By ROD ZOOK
Hutch Post
YODER, Kan. — Last year, the Haven USD 312 School District wanted to come up with something different for the Yoder Charter School. The school was preparing to renew its charter and felt it needed something different. The decision was to place an agricultural setting into the charter.
“They were up for redoing the charter and, in Kansas, there aren’t a lot of charter schools,” Program Director Becky King said. “Knowing the student body and what the community was looking like . . . and agriculture is such a big part of the community, they added that agriculture learning portion to their charter.”
While the students are getting a full-send push into the program, King says all other facets of the school remain in place.
“This school has always been a unique place of doing lots of project-based learning and so they simply added the agriculture project for it,” King said. “We haven’t taken away from any standards that are being taught. These students learn all of the same state standards.”
King says getting the program started and getting the chicks was harder than it sounds.
“I figured out that we weren’t going to be able to get chicks here in the mail,” King said. “So I drove to every Tractor Supply and Orscheln’s within 30 miles and bought all of their meat chickens.”
That meant keeping them in her garage until she could get them in the classroom. Students have chores each week to keep the chickens healthy and are assigned chores each week. They also learn the business side of the project and how they will use the funds from their year-end barbecue to keep the project moving forward. King says that the plan is to expand the program slowly and move into other areas of agriculture.
“Our hope is to add at least one new facet next year,” King says. “We will be raising chickens again. We are hoping, with multiple classes taking over the brain work and the research, to use our supplies to raise egg layers. And so there will be building a coop and getting the resources for that.”
The school would also like to expand into the crop facet of agriculture in the future as well.
CLICK HERE to download the Hutch Post mobile app.
CLICK HERE to sign up for the daily Hutch Post email news update.