In the weeks leading up to the school year, the Fox C-6 School District separated and renamed its district-wide handbook, adding a disciplinary category to deal with physically aggressive behavior.
The district started the school year on Tuesday.
Board of Education members voted unanimously on Aug. 18 to separate the district’s student handbook from individual school handbooks. Fox C-6 also renamed the district student handbook the Student Code of Conduct to better represent the information in the document.
Also on Aug. 18, board members unanimously voted to add the “physically aggressive behavior” category in the code of conduct’s student discipline section.
On Aug. 4, board members voted 6-0 to hire an architect and design firm to handle bond-issue projects, enter an agreement to purchase unleaded and diesel fuel for 3 cents less than the Oil Price Information Service (OPIS) price the day fuel is bought and to have a third party oversee the annual culture and climate survey that Fox C-6 has handled itself since 2019. Each vote was held separately.
Board member April Moeckel was not at the Aug. 4 meeting.
Code of Conduct
Brian Brown proposed separating and renaming the Fox C-6 student handbook after he started familiarizing himself with the district.
Brown was named the assistant superintendent of secondary education in December after Tammy Cardona announced she was retiring after the 2025-2026 school year. Brown began working at Fox C-6 on July 1 after serving as the principal at Troy Buchanan High School in the Lincoln County R-3 School District since 2019.
“Part of my responsibility to the district is learning about the different schools,” Brown said. “I noticed the first 25 to 26 pages of each specific school handbook was actually a code of conduct that was consistent throughout the entire district. I thought by separating those, families could easily navigate different handbooks on each individual school’s website.”
Brown said he also suggested renaming the Fox C-6 student handbook to the Student Code of Conduct because the name better represented the information in the document. The Code of Conduct lists expectations for students’ behavior and the consequences of violating the district’s policies.
The Code of Conduct is posted on the Fox C-6 website, foxc6.org, and on each school’s page on the district website.
Each Fox C-6 school has a handbook, which provides specific information about each individual school and building. Fox C-6 has 11 elementary, four middle and two high schools as well as the Early Childhood Center and Bridges Alternative School.
“Separating those two things, I think makes a lot of sense,” Brown said of the Code of Conduct and handbooks. “Hopefully, it helps with some clarity with our students and families.”
By approving a change to the district’s student discipline policy, board members provided clarity about what is considered physical contact and consequences students may face if they break the policy.
The new category added to the discipline policy is called “Physically Aggressive Behavior,” which is defined as pushing, shoving, scuffling or other types of behavior that could result in injury to another person and/or staff member.
Students may have a conference with the principal or receive detention, in-school suspension, out-of-school suspension or be expelled for a first offense. A second offense will result in either an in-school suspension, out-of-school suspension or expulsion, according to the policy.
Brown said the policy had only addressed consequences for students involved in a fight or assault.
“This was brought up by high school administrators who had seen some of these behaviors but didn’t have a way of categorizing them in our current policy,” he said of the new policy category. “Sometimes, the behavior didn’t rise to a level of a fight or an assault. They felt they wanted to be clear in terms of what the discipline or infraction was, and this was a way to add a specific category to the discipline policy.”
Architect, engineering firm
Fox C-6 entered an agreement with incite Design Studio (iDS), which has locations in St. Louis, Kansas City, Overland Park, Kan., and Wichita, Kan., to provide architecture and engineering services for the district’s bond-issue projects.
The district will spend $48 million over the next three years to improve HVAC systems in most school buildings, replace roofs on some buildings, install improved safety and security measures in all buildings and pay off existing leases.
The bond measure was called Proposition M, which stood for “maintain our schools, modernize our safety measures and manage our resources,” and voters approved it in April.
According to board documents, 13 firms submitted proposals to provide the architecture and engineering services, and Fox C-6 staff members and Navigate Building Solutions representatives interviewed representatives from five firms before recommending iDS.
Navigate is the district’s owner’s representative for the bond issue projects.
“iDS possessed several qualities that matched the district’s needs for the completion of bond projects,” Fox C-6 COO Tracy Schmidt said. “The iDS team also has the capacity to manage and coordinate the large amount and variety of projects for the scope of work that community members prioritized as needs for the buildings on district campuses.”
Fox C-6 will pay iDS between 5 to 11 percent of the cost of the project that it designs. Schmidt said the estimated total cost for design fees is about $3 million.
The iDS firm will design HVAC projects for Guffey, Clyde Hamrick, Hodge, Simpson, Rockport Heights, Antonia and Lone Dell elementary schools; Antonia and Fox middle schools and Fox and Seckman high schools.
The first project iDS will design is the installation of a new crisis alert system in all district buildings.
In June, Fox C-6 agreed to pay Centegix $1,058,400 for the system. The agreement covers the cost to install the system and for Centegix to service the system over the next five years.
Fuel cost
Fox C-6 entered an agreement with the Home Service Oil Co. of Barnhart to buy unleaded and diesel fuel from the distributor for slightly less than the cost on the day the fuel is purchased.
The district will buy fuel at a cost that is 3 cents less than the listed price on the day it is purchased.
If unleaded fuel was selling for $3.0328 per gallon when Fox C-6 purchased unleaded fuel, the district would pay $3.0028 per gallon, and if diesel was selling for $3.5781 per gallon, the district would pay $3.5481 per gallon.
Gary Cross, Fox C-6 transportation director, said the district has a 10,000-gallon diesel tank and 6,000-gallon unleaded fuel tank at its Fox bus lot in Arnold and a 6,000-gallon diesel tank and 2,000-gallon unleaded fuel tank at its Antonia bus lot. He said the four tanks are typically refilled twice a month.
“It is a two-fold savings for us in terms money and time,” Cross said of the deal with Home Service Oil. “It allows us to guarantee a lower price and saves us time from having to hold a twice monthly bid.”
Cross said the district has budgeted $425,000 to buy fuel this school year.
Surveys
Fox C-6 has asked employees to complete a culture and climate survey every year since 2019.
The district saw participation drop off last school year with only 38.9 percent of employees responding after 50.4 percent responded in the 2024-2025 school year and 51.6 percent responded in the 2023-2024 school year.
Fox C-6 will pay CESO Communications of Minneapolis $7,600 to handle the survey this school year. The company will review and load survey questions onto the Survey Monkey platform, develop a climate index score for each question, show a three-year trend for the responses and provide Fox C-6 a spreadsheet with the anonymous raw data for internal review.
“We hope this is going to increase participation and provide us more data to improve the culture and climate in the district,” JP Prezzavento, Fox C-6 chief technology and communications officer, said.
Three companies submitted bids to provide the work, and CESO was the lowest bid, according to board documents.
On Aug. 4, board president Todd Scott said board members asked for this change because they felt some employees were not completing the survey because they feared their responses would not be anonymous. He also said responses have always been anonymous.