CHEROKEE, Kan. — USD 247 Board of Education members met Wednesday night for a special meeting consisting of multiple executive sessions, discussions on reconfigurations, and the approval of capital outlay projects. 

In recent months, the school board has discussed potential reconfiguration options at length, exploring options such as maintaining the current structure of the district, improving current facilities, and focusing on efficiency. One option discussed would close the Weir campus entirely, moving pre-K through second grade to the middle school while seventh and eighth grade students are at the high school. 

The board's mid-December 2025 decision to close the 110-year-old main building on the Southeast Elementary School (SES) site in Weir due to structural and health issues precedes the decision to pursue reconfigurations. In order to determine which design is most effective going forward, the board has convened numerous special meetings and community discussions. 

The board has not settled on an option suitable for the district, and is expected to continue the discussion over the next several months. During Wednesday’s special meeting, USD 247 Superintendent Dr. Brad Miner asked board members whether anything could be done in the meantime to help make the process of deciding easier. 

“It’s been a while since we’ve talked about that and I know everybody’s had the chance to reflect and think about that and I just wanted to see if there was anything that you needed administration to gather as we continue to talk about that in the future or do you need any information from us? Do you need any information from families, communities, things like that.” 

“We appreciate your efforts so far,” said board member Ron Yancey to Miner. 

Board members then talked about relaying information regarding the process to the parents and the community within the district. 

“As we are waiting on some other things, do we want to do outreach to the parents again?” asked board member Tony Gray. 

“I think it’s important to keep the parents informed,” said board member Whitney Lovell. “I mean we are but as we go along.”  

Updates from the district can be found by visiting facebook.com/usd247 or usd247.com.

In addition to the discussion on reconfigurations, the board talked about several capital outlay projects. One of the proposed projects focused on architecture, design proposals, and historical registration. 

“What they would do is come up with three floor plan concepts to relocate the seventh and eighth grade area,” said Miner. “… One of the challenges we have is our buildings, a lot of our buildings, we don’t have the original floor plans for all of them. Sothere’s pieces that we have to the high school, pieces that we don’t have. So they’ve got to make those pieces not into a full-blown architectural drawing, but they have to do some measurements and design it out so they can get that into a working piece to be able to make those three concepts. 

“… Then they talked about historic preservation services. We could apply for some tax credits by being on the historic register, and those tax credits can be applied. There’s many things we could do at the middle school with the old building over there and the old gym over there. They are old enough that they qualify for some of the tax credits if approved through the historic preservation piece. 

“So if we did upgrades to like the tuck work on the brick that we need to do anyway, potentially, we could get tax credits back on that if we go through that process. They pay like 40 percent, and I think they recently raised that. Then what we would do is we’d get these tax credits and we can’t really do anything with them but we could sell them to the bank and we could make money off the tax credits and leave the bank a little to make money off the tax credits.” 

Following a lengthy discussion on the contract with Echelon, the board voted to proceed with the Echelon bid at $28,775 for architectural and historical services. 

The board then approved several roof repairs around the district at the cost of $6,500 and accepted a motion for the four-year-old HVAC unit at Southeast Elementary School in Weir to be moved to Southeast High School gymnasium, with the work to be done by Pilgrim Heat, Air, and Roofing at the cost of $3,777. 

Lastly, the board allowed maintenance employee Adam Wells to conduct stucco work on the main building at Southeast Elementary in Weir. 

“I’m OK with it as long as he takes all the safety precautions into account,” said board president David Stricklin. 

“Adam (Wells) and I got to talking about it,” said Miner earlier in the meeting. “Adam is confident he can do the same thing. We can rent a lift. He’s got other uses for a lift that he needs, and he knows that I don’t want him to get hurt. He knows when I talk to him about things like that, he knows better than to tell me he can do something when he can’t do it.” 

The next USD 247 Board of Education meeting is scheduled to take place at 6 p.m. Monday, June 8, at the board office located at 506 S. Smelter St. 

This reporting is made possible, in part, by the Support Local Journalism Project Fund. Learn more at: southeastkansas.org/Localnews.