U.S. Army tank the color of desert sand glides past Capt. Aaron Cichocki.
The 28-year-old tank company commander wears a pistol strapped across his chest and smiles widely at the armored giant, an M1A1 Abrams. "Seventy tons, stops on a dime," he says. "It's a Cadillac."
After a day of standing in a tank turret, dust fills the pores of his chatted face. He feels the rush of having just finished an exercise involving about 20 tanks, 20 artillery pieces, 15 armed infantry vehicles and 700 active-duty soldiers—firing live rounds.
The exercise, using equipment from the Gulf War, comes as the prospect of combat against Iraq looms again. If President Bush calls for war, some of America's soldiers could be deployed from the Kansas post, says Col. Frank Helmick, Fort Riley's acting commanding general.
Located in the nation's center with superior railway, highway and airfield access. Fort Riley serves as a platform for deploying soldiers and equipment.
The fort always prepares for war, Helmick says, with a standing message to soldiers; "This might be the last chance you get to train before being deployed."
After the live-fire training Wednesday, Col. Russ Gold reminded officers that they never know whether "the next time you maneuver, it will either be in the Mojave (Calif.) Desert or the Iraqi desert."
Now, with arms inspectors in Iraq and talk of war dominating headlines, the fort is receiving calls from national media interested in its operations, said Deb Skidmore; a Fort Riley spokeswoman.
In nearby Junction City, long accustomed to regular vibrations from the fort's firing ranges, residents and community leaders say they have sensed no change in mood at the fort and have seen no
clear sign of a mobilization;
So far, there has been no spike in marriage-license applications at the Geary County Courthouse, which occurred before the Gulf War.
But at Dick Edwaros Auto Plaza, co-owner Janice Edwards said she wonders if car sales could be down partly because soldiers are reluctant to buy when they may be sent to war
When the fort sent forces to the Persian Gulf more than a decade ago, many of the soldiers' families returned to their hometowns during their absence.
Businesses from Junction City to Manhattan suffered because they lost a whole population of customers overnight. The economic impact rippled. Edwards had to lay off four to five employees.
Since Desert Storm, the fort's makeup has changed significantly.
Fort Riley no longer is headquarters for the famed 1st Infantry Division, now based in Germany, although the Kansas post still retains a brigade of that unit.
The fort is headquarters for the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) and offers training for combat units, engineers, and Reserve and National Guard troops from around the nation.
It houses roughly 10,500 active-duty soldiers and 12,000 family members and employs 3,900 civilians. It calls itself the 16th largest city in Kansas.
Much of the fort's operations and expertise are focused on tanks and other armored vehicles.
A massive armored exercise like Wednesday's occurs only a couple of times a year. Fort Riley, with a training area spread across 70,000 acres of rolling prairie, is one of a few posts large enough to hold such training.
The maneuvers test the ability of tanks, armed troop carriers and artillery to coordinate live fire.
Over about a day's time, vehicles and soldiers must move and fire in a concerted, methodical way across miles and miles of terrain, through enemy obstacles, to
attack dug-in forces.
Spacing between the firing vehicles is crucial. Gaps can allow the imaginary enemy to infiltrate. A vehicle out of place could become a casualty of "friendly fire."
Doors at the rear of Bradley Fighting Vehicles lower, and soldiers rush out in full combat gear, carrying M-16s.
The enemy is imaginary, the targets are wooden or plastic, but the ammunition is real.
The foot soldiers clear the enemy out of tree lines.
Clouds of pale smoke rise in the distance over tan- and rust-colored fields crisscrossed by the dust trails left by tanks and troop carriers.
The M1A1 Abrams tanks, some with plows that can shove aside mines, provide safe paths and a sense of security for the ground soldiers and smaller vehicles around them.
Although seemingly indestructible, the tanks depend on the foot soldier to root out an enemy infantryman who can hide in tall grass with an anti-tank weapon.
Through binoculars and from a watch tower, commanders watch the soldiers' attack exercise, noting every move.
At a critique session afterward, Gold, the colonel, stresses the need for quickly sharing accurate battlefield information and for constantly being aware of where the enemy might ambush. Always think ahead, he reminds them.
