Central Elementary School is a Preschool through Sixth Grade facility in the small, rural community of Burden, Kansas. It serves all of the elementary age children in a large, rural unified district, which includes the communities of Atlanta, Burden, Cambridge, and Grenola, along with the surrounding areas.

Central Schools utilize a Four Day School Week model and have been successful with this schedule since 2001. The four day week gives families and staff opportunities for scheduling outside of the school day, long weekends for trips and family time and creates a balance between school, work and life.

The Central Preschool program is provided through the resources of the Cowley County Special Services Cooperative for preschool children, three to five years of age. The staff provides appropriate skills for each child's individual developmental level. Our four year old program is an all day program. This provides families the opportunity to attend without the burden of finding childcare for the remainder of the day and also provides staff the ability to balance play and developmentally appropriate learning activities. The goal is to assist every child in reaching his or her maximum potential. The Preschool staff encourages parents to become actively involved in their child's program.

Instruction for Kindergarten through Sixth Grade is provided in ten subject areas: Reading, Math, Social Studies, Science, Art, STEM, Language Arts and Writing. In addition to the regular classroom activities, our students attend both Vocal Music and Physical Education classes on a daily basis. A special Art/STEM class is taught for a 45 minute period weekly. Instrumental Band is an elective offered to the Fifth and Sixth Grade students. All classes participate in The Leader In Me. The Leader In Me teaches students about the 7 Habits and how to grow as a person, learner, and leader. Our older students are able to carry out lessons and skills learned every day during our RISE Time in roles that best fit their genius. We have groups such as students working in our CES News room, our Agriculture group taking care of our chickens and our garden, our Morning Announcement group who is responsible for writing and presenting our announcements each day, our Social Media group who keeps our community up to date, our library group who organizes and runs our library, the breakfast group who helps our preschoolers during breakfast, cleans up and keeps our hallways clean, and many more! Our students all have a Student Portfolio that captures their goals, their prized work, and their data that they present to their families twice a year during Student Led Conferences. We have a Student Lighthouse Team that is formed each year with students applying and interviewing to serve on our student leadership team. These students help our action teams create targets and reach out goals with planned activities, events, and input from students and staff. With The Leader In Me, staff work with students to enrich and enhance our school with student-led initiatives, actions, community outreach and events. We believe all students have the ability to be leaders at Central Elementary!

Central is a School-Wide Title I school. We have a full-time Reading Specialist who provides struggling students with in depth reading interventions in a small group or independent sessions. She is trained in LETRS and The Science of Reading. We also have three highly qualified classroom aides who help support instruction in the classroom as well as help students by providing small groups and one on one interventions in the area of reading and math.

We have an Interrelated teacher and para who serves our Special Education students. Other special classes, such as Speech/Language, Physical Therapy, and Adaptive P.E. are provided through the Cowley County Special Services Cooperative.

After much research, in August, 2019, we implemented reading instruction based off of the Science of Reading and current evidence based practices. We utilize Really Great Reading in Prek-4 thru 2nd grades for core instruction in the area of phonemic awareness and phonics. In grades 3-6th, teachers continue students' word recognition and knowledge base using morphology lessons that focus on Greek and Latin affixes to increase students' understanding of word meanings.

Kindergarten-6th graders use CKLA (Core Knowledge Language Arts) as their Language Arts and Reading curriculum. This program is a cross-curricular program that focuses on building students' background knowledge in history, science, and the arts that are connected to Social Studies and Science standards at each grade level in addition to the Kansas English Language Arts and Reading standards.

Our math instruction is based on a conceptual understanding approach to building number sense, fact fluency, and real world problem solving. Our math block consists of students mentally solving problems, working together with peers to work through challenging tasks, the opportunity to use self selected strategies, and think critically. At Central Elementary, we believe math should be fun, engaging, and flexible to each learner and enhance their problem solving strengths and abilities.

At CES we have a solid MTSS (Multi Tiered Systems of Support) that we refer to as W.I.N. Time- What I Need. Each day for 30 minutes, students are grouped into ability levels in the area of reading where students who are a bit behind, receive intervention, those who are on grade level and above are receiving extension and enrichment activities. During this time, each child is receiving intense instruction in the area of need to close achievement gaps, gain needed skills, or challenge their abilities with enrichment. Students who are below grade level receive differentiation in the classroom and if needed, will be provided extra support from our aides or a Reading Specialist to close those gaps.

At Central Elementary School, we strive to provide a caring, engaging, positive family environment that builds students’ confidence, pride and knowledge that serve them not only today, but every day.