Feature Story

The 2024 KSDE Great Ideas in Education Conference: “Lighting the Path Forward” provided educators across Kansas a deeper dive into structured literacy, high quality instruction, and data-driven strategies, to name just a few of the topics covered during the three-day event, held Oct. 23-25, in Wichita. 

Chris Perry, co-founder and executive director of Cultivate Education, LLC, delivered the keynote address, focusing on the art and science of effective implementation. He cited research showing only 33% of educational initiatives and programs are successfully implemented and achieve their stated goals. He said implementation can be difficult, especially when it requires more staff and resources to sustain an initiative.  

The Blue-Ribbon Task Force on Student Screen Time held its 11th meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 30 with the focus on finalizing recommendations regarding parental oversight of district-owned devices.  

The purpose of these task force meetings has been to develop guidance/recommendations, based in research, on the following topics: 

• Students' personal device use in school, 
• Screen time and mental health; and 
• Parental oversight of district-owned devices. 

The task force voted on the remaining set of recommendations which will be drafted into the final report presented to the board in November.

Todd Wollard believes he has found the winning recipe for success for his district’s food service program. He starts with a generous amount of treating students as customers and combines it with equal parts love, creativity and common sense.  

“Our entire goal is to do what’s best for our students,” said Wollard, food service and human resources coordinator for Prairie View Unified School District 362. “They deserve to get quality meals.” 

Kansas educators and administrators gathered in Wichita on Wednesday, Oct. 23, for the first day of the 2024 Kansas State Department of Education’s Great Ideas in Education Conference: Lighting the Path Forward. 

The conference, scheduled for Oct. 23-25, in Wichita, focuses on the tools necessary to strengthen school improvement efforts to support each Kansas student. Through professional development and networking opportunities, the conference helps educators and school personnel improve policies and strategies to create safe learning environments and quality teaching and learning practices for each student. 

Role model, mentor, dedicated professional. These are just a few words people who know and work with Dorothy Dorman use to describe the winner of the small bus division of the 2025 National School Transportation Association School Bus Driver International Safety Competition. 

“She can drive anything,” Alan Funk, Wichita North Lot location manager for First Student bus transportation company, said of Dorman. “You put her in something yellow and she can drive it.” 

Dorman has been a driver for First Student since 2008, the company that contracts with Wichita Unified School District 259, and has been competing in bus driving contests since 2009. She was the overall state champion at the Kansas driving competition in early June in Derby. She followed that up with the first-place win in the small bus category at the international competition in late June in Austin, Texas, which included a written test and a rigorous road course, testing her knowledge and driving skills under pressure. Dorman is the first bus driver from Kansas to win in a category at the international competition.