Reason Number One For Consolidation Of Kansas Schools

Kansas never ceases to amaze me with it's stupidity. The public schools in Kansas are not consolidated, which means that each "unified district" has a local school board that is not answerable to state or national standards, or to the state or federal authority, and can force any decision they please on children and parents, be it lawful or not. They can even hire sex offenders and kidnappers if they choose! We now have a Sedgwick County former coach, who was caught in an internet sting, attempting to solicit sex from a fifteen year old, demanding his job as a high school football coach back! Unfortunately, Todd Puetz (it really should be Todd Putz) was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of soliciting sex from a prostitute, and now, since he was not convicted of more serious sex offenses or required to register as a sex offender, his lawyer says he is "entitled" to his job as a high school football coach, and is fighting to somehow force the local school board to engrave him another invitation to endanger children!

Most of us would find this whole request, and the obvious best response......telling Mr. Puetz that he need not apply again.......to be a no brainer. After all, he was fired immediately after his arrest for sex offenses, the local school board did not wait for the trial or the disposition of the charges. As Kansas law does not guarantee a person a job in the event that his services are no longer relevant, and his contract violation(no abusing or molesting children) was proven by his admission of guilt, even though he made a plea in court to a lesser charge, there is a tradition in the unconsolidated, unified school districts of Kansas of covering up the misdeeds of teachers and coaches, and telling the victims to go to hell, because they don't matter. At the other end of the state, in Marshall County, a guidance counselor at Frankfort High still collects taxpayer dollars to endanger children by dropping them off by themselves along highways. The parent who almost had a heart attack over it was told by her local school board that this should not be a cause for concern. If schools in Kansas were consolidated, the laws against child endangerment would need to be followed at each and every public school, and there would be no local school boards protecting political favorites. A thug, such as the guidance counselor in Frankfort, would not be allowed to continue employment in a public school. In fact, the school's insurance should not be allowed to cover this employee any more than an auto insurance policy can be written to cover a driver with fifty DWI's. Child abuse is child abuse, and this guidance counselor committed child abuse and got away with it because Kansas school boards are unsupervised and do not answer to the state. They only answer to themselves. If they do not care about a particular child who has been abused by a teacher, they will generally not lift a finger to stop the abuse. Kudos to the school board who will not offer Todd Puetz his job again. This is an amazing change of pace for Kansas.

Most Kansans fight tooth and nail against consolidation of their schools. Brown v. the Board of Education in 1956 was quite a shock for the quietly prejudiced white population of Kansas, and keeping schools unconsolidated is quite likely a deliberate attempt to continue to keep schools as racially and culturally segregated as possible. Unfortunately, unified districts also have a lot of latitude to violate almost any law when running Kansas schools.