25 April 2023
ANDOVER, Kan. (KSNW) — Nearly a year after an EF-3 tornado ripped through Andover, Senator Jerry Moran announced Monday federal funds for education and law enforcement in the city.
In total, $385,000 will be allocated to the Andover Police Department, and $200,000 will go toward the Andover School District.
“Everything was empty,” Prarie Creek Elementary school art teacher Jamie Clark said. “There was nothing on the boards, nothing on the walls.”
That’s what Clark walked into nearly a year ago.
She uses an interactive display board regularly in her classroom, and it was destroyed. She says without that tool, there are challenges.
“I would be at a table with kids kind of crowded around me,” Clark said. “And what usually happens at that point is they lose focus.”
The Andover School District is using the $200,000 on interactive display boards.
“Teachers use that to engage students and for lessons, so those will be used, really a daily instruction every day of the year,” Andover School District Superintendent Brett White said. “Definitely things that we rely on for our instruction.”
After construction, the district is working to replace the materials teachers need.
One issue uncovered by the tornado was an upgrade to the 911 system. It crashed from an overflow of calls.
“What this system will do for us is going to help us modernize,” Andover Chief of Police Buck Buchanan said. “We’re going to be able to better gather information. So when we get a 911 call, we’re able to collect that data a lot better than the system that we currently have in place.”
A year ago, the department got creative to ensure everyone was safe.
“We had a dry-erase board that we wrote addresses down on because our system kept crashing, and that was the quickest way to keep track of the houses that hadn’t been searched,” 911 Director Becky Day said.
Day says getting news systems is a long process, but she hopes to have them running next year.