School Board candidates are offering insight into their views on recruiting students from out of the district after local residents asked The Eudora Times to seek their perspectives.

The interviews have been lightly edited for clarity. As a reminder, our full voters guide stories on each of the candidates can be found under the Education tab on our website.

Tony Barron

What do you think the role of out-of-district students is in Eudora?

I think the role of out-of-district students is to partake in activities just like we would expect an in-district student to do. If they’re going to be in our school district, we want to welcome them with open arms as if they were a Eudora community member. So I would expect to hold them to the same expectations that we hold all of our students to.

Do you think the district should be bringing in more out-of-district students?

As of right now, I don’t have an opinion on that because I don’t have any data to say one way or the other whether it’s beneficial or detrimental to the district. I would have to get more information on that. I understand the concept that each student in the district means you receive more funds from the state. I understand that, but along those same lines, the more kids we have in the district also brings more expenses, increases class sizes and puts a little bit more pressure on our operational systems that we have in place. 

It’s hard for me to say yes or no, whether I think that’s a great idea or not, until I see some numbers and see something on paper about any proposals that somebody might be bringing forward.

Joe Hurla

What do you think the role of out-of-district students is in Eudora?

Our first obligation is to the students who live in the community of Eudora. I think anything that we can do that maximizes the funding that we have to enhance their educational experiences are outcomes we want to pursue. I think, first and foremost, that’s what I want to focus on. 

The state has outlined some requirements related to out-of-district students having opportunities to choose their own educational setting. We’ve set some limits related to that. I think as long as we are able to operate within those limits and really fill empty seats, then we certainly want to welcome those out-of-district students and raise them as our own and provide them that same quality education. We want to do this in a way that allows us to maintain the class sizes, elective and educational offerings, and extracurricular opportunities for our in-district students.

Do you think the district should be bringing in more out-of-district students?

I think we should continue to optimize our financial situation, and where out-of-district students will allow for that to happen, then yes. But, as a simple example, if we have a classroom at the elementary school that can accommodate 18 students, we would like to be able to have 18 students in that room. 

We don’t want to open it up and now have 19 or 20 and start to jeopardize our class sizes that we’ve tried to retain. But if we start to get down to 15 or 16 students, we’ve run into an issue where we actually will have to reduce the number of sections of that class and then we end up with larger class sizes because we didn’t welcome out-of-district students. 

It’s both an art and a science that we have to very carefully work through in order to ensure that we are, again, achieving those goals that we’ve established as a district.

Shawna Vetter

What do you think the role of out-of-district students is in Eudora?

I kind of have mixed feelings about this. It’s great, I think, because we can get more revenue into our school districts. However, I’m leaning more toward going back to out-of-district students having to be in good standing in order to be able to come here. There used to be, if you wanted to come out of district, even if you were a studious child, you were put on probation and you had to apply, have good attendance and couldn’t get in trouble. It wasn’t based on income or race or anything like that, but you had to be more of an asset to our school. 

I know we have a lot of out-of-district kids, and we’ve had them for a while for whatever reason. My concern is that I still think they should have to follow the same rules that we had in place. Attendance is a factor. You cannot get into trouble, for lack of better words, at school. 

You cannot be getting detentions and, you know, expelled, and still be able to attend our schools. That takes away from our kids who live here and who need the help. It takes away from the one-on-one teachers and all the resources that are very limited, in my opinion, that we have for students who may need extra help. It takes away classroom time as far as, you know, any students who have a lot of disruptions in class take away a lot of valuable time that the teachers do not have in order to teach the students who are there and wanting to learn.

Do you think the district should be bringing in more out-of-district students?

It’s kind of a double-edged sword. I’m not one to just go with what the majority feels, I guess. I think I understand why they want to bring in more students because it gives our district more money. In turn, we can pay for teachers, we can pay for paraprofessionals, aides and things that we need. 

There needs to be a balance as far as that goes. If we are getting a whole bunch of students from out-of-district who, you know, want to come here and they love our schools and they want to be a part of our community, I think that’s awesome. If they are coming here because they are skipping school, they have behavior issues at school, they are getting expelled, things like that, then no. I do not think that they should be allowed to go to our schools. 

It should be a privilege to go to school in Eudora. And I think that the money that we’re getting for our school district to have out-of-district students needs to be weighed over what we are losing by focusing extra attention to these students with behavior or, you know, just not coming to school. 

So, it can go both ways. I understand why it’s good for our schools. If we can get the correct balance of those things and it will be beneficial, maybe we will have more money to be able to have more classroom help and to have more benefits to our students, rather than taking away from our current students.

Heather Whalen

What do you think the role of out-of-district students is in Eudora?

I envision any student who is enrolled and accepted and comes through our doors a Eudora Cardinal, no matter where they are coming from. And if we have enrolled them and accepted them in our school district, then they’re viewed as Cardinals just like every other student. So my vision for non-district students really isn’t any different than in-district students. 

We’ve had a history in Eudora of accepting nonresident students for over 10 years. We have families who have sent all of their children through all of our schools, and no one ever denotes, ‘Oh, they’re out of district, they’re in district.’ They’re just a Eudora Cardinal. 

There’s a long-standing tradition of Eudora accepting nonresident students. This isn’t anything new to our district. So, in my eyes, if you are a student in good standing and have enrolled and we’ve accepted you, then you are a Eudora Cardinal.

Do you think the district should be bringing in more out-of-district students?

Across the state, schools are losing enrollment, and Eudora is no different in that. Some people like to take that and see that as a negative, but it is actually a compliment to Eudora and the Eudora schools. Once people are here, nobody wants to leave. 

There’s just a very low housing market here in Eudora, so we’re having a very difficult time having young families move in because there’s no housing. That’s really driving our lowering enrollment. It’s not because we aren’t doing things well. It’s that we’re doing things so well as a district because of our amazing staff, students and teachers that we just don’t have room for new families that want to move in. 

Many people also are not aware of the changes at the state level, where open enrollment was allowed two years ago. That’s kind of what has brought the news coverage to the open enrollment idea. It’s impacting Eudora in a small way. About 10% of our students are nonresidents, but a high percentage of those are students who have been here for many, many years and families that are on their second, third, fourth child coming through our school district. 

So, we would love to see our enrollment increase because having a consistent level of enrollment is what’s best for our students and our staff and our community. Some of that is just highlighting and making people aware of the great things that are happening here in Eudora. 

We’re not actively going out and recruiting students or changing any bus routes or anything like that, but we are promoting through social media and our website just the great things that our staff, our teachers and our students are doing here in Eudora. I think we all want to see the great things that are happening in our schools.

Travis McCormick

The Eudora Times tried to reach Travis McCormick for comment multiple times but did not receive a response by Friday afternoon.

Reach reporter Bella Waters at [email protected].