Curbside pickup for Roeland Park: Here’s what residents can soon put out for recycling

Roeland Park residents will see purple bins show up at their homes the first week in December as the city prepares to launch a curbside glass recycling program citywide on Jan. 1.

A divided City Council — Mayor Mike Kelly broke a tie vote — approved the initiative back in August after a pilot program collected more than 22,000 pounds of glass from 654 Roeland Park homes. Interest in the program was deemed sufficient to justify a citywide effort for at least the next three years.

Roeland Park is collaborating with Ripple Glass on the monthly curbside pickups, which will coincide with the residents’ regular trash pickup days. Residents are to place the purple bins at the curb on the first pickup day each month.

The monthly cost to the city for the first year is $2.50 for each of its 2,800-plus single residential housing units, and will go up by 6 cents in 2024 and 7 cents in 2025. The city will recover nearly a third of the cost through a solid waste assessment reflected in residents’ property tax bills. The rest will come from general revenue. The cost was reduced somewhat when Ripple Glass received a grant covering $15,000 of the $39,000 cost of the purple recycling bins.

Ripple also plans weekly collections at the BLVD apartments, where residents will receive tote bags they can use to carry their glass into one of the bins provided on the property. The company will pick up glass monthly at two city parks and the community center for no extra charge.

Among the glass items accepted for recycling are food and beverage containers, drinking glasses and mason jars, cosmetics jars and candle jars, as well as shower doors, tabletops and windows with the hardware and frames removed.

Ripple will not accept mirrors, light bulbs, ceramics or pottery, TVs or dish ware, including Pyrex items.

Special education audit begins

The Gardner Edgerton School District is collaborating with the University of Kansas to audit the district’s special education department, which has been a point of concern for parents.

Superintendent Brian Huff described the process in a recent message to district constituents.

“We know that services for our students with special needs are of the utmost importance to our families and employees,” Huff wrote.

Since October, he said, KU has been gathering information from staff members and parents. The university also has received the video from a special school board meeting last May devoted to special education concerns, including heavy caseloads, staff turnover, poor pay for paraprofessionals and feeder school patterns that separate children from their friends.

“To ensure everyone’s voice is heard,” Huff said, KU also is creating a survey, to be returned anonymously, that will go to special education teachers, building administrators, general education teachers, paraprofessionals and parents of students with special needs.

Huff also said that with the recent hiring of two special education teachers, all teaching positions have been filled across the district.

Connection point for Blue Valley parents

The Blue Valley Board of Education has developed a forum, quarterly meetings called Community Connection Points, where members of the public can engage with board members and learn about specific topics.

The first meeting, focusing on the upcoming school bond election, will take place at 6 p.m Nov. 29 at the Blue Valley North High School library, 12200 Lamar Ave. in Overland Park.

Subsequent meetings are scheduled for 6 p.m. Feb. 1 at Blue Valley Northwest High School and 6 p.m. April 13 at Blue Valley High School.

Anyone who wants to ask a question is asked to submit the question ahead of time, but others can attend without registering. Find the sign-up link in a news release announcing the program at bluevalleyk12.org.

REDLINED exhibit wins award

The Johnson County Museum has received the 2022 Special Achievement Award from the Greater Kansas City Attractions Association for the temporary exhibit, “REDLINED: Cities, Suburbs, and Segregation.”

“We would like to thank our 20-plus community partners who helped develop REDLINED and created programming to continue the community conversations,” Lindsey Arnold Seevers, the museum’s curator of engagement, said in a news release.

“Without their support we would not be able to share this hard history of a short-lived federal policy that is inextricably intertwined with the development of our suburban cityscape.”

The REDLINED exhibit runs through Jan. 7.