Spc. Adam Kurtz, from Idaho, hops down from one tank and reflects on the day's training — as close as it gets to the real thing.
"As long as you're moving, you're alive," he says. "Otherwise, you become a target. ... If you can be seen, you can be shot."
"This," he says, "is what we join the Army for, to drive these tanks, to fight."
Guam blasted by typhoon
The Associated Press
HAGATNA, Guam — A day after Guam was raked by a severe typhoon with wind gusts estimated at more than 180 mph, the U.S. territory today asked for a federal disaster declaration.
Although Typhoon Pongsona had moved away from the island. Guam still was being shaken by wind up to 70 mph.
No deaths were reported, but the entire island was without electricity, and water and sewer systems aren't expected to be fully operational for several weeks. Gov. Carl Gutierrez said today.
"There is no doubt that the impact of this latest storm will be devastating," Gutierrez said in a letter asking President Bush to declare Guam a federal disaster area.
Typhoon Pongsona hit Guam on Sunday, covering the islands for hours. The sustained wind speed estimated at 150 mph around the eye of the storm gave Pongsona "supertyphoon" status. The storm blasted some
spots with gusts up to 184 mph, officials said.
Barrigada resident Jackie Cabrera said her brother's house lost its roof and his mother-in-law's house also lost part of the roof.
"They ran over here during the typhoon," she said. "When they were running here, the wind was pushing against them. My other brother had to go out to the porch to pull them into the house."
A wind speed of 117 mph was clocked before the National Weather Service's wind sensor failed, along with its radar.
Gutierrez said it would take some time to determine the typhoon's full impact on island infrastructure because of the extent of the damage and the limited number of engineers available to do surveys.
"The situation is that we have a very severe storm lasting for a very long time," said governor's spokesman John Ryan. "After a storm of this severity, we are looking at a lot of damage — a lot of things loose and to the point where 40 mile winds and 50 mile
gusts might snap something off that normally it would not."
Eight people reported missing after a fire at the fuel tank farm operated by Mobil Oil Micronesia were later accounted for, officials said.
Earlier today, the storm was centered about 100 miles due west of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. Saipan is about 100 miles northwest of Guam.
It still had wind blowing at a sustained 150 mph as it moved toward the north-northwest, said Capt. Robert Leejoice of the Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The National Weather Service on Guam said wind would continue blowing 40 mph to 60 mph today with gusts as high as 70 mph.
Guam is located west of the international date line, about 3,700 miles southwest of Hawaii.
The storm's eye crossed the northern end of Guam, but the entire island was hit by at least part of the storms' eye wall, which contains the strongest wind.
The Associated Press
N.C. power outages lead to deaths
DURHAM, N.C. — In a region left dark and cold by a major ice storm, National Guard volunteers went door to door yesterday to show residents how to safely heat their homes after two people died of carbon monoxide poisoning while trying to keep warm.
More than 200 people have sought medical help for carbon monoxide poisoning since the ice storm downed trees and power lines Thursday.
Utility work crews had made progress in getting power restored to darkened homes.
Duke Power, which had 1.3 million customers in the Carolinas without electricity after the
ice storm Thursday, had restored power to more than half of them as of early yesterday afternoon. It reported 76,200 power outages in Durham as of yesterday morning, down from 108,900 immediately after the storm. However, Duke said it would take it until midnight Wednesday before a majority of its Durham customers had service restored.
Carolina Power & Light, which serves most of the state east of Durham, was still working to return power to about 142,000 customers. The state's rural electric cooperatives reported about 19,000 without power yesterday.
About 4,300 utility workers from 15 states are assisting efforts to restore power.
Gov. Mike Easley said soldiers
National Guardsmen reminded residents that emergency shelters were open and offered kind words of hope.
A 31-year-old man died and at least seven people in the same Durham apartment were hospitalized Saturday, police said. They were burning charcoal on a grill indoors to keep warm.
In Shelby, a man died and his wife was hospitalized after they ran a generator on an enclosed sun porch, police said.
Thirty deaths, mostly traffic-related, have been blamed on the storm and its aftermath.
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